Rabbi Roodyn

Dedicated le ilui nishmas Braina Mariasa Bas Dovid Efrayim, Mrs Barbara Shenkin a’’h a true tzadekes who passed away this week in Yerushalayim ir Hakodesh.

I have always found it beautiful that the parsha that deals with the death of Sarah is called Chayei Sarah, the life of Sarah.

For Jews, death is not the end of life, rather it is a form of birth. We are born into another dimension, one where we exist without the limitations of a body, to be able to take pleasure in perceiving that which would not be possible were we still to exist as physical beings. A cemetery is called a  beis hachayim  and every tombstone ends with the request that the deceased be bound up in the bond of everlasting life. Chazal say that tzadikim after their deathare called alive. Not only does their legacy live on, but they themselves reap the infinite rewards of their decisions, choices and actions.

In memorial prayer א-ל מלא רחמים we refer to the deceased as שהלך לעולמו, having gone to their world. The implication clearly being that this world is not our world. This is an incredibly powerful idea. This world is not our world because we are not in control of what happens to us,  we cannot choose our circumstances. What we can choose however is how to respond to those circumstances. It is  from those responses, those choices that our eternity is formed. Our portion in the world to come is the sum total of all our choices in this world. That is our world and that is why we say שהלך לעולמו.

Sarah’s legacy lives on in each and every one of us, we are her children. Through her choices, decisions and commitment a family was born, a nation was formed that changed the world. As  long as we are alive, she too is alive.