This week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, literally “The life of Sarah,” begins with Sarah’s death, which follows the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, at the end of last week’s portion. Rashi is bothered by the strange juxtaposition of the almost slaughtering of Isaac by Abraham and the death of Sarah, and quoting the Midrash, comments: “The death of Sarah follows the binding of Isaac because when Sarah heard from Isaac that he was bound and almost slaughtered, she died.”

This Midrash moves us to ask several questions: Wasn’t the binding of Isaac a good thing? We know that it is considered the greatest test of Abraham’s faith and for it he is rewarded with blessings and children ‘like the stars of the heavens.’ Sarah should have jumped for joy at her husband’s faith, not died of shock; and if Isaac is standing before her telling her the story, why does she die? She should instead feel relief that he is alive. 

The key to unlocking Rashi’s paradoxical comment lies in discovering who Sarah is and how she and Abraham are different. At the end of our Torah portion, when Isaac marries Rebecca, the Torah tells us (Bereshit 25:67): “And Isaac brought her into the tent (of) Sarah his mother and he took Rebecca to himself for a wife and loved her, and Isaac was comforted over the death of his mother.” Rashi comments: “Isaac brought her into the tent and she was Sarah his mother, meaning to say she was like Sarah, for while Sarah was alive her Shabbat candles (miraculously) burned from one Friday to the next, there was a blessing in her dough, and a (Divine) cloud rested upon her tent. When Sarah died these things disappeared but when Rebecca entered Sarah’s tent they returned.”

Sarah’s relationship to Isaac was unique. Sarah’s tent, in which Isaac grew up and was nurtured, was a divine place. Abraham did not effect these miracles—only Sarah, and ultimately Rebecca, her spiritual successor, did. Another Midrash tells that when Sarah nursed Isaac in the tent, she had so much milk that mothers from around the country brought their infants to drink from her breasts and that whoever drank her milk ultimately reached Mount Sinai to receive the Torah (Bereshit Rabbah 53:9). Thus, Isaac received his spirituality literally, “through his mother’s milk.”

Abraham spreads the idea of one God, welcomes guests, and ascends the mountain for all to see that he has faith like no one else in the world. Abraham’s method of spiritual life is very different from Sarah’s. The binding of Isaac is a profound act of faith, a divine command that brings Abraham close to God, but this method is not Sarah’s. Hers is the tent: the private, deeply spiritual, palpable place of the Divine. There, God is transmitted through the very intimate process of nursing and nurturing. Feeding Isaac from herself, she gives of her divine and holy self to her son.

Sarah’s is not an intellectual opposition to Abraham’s binding of their son. I’m sure she would have agreed that he should obey God’s command, since Abraham, as Søren Kierkegaard famously summed him up, is the knight of faith. But Sarah represents a spiritual approach that is so different from Abraham that she and the Akedah could not coexist in the universe, and so she dies. Isaac, who is tuned into Sarah’s spiritual path, cannot exist without her and finds Rebecca to replace her. Rebecca becomes the Sarah for her generation, who will now nurture the Jewish nation with her divine cloud, her candles, her bread and her milk.