A Life Lived

The life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years. Genesis 23:1.

Painstakingly, the Torah details segments of Sarah’s lifetime. Here, the words are repetitive and unnecessary. They do not gently pass through the narrative. Instead the words arrest our vision. They are clunky and dissonant. Yet we are taught that nothing is redundant in the Torah. No word is extraneous, chide the ancient voices. Why then does the holy Torah use its precious space to ploddingly delineate the lifetime of Sarah, our Mother? It does need to repeat the word years after every number. Any reader would know that the cumulative lifetime spanned one hundred twenty-seven years, without those additional words.

Idea: Each part of our life is a stepping-stone to reach upwards toward a new level. Sarah’s life is demarcated into three segments, each representing a distinct phase of her life. At one hundred years of age, tell the Sages, Sarah was as sinless as a young woman. 1 What happened during those many decades? Sarah strove not to become jaded or bitter. Everyone’s life is full of disappointments. People let us down. They betray us. We are victimized. Only the most resolute character can maintain the discipline to remain positive. Sarah incessantly worked to maintain her hopeful outlook despite the ravages of decades.

At twenty years old, Sarah was as wide-eyed and beautiful as a child of seven. Nothing deterred this matriarch from being full of awe at a world brimming with miraculousness. While most people become tired of sunsets, flowers in full bloom, love given and received, birth and death; Sarah remained full of awe at the spectacle of the universe.

Sarah’s beauty was never diminished by the blights of sadness, depression or despair.

Musar: At all costs, we must never abandon our hope, trust and optimism. It easy to be psychically marred by the bad things that happen to us. We are betrayed. We are assaulted. Our character is defamed. To become cynical in the face of such onslaughts is a natural reflexive action. Do not do this, warns mother Sarah. Remember who you are at your core: a pure soul.

Idea: —all of them [each year of Sarah’s life] full and perfect. 2 That is why the Torah states; The life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years … the Torah subtly indicates that Sarah lived every day of her life. Time was not wasted on self-pity, abuse or wantonly killing time. Instead, she lived every moment of her one hundred twenty-seven years.
Musar Talmud teaches, "one can acquire his universe" — the world-to-come — or destroy it "in a single moment." 3
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From earliest times, it is a great mitzvah (commandment) to comfort mourners. The first seeds of the practices of mourning are found here. Why is comforting mourners such a great mitzvah? Rules and practices of how to grieve and how to treat the bereft fill many heavy volumes. When there are so many demands in life, why does tradition place such a premium on mourning?
Is it not obvious?

Part of our life is excised when someone we love dies. There will be no more kisses or caresses. No more conspiratorial meetings or happenstance encounters at the refrigerator. No more birthdays will be celebrated. No more blessings given. How could the yanking of a life-soul be anything but painful?

Sarah died. According to the Midrash, Abraham looked around and saw distraught looks on the faces surrounding him. He looked at their unmasked pain and felt the overwhelming raw abandonment everywhere. He saw their tears and watched as they ground their hands helplessly into one another. Isaac dissolved into tears and cried out, “My mother, my mother! Why have you left me?” 4 Servants gathered about and ripped their clothes as they fell to the ground weeping. So, Abraham went to console them. Abraham? The bereft was comforting everyone else? How did this cruel inversion happen?

When we finish studying a holy text, we say Tam v’nishlam…” All is whole and complete now.” Long ago the book was written but it is only complete when it has been read and finished. Only then is the book tam, whole. Afterward, we return the volume to its place on the shelf. It is truly finished. Is this a cause for celebration or sadness? You can argue that it is an unhappy event to finish a good book. Once it is over, what becomes of the yearning in the dark night to find out what happens next? The desire to grasp the book that held our attention and pursue us to lose sleep is gone. Now that it is over, are we sad? Or perhaps having become enriched by the experience of the book we rejoice.

In a Jewish frame of mind, we celebrate our immersion and successful conclusion of the volume. We read. We analyze. We fulfilled the terms of the author; the words were animated by our connection with them. In some sense, Tam v’nishlam, we and it, are whole and complete. So it is with Sarah, our Mother. Having lived a full and rich life she returns to the resting place of Adam and Eve, Makhpelah. She is whole. Soon afterward Sarah will be joined by Abraham.

In the meanwhile, Abraham knows his separation from Sarah is temporal. He is old and will soon regain the companionship of his life. Tam v’nishlam. That is why the Patriarch can comfort the others. Abraham knows the truth. He knows that eternity has clasped his beloved and soon he will come to the banquet table of the Almighty too. Tam v’nishlam.
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Hebron is the place where Sarah, our Mother, died and was interred. The transaction for Makhpelah between Ephron and Abraham is bizarre. Ephron kindly offers the land to Abraham free. It is a grandiose and magnanimous offering to Abraham. Yet, the Patriarch refused. Why? Translating the exorbitant price Abraham ultimately gave Ephron into today’s currency, he paid millions of dollars for the Cave of Makhpelah. Perhaps we understand why Abraham refused to take the land as a gift but paying such an extraordinary lot of money?

Kabbalah illumines why Ephron was so willing to part with the property. The Zohar declares that Ephron believed the Cave of Makhpelah he was selling to the new immigrant was a worthless, dank black hole. 5 What was father Abraham able to discern about the true nature of the Cave of Makhpelah? And, why did he see it when Ephron saw nothing but blankness?

Rebbe Nachman observed that when a person lives a virtuous life, seeks opportunities to do God’s Will, fulfils mitzvot and acts with kindness a change occurs. The inner soul-voice becomes pronounced and strong as it is allowed to speak and be heard. Its ability to be the eyes which perceive and interpret is the catalyst for greatest wisdom. Such a person begins to see the true nature of all things. That is why Abraham saw what others – including Ephron – could not. Noble living allowed Abraham to see the great supernal light hiding in the darkness.

There is a gifted and innate connection between the Jewish people and Israel. The holy Torah opens up with a question posed by Rashi: why does the Torah bother to begin with Bereshit? What does the book of Genesis contribute to our connection to God and the Torah? All the book seemingly does is provide an awareness of the chain of generations that spanned the Beginning until the descent to Egypt. Rashi reveals that its task is to declare the Godly nexus with the Land. In other words, all the tales lead to the covenant between the Abrahamic line, God and Israel. The Land of Israel is the eternal inheritance of the Jewish people, equally the property of every individual Jew. This is what Abraham saw and why no amount of money was too much for the cave of Makhpelah.

At the same time, said the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, the purchase by Abraham was the fulfillment of Rashi’s rationale for the existence of entire book of Genesis: Makhpelah was the moment when the Jews took ownership of the Holy Land. The Cave of Makhpelah would become each generation’s share in Israel.



1 Bereshit. Rabbah 58:1
2 Ibid.
3 Avodah Zarah 18a
4 Ginsberg, Legends of the Jews, vol 1.
5 I, 127b