Tremendous Tribute
Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein
Parshat Chayei Sarah records the events immediately following the end of Sarah Imeinu’s life on earth. Avraham Avinu came to eulogize Sarah velivkosah/and to cry for her. The narrative raises several questions. First, where was Avraham coming from? More striking, the letter “khof” in “velivkosa” is written smaller than the other letters. Why is that so? And what was the eulogy, unrecorded here in the Torah? Actually, notes Rabbi Heiman, while people had mourned the passing of a loved one, this is the first time a eulogy is mentioned in the Torah.
It is on this last point that Rabbi Heiman explains that the eulogy served a purpose, to impact and teach others. Sarah’s eulogy was delivered to Bnei Chet, descendants of Canaan among whom Avraham lived at the time and on whose property Meorat Hamachpelah existed. The mantra of these Canaanites was to love only each other and to love to steal. That the eulogy of Sarah’s life and values had an impact on the listeners is evident by their response to Avraham’s request for a burial plot. They immediately offered it to him as a gift to an honored resident among them. But their true nature came out when Avraham refused the gift and offered to pay for the site. The price Efron, the leader and negotiator suggested, was exorbitant. Nevertheless, Avraham paid it graciously.
We are still left with our original two questions, and the question of this particular eulogy will be answered as part of those discussions.
The medrash suggests two possibilities for Avraham’s whereabouts prior to Sarah’s passing, each of which could have impacted Avraham’s diminished crying now for the passing of his life partner. First, the medrash states that Avraham was coming from his father Terach’s funeral. However, Terach had died two years earlier. Why would coming from that funeral leave him now with fewer tears for Sarah? What, then is the connection?
The second, more well known possibility, is that Avraham was returning from Har Hamoriah and the binding of Yitzchak. That experience and Avraham’s encounter with God left Avraham on such a spiritual high that his mourning was diminished.
If we examine the lives of Terach and Sarah Imeinu mentioned in this medrash, we may gain further insight into Avraham’s diminished crying. Terach, although he did teshuvah in his later years, was an idolater all his life. How many opportunities for righteousness did he miss as a result? Avraham cried bitterly over his father’s relatively empty life. Sarah, on the other hand, lived a long and full life, rich with achievement and actualized purpose. It was Sarah who converted the women to monotheism alongside her husband who converted the men. Therefore, Avraham eulogized her achievements but cried only minimally for his personal loss, for Sarah had passed on now to a well deserved eternal life. This life is just a transitional phase to eternal life, says Rabbi Galinsky quoted in Letitcha Elyon, just as birth is a transition from in utero existence to independent physical existence. Sarah had successfully completed this intermediate stage. Avraham could not mourn for her, only for his loss.
Rabbi Pinto in Toras Yeshayahu brings a different perspective to our discussion. He notes that there are four ways to avert an evil decree. Three have become part of our liturgy, teshuvah, prayer and tzedakah. The fourth is changing one’s place – meshaneh makom meshaneh mazal/He who changes his place, changes his mazal/destiny/fate/decree. [I suppose changing one’s name falls into this general category. CKS] How does that work? Rabbi Pinto suggests that changes are always stressful or traumatic, even positive changes that are actually transitions, like marriage, a new baby or moving to a larger home. Routines, both positive and negative become part of us, and change is hard. The stress or trauma of change translates into a form of suffering that acts as atonement.
What greater trauma is there than the transition from one level of existence, from fetus to the physical world, and from the physical world to death and the world of the soul, asks Rabbi Pinto. A baby cries at that transition, for it doesn’t want to leave the comfort of the uterus, and the soul cries as it leaves the familiar body. We cry and empathize with the soul as it cries. But a tzadik is already living his physical life in a spiritual realm, and when his soul leaves his body, he is not going to a totally unfamiliar place. Since the soul cries less, our empathetic cries are also diminished. Our cries are more for our loss that for the soul’s transition. While Terach’s soul cried bitterly at the transition, Avraham cried along with it. In contrast, Sarah’s soul did not cry, and therefore Avraham cried minimally.
According to some traditions, Avraham’s eulogy was Eishet Chayil/A Woman of Valor [Proverbs 31]. While Sarah grew up in the home of Terach, she spent the rest of her physical life often referred to as night, rectifying any errors of those years and teaching Torah to naaroseha/her women, preparing for the next world, explains Rabbi Druck.
The alternate place Avraham was coming from mentioned in the medrash is more widely known, Avraham’s returning from the binding of Yitzchak. This detail is what Rashi focuses on as the trauma that was the catalyst for Sarah’s death. Rabbi Uziel Milevsky reveals the Satan’s strategy. From the time Hashem told Avraham to bind his son to the altar, Satan put obstacles in Avraham’s path to try to prevent him from fulfilling Hashem’s wish. Not having succeeded, Satan made one last effort to undo Avraham’s mitzvah. If he could make Avraham regret having obeyed Hashem, the merit of the act would be erased, just as regret over sinning could erase the punishment for the sin. Therefore, Satan showed Sarah Yitzchak tied to the altar. According to the medrash, the shock killed Sarah. If the pain of losing Sarah would overwhelm Avraham so that he would regret having fulfilled Hashem’s direction this one time, all the merit of the binding of Isaac would be erased forever. With tremendous self discipline, Avraham controlled his grief, crying only minimally after eulogizing Sarah. Avraham thus created a great kiddush Hashem and foiled Satan’s plan. Therefore, writes Otzrot Hatorah, we pray that Hashem remove the Satan both from in front of us, that urges us to sin, and from behind us, to regret having performed a mitzvah or for boasting about having performed the mitzvah.
Rav Menachem Man Shach finds a homiletic connection between the two places Avraham left to come to bury Sarah. Indeed it was Sarah’s spiritual fortitude that pervaded Avraham’s life and household and strengthened him to withstand the pervading idolatry of all of society. It was her influence that was the constant impetus to follow Hashem’s word, and her mothering that raised a Yitzchak willing to sacrifice himself for God’s word. It was through Sarah that Avraham was able to “bury” the ideology of Terach and the society around them.
The names of women are few and far between in Tanach. By no means does this imply that they are any less important. Rather, their influence is visible in the public arena most often through their men, while the woman is influential in her household, enabling her husband to be “known in the gates.” As Rabbi Besdin notes in the name of Rabbi Soloveitchick, when Hashem states, “I will remember My covenant with Jacob, v’et/as well as My covenant with Isaac, v’et My covenant with Avraham” those superfluous words, et, come to add the private, in the tent Matriarchs as equally important in this covenant. In fact, from creation itself, Man and Woman were both created with equal spirituality and importance, for “Male and Female created He them,” both created in the image of God.
We can further see the important role of Sarah when Avraham asked that Yishmael should “live before You.” Hashem’s reply is the affirmation of Sarah’s importance for, although Yishmael will indeed become a great nation, it will be through the child born of Sarah, who will be named Yitzchak, that Avraham’s legacy must continue. Your wife, Sarah, will bear this child, affirming that her name change and destiny occurred concurrent with Avraham’s name change and destiny, making them equal partners in the creation of Hashem’s nation. In fact, after Sarah’s death we hear only of Avraham’s arrangement for her burial and arrangement for the continuation of their legacy through the marriage of Yitzchak, even though Avraham still lived for many more years.
In a very interesting interpretation of Eishet Chayil as Avraham’s eulogy for Sarah, Rabbi Gedaliah Schorr posits that the mission of Avraham Avinu and Sarah Imeinu was to rectify the sin of Adam and Chavah. Hashem’s command to Adam and Chavah was not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Chavah already had an intrinsic, clear understanding of the difference between good and evil. By eating of the tree, this knowledge became blurred and confused as it became intermixed with all sorts of outer influences. Sarah Imeinu retained that clear vision of tov velo ra kol yemei chayeha/good and not evil all the days of her life. Therefore, her husband could rely on her, trust her to find the good in everything, even that which outwardly appeared evil. She could even retrieve the hidden sparks of holiness in Egypt. Even though she herself is in the background, she clothed her entire household in scarlet wool, Kabbalistically associated with the purification process of Yom Kippur. All her days she prepared for eternal life, when her physical body would return to the field of Machpelah and her soul would transition to the next world.
Despite Sarah’s upbringing in the house of Terach the idolater, Sarah rose to such great spiritual heights, reminds us Rabbi Sorotskin in Oznaim Latorah. This is perhaps the greatest lesson and legacy of Sarah Imeinu, that, in spite of our beginnings, we each have within us sparks of greatness that we can develop.
What aspect of Sarah Imeinu did Avraham Avinu focus on in his eulogy, asks Rabbi Michel Twersky in Yiram Hayam? In every verse of Eishet Chayil one senses the devotion and self sacrifice of Sarah Imeinu to her husband and her household. It was this self sacrifice that Yitzchak witnessed throughout his life that was the model for his own willingness to self sacrifice for Hashem’s will. In contrast, notes Rabbi Twersky, Adoniyahu, King David’s son who rebelled against his own father was raised without ever being disciplined and without ever seeing the pain his negative or evil actions could bring his parents.
We have no excuses to grow in spirituality, notes Rabbi Goldstein in Shaarei Chaim. The environment, the home of Terach, did not prevent Sarah from raising a Yitzchak. We must value every moment of life, make each moment count, as did Sarah Imeinu for one hundred years, and twenty years, and seven years.
[Rebbetzin Smiles delivered this shiur before the passing of our two great luminaries. It seems fitting that surrounding the week we read of the death of Sarah Imeinu and her impact on our nation we have lost two giants of our tradition who also had tremendous impact on Bnei Yisroel. Though we mourn their passing as a loss for Bnei Yisroel, we are confident that their transition to eternal life will bring them the well deserved light and warmth of Hashem’s embrace. May the neshamot of Rabbi Dovid Feinstein zt”l and of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l be bound in the bonds of eternal life. CKS]