Abraham marries Keturah at the end of Chayei Sarah, and Rashi tells us that this is Hagar. When the Torah refers to someone by introducing the figure with “Shmo” or “shma” (“His/her name is”) we know that the Torah is describing the person’s essence. In this case we know that Ketura was really Hagar, Abraham’s concubine, but something about her essence involved incense, as Rashi tells us (the word Ketura is related in incense).
When I was in Bali Indonesia I couldn’t help but notice that everywhere I traveled I could smell incense, because the Hindus there were contantly offering incense as a spiritual practice.
The Torah tells us that Abraham had 6 children with Keturah, but it is strange that the Torah does not simply say that Abraham had 8 kids in total (the number representing one beyond the limits of physicality) or, perhaps more fitting, 1 child with Sarah and 7 with Hagar. 7 represents physical completeness so Abraham having 7 children with Hagar would make sense. However, perhaps the Torah is trying to make a point with specifically detailing 6 children from Ketura, 6 being one short ofphysical completion. The Zohar in this parsha notes that when the Torah writes that Abraham gave everything he had to Issac and gifts to the children of Ketura, the “gifts” must be spiritual gifts (for how could a father give everything material to one son and have anything else to give to others?).
According to the Zohar, these 6 children were send “eastward to the east” taking with them the roots of Eastern meditation and spirituality, the essential roots o Hinduism and later Buddhism. However, although Eastern spirituality has a lot (incense, medditations, etc), it is inherently incomplete, hence the number 6. It is like having 6 days a week, and never having Shabbat, the most important day, the day we all aspire to reach through our work on the other 6 days of the week!
As Rabbi Orlowik notes, even the word for Hindu in Hebrew, Hodi, is spelled הודי. The letters here almost contain G-d’s name, yud-k-vuv-k, but the missing part is the dalet instead of the Hay. To make a dalet into a hay is quite easy, all that is necessary is to insert a yud into the bottom left side of the dalet. Dalet is 4, representing physicality (the 4 corners of the world) and yud is the only letter that hovers above the line of the page, representing spirituality, G-d’s oneness. Eastern spirituality almost has it all, but lacks the most essential part, the conclusion of everything we are trying to accomplish, the realization that at the end of the day, everything is a coherent unit, G’d is the source of all physical and spiritual powers, and G’d is one.
