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Parshat Chayei Sarah
2006
These are the Days
Our Torah portion begins with a summary of the number of years of Sarah’s life and quickly proceeds to her death. What of her life? Who was Sarah? What do we know about her?
Primarily, we know her as a woman who desired a child and did everything she could to protect that child. Her role as mother became her identity, even coming as late in life (at 90!) as it did. Our tradition refers to her in this manner, calling her Sarah Imeinu, Sarah our mother.
Sarah lived a long time before she became a mother. Who else was she in her life?
Let’s start with her name: Sarah. It means “princess,” “chieftainess,” or “priestess,” suggesting a powerful, gifted personality and aristocratic lineage. We tend to think of Abraham and Sarah as nomads of no particular societal status; rather, we should see them, Sarah in particular, as nobility. Perhaps she is descended, as Ellen Frankel, in The Five Books of Miriam, suggests, from a line of priests and perhaps her mother was skilled herself in prophecy. In this way, we could see Abraham and Sarah both as descending from spiritually-attuned families (according to the midrash, Abraham’s father was in the idol-making business) who continued on the journey their parents began with them.
The rabbis say she was also called “Iscah” because she saw “with the holy spirit,” which is to say that she had prophetic vision. Sarah was a spiritual leader along with Abraham: when they left Haran, they took with them “all the persons that they had acquired….” How does one “acquire souls?” Tradition understands that Sarah and Abraham converted the people in their community to monotheism – Sarah taught the women and Abraham the men. In fact, the midrash tells us that her prophetic powers were stronger than Abraham’s. What did she teach them? How did she convince them to leave all they knew and travel to an unknown place on a journey fraught with danger? Clearly, she was a strong, charismatic and visionary leader.
Speaking of visionary, the name “Iscah” seems, in the minds of the sages, to have something to do with seeing and being seen, also refers to Sarah’s exceptional beauty – “all saw her beauty.” Her physical beauty was so extraordinary that, even as an elderly woman, she was the object of such desire that it put her safety and Abraham’s life at risk. Beauty is clearly not always a blessing. But, for many of us, it’s startling to think of Sarah as number one on People magazine’s list of “Most Beautiful in the World Ever.” Not only was she more beautiful than Eve herself, and not only did her beauty irradiate all of the land of Egypt, but it was undiminished by all the traveling she did.
When word of this beauty reached Pharoah, she was taken into his house, where she seemed to have an angel at her disposal for her protection. In the Talmud, Rabbi Levi says, “The whole night an angel stood with a whip in his hand; when she ordered, ‘Strike,’ he struck, and when she ordered, ‘Desist,’ he desisted.” Sarah’s beauty did not imply weakness or passivity; she had the capability to summon heaven’s defense.
Yet power alone does not translate into a life of ease or consistent good judgment. Sarah, who desperately wanted to bear a son, gave her maid to Abraham to bear one for her. Yet, as soon as Hagar conceived, Sarah was wracked with pain and jealousy, striking out at both Hagar and Abraham. And when she learned that she herself was to give birth at the age of 90, she laughed. Did she no longer trust heaven’s power? Or did she no longer trust her own?
Her death, which brings us back to this week’s portion, immediately followed the akeidah, the near-sacrifice by Abraham of their son Isaac. The midrash teaches that it is learning of this news that killed her. Isaac (or perhaps Satan) appeared to her in a vision and told her what was happening on Mt. Moriah (prophetic powers aren’t always a blessing, either) and the news of Abraham’s plan was such a shock that she cried out (the calls of the shofar) and died. As the midrash says, “She did not even finish screaming and was already dead.” It is a tragic end to a life of leadership and spiritual-cultural transformation.
Sarah’s is a complicated, moving, human story of love and loss, striving, real failure and wild success. Beauty, vision, power, longing, struggle, laughter and change were among the characteristics of Sarah’s life. And these, along with the (not significant!) beginnings of the Jewish people, are her legacy to us, a worthy legacy from Sarah Imeinu, our mother.
Written by Rabbi Lina Zerbarini, Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale
Learn More
Additional commentaries and text studies on Parshat Chayei Sarah at MyJewishLearning.com.
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