Chayei Sarah 2021
This week’s Torah portion, Chayeh Sara, “The life of Sara”, begins with Sara’s death which follows the story of the akedah, binding of Isaac, at the end of last week’s portion. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as RASHI, a famous 11th century French commentator on the Torah is bothered by the strange juxtaposition of the almost slaughtering of Isaac by Abraham, and the death of Sara, Abraham’s wife and Isaac’s mother. RASHI explains this by quoting the Midrash, an ancient rabbinic commentary on the Torah: “The death of Sara follows the binding of Isaac because when Sara 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’. Sara 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 perhaps lies in discovering who Sara is and how she and Abraham are different. Sara’s relationship to Isaac was unique. At the end of our Torah portion when Isaac marries Rebecca the Torah tells us (Genesis 25:67): “And Isaac brought her into the tent (of) Sara his mother and he took Rebecca to himself for a wife, and loved her, and Isaac was comforted about (the death of) his mother.” RASHI understands this verse as, “Isaac brought her into the tent and she was Sara his mother, meaning to say she was like Sara, for while Sara 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 Sara died these things disappeared but when Rebecca entered Sara’s tent they returned.”
Sara possessed powers that Abraham did not. Her tent, the place in which Isaac grew up and was nurtured, was a Divine place. Abraham could not sustain these miracles, only Sara and ultimately her replacement Rebecca could. Another Midrash that tells us that when Sara nursed Isaac, she had so much milk that mothers from around the country brought their infants to drink from her breasts and that who ever drank her milk ultimately reached Mount Sinai to receive the Torah (Berashit Rabah 53:9). Isaac received his spirituality, literally, “in his mother’s milk”.
Abraham spreads the idea of one G-d, 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 than Sara’s. The binding of Isaac is a profound act of faith, a Divine command that brings Abraham close to G-d, but such is not Sara’s path. Hers is the tent, the private, deeply spiritual, palpable place of the Divine. There G-d is transmitted through the very intimate process of nursing and nurturing. Feeding Isaac from herself, she gives of her Divine and holy self.
Sara’s is not an intellectual opposition to Abraham, (indeed G-d had commanded Abraham to bring Isaac o the altar), but Sara is so different that she and the akedah (binding of Isaac) can not coexist in the universe together. Isaac realizes how much Sara is needed and finds Rebecca to replace her. Rebecca becomes Sara in the world and in his and our lives. Rebecca is the Sara for her generation who will now nurture the Jewish nation with her Shechinah cloud, her candles, her bread and her milk. Shabbat Shalom.