Hayey Sarah

A new midrash on the story of Sarah's life

This is a story I wrote some years ago, a midrashic re-telling of the final years of Avraham and Sarah. As I am still waiting for Hannukah to come along and bring me back to my writing on the year-cycle, I thought it was an opportunity to share this, as we will read this parasha on the coming Shabbat.

I originally wrote this in Hebrew, which those who are interested can read here.

Sarah died in Kiryat Arba, which is known as Hevron, in the land of Canaan, and Avraham came to mourn and weep for Sarah (Bereshit, 23:2).

As all the commentators ask – where was Avraham coming from?

It is a known principle that the Torah is not organized in chronological sequence (Mekhilta d’Rashby, 15:9, and Sifre Bamidbar 64). So perhaps this story can be better understood if we posit that the death of Sarah occurred after the marriage of Yitzḥak and Rivkah which is described at the end of this week’s parasha, rather than at the beginning.

Gustave Doré, The Burial of Sarah, 1866 (Public Domain)

We could then imagine the Torah’s eulogy for Sarah as following:

“The lifetime of Sarah was one hundred years…” (Bereshit 23:1)

For the first century of her life, our grandmother Sarah, who lived a rich and meaningful life, also lived with concerns about continuity and legacy. For ninety years she carried the concern of childlessness, and for the first ten years of Yitzḥak’s life she worried whether Yitzḥak or Yishmael would continue Avraham’s legacy. (The Or HaHayyim offers a similar explanation at the beginning of this week’s parasha)

“and twenty years…” (ibid)

For the following twenty years she was dominant, as Avraham had done as she asked, and expelled Hagar and Yishmael from his home. But after twenty years, she saw the wheels of fortune turn, and the man who had accepted her demand to send his son, born of Hagar, to die in the desert, also accepted God’s demand to kill his son, born of her, on a mountaintop. And when Sarah heard from her son Yitzḥak, that without God’s intervention his father would have actually gone through with the slaughter (as told in Kohelet Rabbah 9:7), she knew that she could no longer trust Avraham on anything, and she left his home in Be’er Sheva, and went to live in Kiryat Arba which is known as Ḥevron.

“…and seven years”(Bereshit, 23:1)

For seven years our grandmother Sarah lived in Ḥevron. Those years were a mixture of both sorrow and joy. She felt sorrow for the pain she had caused Hagar and her son, and she suffered the anger of her son Yitzḥak who did not distinguish between the parent who bound him and the parent who did not, and stayed distant from his mother as well as from his father.

Yet at the same time these were years of joy for her. In some ways she returned to her youth, like when she was seven years old (see Rashi on this verse) and her life, joy and sense of identity did not depend on others, neither her spouse Avraham nor her son Yitzḥak. Now it was only her, and the Shekhinah present in her tent.

And when Rivkah came to Yitzḥak, “he brought her to the tent, to Sarah his mother” (Bereshit 24:67. See also the Kli Yakar on this verse who alludes to the possibility of this interpretation)

“and he loved her” (ibid)

He loved both of them.

For in his love for Rivkah and in their relationship, he came to know her and himself, and to appreciate the ways human relationships are “caught in the thicket” (Bereshit 22:13) of love and hate and anger and fear…

“And Yitzhak felt differently about his mother” (Bereshit 24:67. For this meaning of the root NHM see also Shemot 32:14, Jeremiah 31:19 and many more)

He moved away from his anger, and they were able to be close again, as mother and son. And as they became close to each other, they reached out to Hagar and Yishmael as well, and with much work, of both asking and giving forgiveness, they were able to reestablish love once more.

But our grandfather Avraham, when Sarah left his home, set her aside from his mind as well. He married another woman named Keturah (Bereshit 25:1), he had children with her, and for those seven years he did not think of Sarah. Indeed, his consciousness is reflected in the sequence of the Torah’s story, for after the Akedah, Sarah was not present in his mind until he heard of her death, so those two stories are told next to each other.

But when our grandmother “Sarah died in Kiryat Arba which is known as Hevron” (Bereshit 23:2), our grandfather Avraham remembered their love and understood something of the pain he had caused her. So, he rose from Beer Sheva -

“and Avraham came to mourn and weep for Sarah” (ibid). Still, we cannot help but notice that the scribes of the Torah wrote the word “to weep” with a smaller letter. Did they not believe him?

And after all of this Avraham died.

We do not know if at the end of his life he repented and was able to do the work of transformation. We are of course taught that “if you see a disciple of the wise sin at night” meaning during his dark times which are like a nighttime of the soul, “you should assume that he has certainly done teshuvah during the day” meaning during his better times (bavli, Berakhot 19a), for most certainly, ”as long as the candle is lit, it is possible to do the work” (from a story attributed to R Yisrael Salanter).

What we do know, is that it is told of his sons after his death – “Yitzḥak and Yishmael came to bury…” (Bereshit, 25:9), for they had returned to love each other as brothers, and they came together to do a final act of love for their father. And although we are taught that it is wrong to pray for the past (Mishnah Berakhot, 9:3) they are still alive within us, so we can pray that they came to bury him with forgiveness in their hearts.

Amen, so may it be.