By Rabbi Yisroel Shusterman
This
week’s Parsha Perspective is dedicated in
memory of Elka bas Zisel OBM
And
in memory of Leah bas Rochel OBM
This week's Parshah Chaye Sarah (Bereishis
[Genesis] 23:1-25:18) contains the most serene description of old age and
dying anywhere in the Torah: “Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a
good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people”
(Gen. 25: 8). There is an earlier verse, no less moving: “Abraham was old, well
advanced in years, and God had blessed Abraham with everything” (Gen. 24: 1).
Nor was this serenity the gift of Abraham
alone. Rashi was puzzled by the description of Sarah –
“Sarah lived to be 127 years old: [These were] the years of Sarah's life” (23:
1). The last phrase seems completely superfluous. Why not just tell us that
Sarah lived to the age of 127? What is added by saying that “these were the
years of Sarah’s life”? Rashi is forced to the conclusion that the first half
of the verse talks about the quantity of her life, how long she lived, while
the second tells us about the quality of her life. “They – the years she lived
– were all equal in goodness.”
Yet how is any of this conceivable? Abraham and Sarah
were commanded by God to leave everything that was familiar: their land, their
home, their family, and travel to an unknown land. No sooner had they arrived
than they were forced to leave because of famine. Twice, Abraham’s life was at
risk when, driven into exile, he worried that he would be killed so that the
local ruler could take Sarah into his harem. Sarah herself had to say that she
was Abraham’s sister, and had to suffer the indignity of being taken into a
stranger’s household.
Then there was the long wait for a child, made even more
painful by the repeated Divine promise that they would have as many children as
the stars of the sky or the dust of the earth. Then came the drama of the birth
of Ishmael to Sarah’s servant Hagar. This aggravated the
relation between the two women, and eventually Abraham had to send Hagar and
Ishmael away. One way or another, this was a source of pain to all four people
involved.
Then there was the agony of the binding of Isaac.
Abraham was faced with the prospect of losing the person most precious to him,
the child he had waited for so long.
Neither Abraham nor Sarah had an easy life. Their lives
were lives of trial, in which their faith was tested at many points. How
can Rashi say that all of Sarah’s years were equal in goodness? How can the
Torah say that Abraham had been blessed with everything?
The answer is given by the Parsha itself, and it is very
much unexpected. Seven times Abraham had been promised the land. Here is just
one of those occasions:
“The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted
from him, “Raise your eyes, and, from the place where you are now [standing],
look to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west. All the land
that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. . . . Go, walk
through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you” (Gen.
13: 14- 17).
Yet by the time Sarah dies, Abraham has no land at all,
and he is forced to prostrate himself before the local Hittites and beg for
permission to acquire even a single field with a cave in which to bury his
wife. Even then he has to pay what is clearly a massively inflated price: four
hundred silver shekels. This does not sound like the fulfillment of the promise
of “all the land, north, south, east and west.”
Then, in relation to children, Abraham is promised four
times: “I will make you into a great nation” (12: 2). “I will make your
offspring like the dust of the earth” (13: 16). God “took [Abram] outside and
said, 'Look at the sky and count the stars. See if you can count them.' [God]
then said to him, 'That is how [numerous] your descendants will be.'” (15: 5).
“No longer shall you be called Abram. Your name shall become Abraham, for I
have set you up as the father of many nations” (17: 5).
Yet he had to wait so long for even a single son by Sarah
that when God insisted that she would indeed have a son, both Abraham (17: 17)
and Sarah (18: 12) laughed. (The sages differentiated between these two
episodes, saying that Abraham laughed with joy, Sarah with disbelief. In
general, in Genesis, the verb tz-chk,(to laugh) is fraught with
ambiguity).
One way or another, whether we think of children or the
land – the two key Divine promises to Abraham and Sarah – the reality fell far
short of what they might have felt entitled to expect.
That, however, is precisely the meaning and message of
Chayei Sarah. In it Abraham does two things: he buys the first plot in the land
of Canaan, and he arranges for the marriage of Isaac. One field and a cave
were, for Abraham, enough for the text to say that “God had blessed Abraham
with everything.” One child, Isaac, by then married and with children (Abraham
was 100 when Isaac was born; Isaac was sixty when the
twins, Jacob and Esau, were born; and Abraham was 175 when he died)
was enough for Abraham to die in peace.
Lao-Tzu, the Chinese sage, said that a journey of a
thousand miles begins with a single step. To that Judaism adds, “It is not for
you to complete the work but neither are you free to desist from it”
(Avot 2: 16). God himself said of Avraham, “For I have chosen him, so that
he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the
Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for
Abraham what he has promised him” (Gen. 18: 19).
The meaning of this is clear. If you ensure that your
children will continue to live for what you have lived for, then you can have
faith that they will continue your journey until eventually, they reach the
destination. Abraham did not need to see all the land in Jewish hands, nor did
he need to see the Jewish people become numerous. He had taken the first step.
He had begun the task, and he knew that his descendants would continue it. He
was able to die serenely because he had faith in God and faith that others
would complete what he had begun. The same was surely true of Sarah.
To place your life in God’s hands, to have faith that
whatever happens to you happens for a reason, to know that you are part of a
larger narrative, and to believe that others will continue what you began, is
to achieve a satisfaction in life that cannot be destroyed by circumstance.
Abraham and Sarah had that faith, and they were able to die with a sense of
fulfillment.
To be happy does not mean that you have everything you
want or everything you were promised. It means, simply, to have done what you
were called on to do, to have made a beginning, and then to have passed on the
baton to the next generation. “The righteous, even in death, are regarded as
though they were still alive” (Berachot 18a) because the righteous leave a
living trace in those who come after them.
That was enough for Avraham and Sarah, and it must be
enough for us.
(by Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of
England and the British Commonwealth)
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