Hayyei Sarah 5776 - English

By Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik

Kol Shearith Israel - Panama 

Let me begin with a literal translation of the first verse in the Parashah (Gen. 23:1): 

“Sarah’s lives came to one hundred years and twenty years and seven years, the years of Sarah’s lives.”

Some simple and powerful ideas emerge from the beginning of Parashat Hayyei Sarah.  Perhaps they are well known, but it might be worthwhile to review them.  

The first observation is that the word Haim -translated as life- does not exist in singular form in Hebrew.  This plural is more than a grammatical issue; it is the acknowledgement that human experience is multidimensional. 

And I do not mean the notion of life after death (a merely speculative topic), but realizing that in our daily activities we establish different dynamics related to our personal, social and professional development, and in a similar way, we define the roles we play in each environment where we interact.  

In our “I”, a variety of identities and relationships converge that could be better defined as a multiple number of “lives” coexisting simultaneously to a higher or lower degree.  We aspire to a coherence that will allow us to integrate them in a relatively harmonious confirmation, even though we know from our own reality how complex this can be.  The term Haim, in plural, gives testimony of this multiplicity.  

The second idea comes from the strange way in which the text provides us with Sarah’s age at the time of her death.  Instead of giving us the complete number of years (one hundred twenty seven), it announces separately the hundreds, the tens and the units.  

Rashi (France, XI Century), based on the Midrash, explains that the Torah expresses itself in this manner to teach us that when Sarah was one hundred, it was as if she were twenty in regards to the sins committed, and when she was twenty, it was as if she were seven in regards to her beauty.  Rashi finally says: all of Sarah’s years were equally good.  

I like Rashi’s commentary in terms of understanding that life has different stages and each of them has its own characteristics.  What I do not like from his interpretation is that he attributes Sarah with virtues from one phase to the other.

Almost every day we witness the difficulties that arise when someone skips a stage or decides to assume attitudes not appropriate for that moment.  We see little kids acting like adolescents, teenagers pretending to have the freedom but not the responsibility of adults, and adults behaving with the same impertinence as the young.    

I would rather think that the wholeness of Sarah’s life consisted precisely of living each stage in an appropriate manner.  With all the challenges and anguishes, trials and illusions that each stage of life brought her.  

Finally, there is a very valuable message when we see that the Parashah that tells us about the death of the matriarch Sarah (and also of the patriarch Abraham) is called “the lives of Sarah.”  The same concept is repeated in Parashat Vayehi (he lived), which tells us about the death of Jacob (and Joseph).  

From it, we can recognize an effort to remind us that death is a part of life.  And it is death that gives us the perspective on the reach and impact that life had.  Beyond the pain that the departure of a loved one causes us, the summons is to celebrate that life.

Contrary to a society that attempts to hide and deny death, we could think that the Torah invites us to deal with it more naturally, to find in that ‘end of the road’ the meaning of what we have done and the legacy we leave behind.    

Shabbat Shalom

Gustavo