רפואה מן התורה
Healing from the Torah
This week we continue to read about a reoccurring theme that is setting up a pattern. The pattern is simple;
the Torah is a full of stories about normal people who are celebrated for being
righteous. It was Rabbi Elie Muck who said being
“righteous,” is not the same as being “perfect.” In the bible, and our tradition,
the God of creation partners with everyday people to bring repair to the world. With that, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg in
her commentary on Genesis writes, “The Life of Sarah … in a covert sense,
Sarah’s life is germinal to the whole reading.
The problem of her life is manifest just at the moment of her leaving
it.” How does Sarah further the cause of
tikkun?
To be noted the last parasha, Vayeira, ends with the narrative about the Akedah (the binding of Isaac), whereas the last time Sarah is mentioned is when Isaac is born. In this week’s parasha, Chayei Sarah – Genesis 23;1-25:18, there is no mention of Sarah at all except in the very beginning that tells us that Sarah lived for so many years on this earth before she died, thus we read; ויהיו חיי שרה, “and they would be Sarah’s life" (they being the many years of her life). We need to read this more so as referring to the years that Sarah lived as opposed to the life she had. Make no mistake though, she was a busy woman, following her husband to Canaan and their journey through Egypt, being an active partner with Abraham in the future promises for Israel, protecting her family, helping serve their guests and in the end being the mother to Issac and grandmother to Jacob. But in general the Mikra (Bible) does not say much about her, which is why Zornberg writes that the opening passage about Sarah is “covert,” simply because there is more to Sarah’s life than meets the eye.
To be noted the last parasha, Vayeira, ends with the narrative about the Akedah (the binding of Isaac), whereas the last time Sarah is mentioned is when Isaac is born. In this week’s parasha, Chayei Sarah – Genesis 23;1-25:18, there is no mention of Sarah at all except in the very beginning that tells us that Sarah lived for so many years on this earth before she died, thus we read; ויהיו חיי שרה, “and they would be Sarah’s life" (they being the many years of her life). We need to read this more so as referring to the years that Sarah lived as opposed to the life she had. Make no mistake though, she was a busy woman, following her husband to Canaan and their journey through Egypt, being an active partner with Abraham in the future promises for Israel, protecting her family, helping serve their guests and in the end being the mother to Issac and grandmother to Jacob. But in general the Mikra (Bible) does not say much about her, which is why Zornberg writes that the opening passage about Sarah is “covert,” simply because there is more to Sarah’s life than meets the eye.
Zornberg wants
to look beyond the three Midrashim that Rashi calls upon, in particular to the
Akedah of Vayeira, as she seeks the deeper meaning behind the person of
Sarah. In the Midrash, Perkei d’Rabbi
Eliezer, Zornberg says that a theme of this Midrash is about the ongoing
purpose of the Shofar blasts that we hear at Rosh Hashanah. In this case the crying sound of the Shofar
represents the crying of Sarah (three sobs) after hearing about Isaac,
which itself is apart of our liturgy “as an atonement for her [Sarah]
descendants.” For Zornberg, Sarah’s
crying for Isaac was not just connected to a loss, but it was the anguish of a
nightmare, teaching us how we need to wrestle with the message of the Akedah ourselves. Tradition teaches that Sarah died when Satan
told her what Abraham did to Isaac, leaving out the ram part of the story and
the fact that her son lives. In another
Midrash, Tanachuma also on the Akedah, Sarah is confronted by Satan
disguised to look like her son, Isaac. In
this Midrash, although Satan (by looking like Isaac) tells Sarah that “he” is
okay, Sarah cannot bear the story of what happened
and dies. In this case Satan does to
Sarah what he could not do to Abraham; bring death to their offspring and the future of the Jewish people. However, despite evils failure so to speak, the theme of this Tanachuma Midrash is
that while “the sacrifice is not carried out [it is] not aborted [either],”
meaning that for Sarah (and for us) it still has compromising results. Finally, in a Midrash from Leviticus
Rabbah, Zornberg says that its central theme is the tension of joy in a
broken world. The joy of Abraham that
his son lived is mitigated by the sorrow that Sarah experienced that caused her
death. Zornberg concludes that this
Midrash teaches us that “joy belongs to the future … not to the troubled
middle-distance of temporal reality.”
All this to say that Sarah depicts humanity in a variety of ways by how she
reacts to her own feelings and emotions regarding Isaac, which is why “The Life
of Sarah” in the Bible is covert. If that is so, what is it that Zornberg wants us
to know?
Well, each
Midrash says something about how Sarah lived.
The first Midrash tells us that Sarah died not of misinformation but a
terrible truth that her family would be attacked. The second Midrash wants us to know that Isaac’s
survival contributed to a frightening reality for Sarah, which would be the continuing attempts upon her descendants. And lastly the final Midrash says, it will
be even though it might not, hence even though Isaac lived the next person may
not. All in all, all three Midrashim for
Zornberg carry a similar, although slightly different, meaning. Sarah recognizes that the plot against her
son and his father is the same that will plague humanity going forward, just
like she separated Ishmael and Isaac as she reflected on what happened between
Cain and Abel. More than that, the death
of Sarah also allows us to consider how the power of bad things can impact life
in our world. If Abraham did not do what
he did with Isaac, even though Isaac lived,
perhaps Sarah would have not morphed into a woman who allowed the moment
to ruin her? This is based on
Rashi who teaches וכמעט של נשחת, “and he was
nearly slaughtered,” thus for the Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, 1520-1609)
Sarah’s “reaction of panic [came as she realized] that [it is] only a small
thing [that] separates life and death.” Sarah
could not get over what almost happened to her son, it took her breath away so
to speak. On the positive, when Isaac marries Rebekah, a 14th
century Midrash teaches that every time he entered his mother’s tent he
would see darkness but upon entering it with Rebekah he saw light once again.
That is how
Sarah continues to live. She died in the darkness of fear, panic and anxiousness of what
could have been for her son, but also what the world can expect. With Isaac, his mother was also a means of
renewal, a light reappeared in the beauty of his marriage with Rebekah whom he
loved. We can therefore conclude that Sarah suffered a somatic attack
that cased her death. A somatic event is
when the power of the mind and spirit, although distinct from the physical body, can impact the
functioning of the body itself. It seems like such a negative
message to embrace, but really is just the opposite. Knowing is a large part of the battle to
overcome. Torah is telling us that we
live in a world demanding repair that will impact our mental and spiritual
health not always in the best of ways (Sarah's darkness). Torah does
not want us to be ignorant that we live in a broken world, and via its teachings, wisdom and light are revealed (Sarah's light). Having the expectation that everything is okay all the time has the power of working against us. Expectation can be our worst enemy or it can be a healthy dose of realism. Still, do we really need words on a page to tell us that we live in a broken world; of course not! The words of our tradition simply want us to know that to fix things and rise above the brokenness of Sarah the answer involves her light as well, or a sense of “other” to guide us.
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