This week’s Torah portion is called Chayei Sarah, The Life of Sarah, but really is about her death and burial: “And it was the life of Sarah, one hundred years and twenty years and seven years, these were the years of Sarah. And Sarah died…”

The Midrash in Bereshit Rabbah relates the following story: “Rabbi Akiva was once sitting and lecturing and the audience began to doze off. He sought to rouse them. He said: ‘Why was Esther seen fit to reign over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces? The explanation is: Let Esther, who was a descendant of Sarah, who lived one hundred and twenty-seven years, come and reign over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces.’”

Was this just Rabbi Akiva’s way of being silly? If so, why would the Talmud record it? Or is there some deeper conceptual meaning in the connection between Sarah and Esther?   

I would like to suggest two possibilities.  

The first is based on a Midrash that points out the juxtaposition in the Torah between the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, at the end of last week’s Torah portion and the death of Sarah at the beginning of this week’s portion.  The Midrash concludes from this that news of the Akedah was the cause of her death: “Isaac returned to his mother and told her the story. ‘Alas,’ she said, ‘for the son of a hapless woman! Had it not been for the angel you would by now have been slain!’ ‘Yes,’ he said to her. Thereupon she uttered six cries, corresponding to the six blasts of the shofar. It has been said: She had scarcely finished speaking when she died. Hence it is written, ‘And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.’ Where did he come from? Rabbi Judah, son of Rabbi Shimon, said: ‘He came from Mount Moriah (from the Binding of Isaac).’”

Perhaps there is a connection between Sarah and Esther in that Sarah felt she was unable to prevent the threat of the destruction of the Jewish people (the sacrifice of Isaac) and died because of it, but Esther, when faced with the destruction of her people, was able to save them. Thus, in a sense, Esther is the tikkun, the repair, for Sarah’s tragedy.

Secondly, following Sarah’s death at the beginning of our Parsha, Abraham does the first act of buying part of the Promised Land in which to bury Sarah. He purchases a plot from Ephron the Hittite. In the Megillah, Esther battles Haman, who is a descendant of Amalek. Amalek’s grandfather was Esav and his grandmother, Esav’s first wife, was Ada, who was a Hittite. Thus, Haman descended from Esav and from the Hittites. Both are parties who did not get the Land. Esav was split off from the Jewish people, did not receive the blessing of the land as intended by his father and had to leave the land, as the verse states: “Esau took his wives, his sons and daughters, and all the members of his household, his cattle and all his livestock, and all the property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan, and went to another land because of his brother Jacob.” Amalek bears a grudge against us regarding the land from both sides: Esav, his grandfather, and Ada the Hittite, his grandmother. Though Abraham bought the land from the Hittites and overpaid for it, this has never stopped others from accusing us of stealing the land.  

This splitting off of the Jewish people, which happened in the first generation to Ishmael and in the second to Esav, began when Sarah exiled Ishmael and Hagar from their home, saying, ‘Ishmael will not inherit [the land] with my son Isaac.’ Thus, it is Sarah’s doppelganger Esther who, so many years later, must battle Haman and his insatiable, violent desire to displant the Jewish people.