Rabbi Roodyn

Parshas Chayei Sara starts with the loss of Avraham’s life partner, Sara. Together they formed a formidable team dedicated to the mission of bringing mankind to an awareness of an Infinite Being who created and has a constant involvement with the world. At a time when all of mankind was immersed in idol worship, their efforts were nothing short of remarkable.

It is interesting to note that the Sedra that deals with Sara’s death and all the activity surrounding her subsequent burial is called Chayei Sara, the life of Sara, surely it would be more appropriate to refer to it as the death of Sara?

The Torah views death as being very much part of life. As a community, levayas and shiva visits are part and parcel of every day life. In fact rather than call a cemetery a house of death we refer to it as a beis hachayim house of life. The pasuk in Shmuel[1] refers to the dead being bound up in the bond of everlasting life (something that is universally written on our matzeivos).  When we recite the kel malei rachamim we refer to the deceased having gone to their world, with the implication clearly being that this world is not our world.

This provides us with an insight into the nature of life. In a sense this world is not our world inasmuch as we can never choose what happens to us, there are so many things that happen to us that are out of control. What we are able to do is choose how we respond to our circumstances and to situations that come our way. Our eternity, our world to come is in essence the sum total of all the choices that we choose to make in response to these events. Rav Hirsch[2] therefore explains that all of Sara’s years are called chayei Sara, she lived all of them, all of her years were vital, joyful, good and meaningful and that there was not a moment of it that she would have preferred not to have lived. There is not a day, not a minute of life that is not recorded in the Book of Remembrance before Hashem, in the 127 of her life, there was not a day that was unimportant creating the true heritage that is hidden for the world to come.

Therefore the world to come is considered to be ‘our’ world as that is the reality that we create for ourselves, where we are able to take pleasure in the choices that we have made during our earthly existence. It therefore makes sense that the Sedra that marks the death of Sara is referred to as the life of Sara because in death we really focus on her legacy.

Good Shabbos!

[1] Shmuel 1 25:29

[2] Commentary to Bereishis 23:1