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Seven Years Old, Twenty Years Old, One Hundred Years Old

This is the D'var Torah I plan to give tomorrow for Parashat Chayei Sarah 5784, November 11, 2023.

One of the weekly Divrei Torah that are always worth a look comes from Rabbi Josh Feigelson, leader of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. This week Josh started by talking about the idea of the “multiverse”, which he first learned about from one of his kids. Josh mentions the TV show “Rick and Morty”, which his son loves, and it’s about a scientist and his grandson who can travel between alternate versions of the universe and different times in those universes and different versions of themselves.

I thought where Josh might be going was to our fantasies of an alternate universe in which, say, the Palestinians had finished negotiating a peace deal with Israel in 2000 at Camp David, or just any other version of the universe after October 7. I also thought he might go to the commentaries on the first line of our Torah reading, which describe Sarah Imeinu, our ancestor Sarah, as the ultimate human multiverse. He didn’t but he helped me to.

The Torah says (Genesis 23:1) that Sarah’s life was me’at shana v’shiv’im shana v’sheva shanim, 100 years and 20 years and 7 years. It’s a distinctive way to express 127 years, and the commentaries cluster around this thought: That Sarah at every phase of her life lived with the qualities of a 7-year-old, a 20-year-old, and a 100-year-old.

The Sfat Emet explains: For most people, as you grow in life you become wiser, building on your middot, your qualities, and purifying them. Which means that for most people, the only complete moment of life is the final one, when you are the most perfect you’ve ever been. But Sarah managed to grow without having to reject any of the previous iterations of herself. Sarah’s multiverse was present with her all of the time, and she always had access to all the dimensions of it, while standing in exactly the time she was in.

To be less abstract about it -- as a child, and an adult, and an elder, Sarah always had the best qualities and capacities of each of those stages.

Even as a child, she had the wisdom that most people need long life to attain.

Even as an elder, she had the wonder and freshness of a child experiencing the world, the constant urge to discover and see if this or that might be a worthwhile interest or a worthwhile friend.

Even as a child and even as an elder, she had the purposefulness of her prime, the ability to pursue a path with capacity and with her full energy. The well-formed dreams of how the world ought to be.

In Jewish tradition, we have an opposite character who helps us understand what was so special about Sarah. Shlomo Hamelech, King Solomon, is said to have authored three of the books of the Bible. It is said that when Shlomo was young, he wrote the Song of Songs, Shir Hashirim, a book of intense love poetry. In his prime he wrote Proverbs, Mishlei, a book of advice for how to succeed and prosper. In his old age he wrote Ecclesiastes, Kohelet, a book of often bitter reflections on whether life has any meaning or whether things just circle again and again -- “there is nothing new under the sun”, ein kol chadash tachat ha-shamesh.

After October 7 we’ve felt like Shlomo Hamelech in his old age. How can we be like Sarah Imeinu?

How can we recapture freshness and energy and wisdom, all at once, even seeing and knowing everything we see and know?

Our Torah reading is framed by two funerals, Sarah’s and then Avraham’s. And yet between them is the first concrete foothold of Israel in the land, the purchase and sale agreement between Avraham and Ephron the Hittite, the translation of Divine promises into something very specific. 

Then the introduction of Rivka, the generous young woman who transcended the small-mindedness and materialism of her culture in Aram, who saw a thirsty stranger and his camels and gave them water, even before she knew the stranger was send on a mission to find the woman suitable for his master’s son Yitzchak in marriage. Rivka is the one who delivers on the promise of that our people are to be rachanim b’nai rachmanim, compassionate people descended of compassionate people.

Then we hear of Avraham’s golden years, of life after mourning, and when he dies there is a remarkable reunion of his sons, who have been estranged from their father and from each other, as Yitzchak and Yishmael come together to bury him.

These possibilities the Torah lifts up for us, in a reading framed by two burials. The promise of a homeland; chesed and rachamim, boundless compassion; even reconciliation between Yitzchak and Yishmael -- these are the multiverses that remain present. That we try at least in our minds and hearts continue to leap to, as the descendents of Sarah.

Last Motza’ei Shabbat, last Saturday night, was the annual fundraising dinner for the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter. It felt very strange to go to what was after all a nice party, and I know I wasn’t the only one who felt strange as we walked in. Over the course of the evening, I saw something like twenty-seven members of our Jewish community there. The event was co-chaired by our own Mindee Greenberg, and the new executive direction of the organization is our own Jane Goodman. 

I was so proud to be part of a Jewish community that is so committed to feeding people from week to week and helping people become self-sustaining and flourish. And to be so recognizable as Jews in this wider community because fo that work. I was amazed that so many of us could find a way across the multiverse of our Jewish pain in this moment, and make that mission and the joy of being a part of it the central of our lives for an evening.

100 years old and 20 years old and 7 years old. These days we are thinking about all our 7-year-olds, the children held hostage in Gaza or who lost their parents or whose parents are at war, and the children of Gaza, and our own children who we want to shield from an awareness that this is the world still.

And we are thinking about all our 20-year-olds,those who were just joyfully celebrating with music when they were attacked, young people fighting for Israel’s defense and berated on college campuses in this country.

And we are thinking about all our 100-year-olds, our elders, some of whom too are being held captive, Holocaust survivors retraumatized, people who thought they would never have to see what we have been seeing.

As we hold all of them, all of you, in our prayers and in our Torah, we reach for the blessing of our ancestor Sarah. That we can find in ourselves, and help each other find, the best of the 7-year-old within, the 20-year-old, the 100-year-old. That we continue to live with wonder and discovery, with purpose and energy and capable compassion, with wisdom. All at once, 100 and 20 and 7. All in the same life, even now.

Shabbat Shalom.

E-Maggid: Rewards of a Mitzvah

As Parashat Chayei Sarah begins, Avraham sees to all the details of the burial of his wife Sarah.  In Judaism, burial is called chesed shel emet, or the most faithful type of kindness.  Reb Chaim of Tzernovitz taught that it's because of this mitzvah that the following chapter begins by saying that Adonai blessed Avraham in everything.

Reb Chaim wonders about two ideas.  On the one hand, we are not to expect any reward in this world for performing a mitzvah.  On the other, the Mishnah teaches that "These are the things that a person eats the proceeds of them in this world, and the principal endures for him into the World to Come:  supporting one's father and mother, acts of kindness, bringing peace between a person and his friend -- and the study of Torah, which equals all of them."

 

All of these are mitzvot we do for the benefit of other people.  Reb Chaim says there is a mysterious dimension to these actions.  They are the easiest mitzvot in the Torah to understand, and yet our own motivations and sense of reward are complex.

 

The thanks we receive in return, the good feeling we have in helping others, the reputation we might develop -- these are not what is meant by the "proceeds in this world."  Instead, when we do acts of chesed, we are the most God-like we can be.  At the particular moment the world might reward us for our act, we are blessed with an awareness of how much we receive of God's generosity at every moment.

 

The paradoxical combination of that awareness, the humility that results, and the knowledge that our acts are the channel to others of God's generosity -- that's what stays with us.  That feeds us, and gives us what to chew on in this world.  And, says Reb Chaim, the ultimate understanding of all of it is hidden away, secured for us to learn in the World to Come.

Parashat Chayei Sarah -- The Meaning of Each Moment

Most of the commentaries on Parashat Chayei Sarah focus on the opening line: The life of Sarah was:  one hundred years, and twenty years, and seven years -- the years of the life of Sarah (Genesis 23:1).  Why so many words to say the simple fact that Sarah lived 127 years?

Rashi observes that 7, 20, and 100 represent different stages of life.  He teaches that Sarah lived each phase fully, and even maintained the important achievements and qualities of each stage as she moved into the next.  Rashi sounds a lot like Erik Erikson, the 20th century psychologist who wrote about the eight stages of life, and the particular challenges and achievements of each phase.

Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense.  Even if each individually does not experience every stage the same way, there are times of life that seem more or less dramatic, more or less consequential.  We're not the same from one time of life to the next, and hopefully we grow in wisdom.

There is a downside, though, in treating our life as a series of stages.  During my interviews at Temple Beth Abraham, I was asked more than once about my ideas for programs for seniors.  One of my responses was:  People in the later parts of life have many of the same interests, concerns, questions, and passions as people who are younger.  You don't graduate from being a human being.  One of the most important things about a synagogue community is that it's one of the few places where we are not sorted by age, where we can pool our collective wisdom.

Sfat Emet, the 19th century chasidic commentator Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, picks up on this line of thinking.  He teaches that Sarah's youth, young adulthood, and old age are mentioned individually because indeed, each phase of life has a particular tikkun assigned to it.  Tikkun means "repair".  Each time of life, Sfat Emet says, gives us a unique problem or situation to fix.

Then he goes a step further.  Each moment, according to Sfat Emet, presents its own opportunity for tikkun.  Every day suggests a unique wisdom to be learned and passed on, or a unique opportunity to fix an issue in our lives or work on a relationship.  So, the Torah does not describe Sarah's life as a single number, the final achievement of a big spiritual goal.  Instead, Sarah life is presented as a set of present moments and spiritual opportunities.

Later on, he teaches, Avraham is described as "advanced in years" (Genesis 24:1).  In Hebrew, the phrase is ba bayamim, literally "he came with days."  Sfat Emet says that Avraham lived each day with all of his days.  Each occasion to do a mitzvah was not simply for one day or one stage of life, but stayed with him as a presence every day after.

This is a challenging way to live.  But Sfat Emet's take on Sarah and Avraham gives us a different way to look at the calendar or the schedule, as the day begins.  Hidden in the commute, the appointments, the meetings, the carpools, there is a tikkun, something waiting to be fixed.  And the mitzvah I perform today reappears in a month or a year or a decade.  On a day when we feel like we're just punching the clock, phoning it in, going from prearranged place to place-- we remember a day just like that, when the occasion for a mitzvah interrupted and we seized the chance.

 

Parashat Chayei Sarah: How Old Until We Have Grown?

The life of Sarah was:  one hundred years, and twenty years, and seven years -- the years of the life of Sarah (Genesis 23:1).

As you can imagine, the unusual way of stating a basic fact has caught many commentators' attention.  Rashi has the most often quoted explanation:  That Sarah was without sin at one hundred years old just like she was at age twenty, before she had responsibility for the commandments, and she was as beautiful at age twenty as when she was a little girl of seven.

I'm almost certain that this particular version of Rashi is jumbled -- it's the seven-year-old who is without sin, no?  In fact, before I went to my books to check the language, I remembered Rashi saying that Sarah was a beauty at one hundred as she was at the age of twenty, and as pure at twenty as she had been at seven.

The "supercommentaries" -- that's what we call the commentaries on the commentaries, it's the root of a saying I coined that "Jews don't let other Jews read alone" -- anyway, the supercommentaries pick up more on Rashi's approach to the verse than the specifics.  The point of Rashi, after all, is to say that Sarah was throughout her life a person with the qualities we associate with childhood, adulthood, and old age.  She was pure, beautiful, and wise her entire life.  I quoted this teaching at a funeral this week, with my own twist -- that Sarah was energetic like a child, productive like an adult, and wise as an older person all the years of her life.

We usually talk about life in terms of growth.  We can't be wise in our early years, the way we (hopefully) get later on.  Life is necessary in order to grow.  Rashi's interpretation of Sarah's life suggests an alternative.  Is it possible to be wise in advance of all our life experience?

I had an eleventh-grade student named Judy who was wise that way.  We would read books or discuss history in her 11th grade class, and she would say things that were not just smart but wise.  We were discussing The Grapes of Wrath.  Judy made the most astounding comment, that John Steinbeck was trying to say that all the New Deal politics in the world would not really change things, unless people changed on the inside.  It was the kind of thing that you would say if you had been poor your whole life, or after long experience in community organizing.  Here it was in the mind of a seventeen-year-old from suburban Long Island.

When I wrote her college recommendation the following year, I tried to figure out how a teenager could be wise.  In her case, it came from a lot of reading, and a family that traveled.  She was fortunate to be a person with deep friendships, and a desire to be an organizer in her school clubs.

Judy helped me see the power of reading.  We read books, we study Torah, we chew on these in conversation because they give us access to the life experience of others.  It's easier sometimes to learn from a conversation about a "third party", which is a story, than to go directly at our own soul.  With the Torah, we have access to generations of life experience from all times and places, each time we study a verse or a parasha.

Sarah, viewed through Rashi's lens, had also been able to find wisdom even in her experiences of childhood and young adulthood.  My student Judy seemed to get a lot of insight into people and groups by planning events with a group of five or six other teens.  There were all the challenges you'll ever face in an adult enterprise -- motivating people, coming to one vision, sharing leadership and responsibility, knowing when to question a plan and when to forge ahead.  She  seemed to understand that, and I think she took the small task of young people and sensed that she could learn something for later on too.

Some commentators suggest that Sarah was just special -- that most of us have to grow old to grow wise.  I suspect that any of us can be wiser at any given time than we realize. 

You can't get wise on your own.  Valuing wisdom, pursuing it, finding wise company -- if you do these things, you'd be hard pressed to avoid attaining wisdom.  Not because it just rubs off, but because by doing them you would already be pretty wise.