When a famous person passes away, any newspaper of record will try to capture the life and accomplishments of that person in a news article or obituary. The greater the person’s accomplishments, the longer and the more detailed the obit. Based on this, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik asked: We would assume that for the first lady of Jewish history, the Matriarch Sarah, the Torah would contain a lengthy and detailed description of her life. Yet, the very first Jewish woman is remembered and eulogized in this week’s parasha in one single sentence: “And these were the years of Sarah, a hundred years and twenty years and seven years, these were the years of Sarah.”
Why does the Torah phrase Sarah’s age of death so strangely? Why is it written, “a hundred years, twenty years and seven years”? Why not simply say that Sarah was 127 years old?
The Sages of the Midrash answer: To teach that at the age of a hundred Sarah was as beautiful as when she was twenty, and at the age of twenty she was as free of sin as when she was seven.
But in answering one question, another one is raised: The last words of the verse “these were the years of Sarah” also seem redundant. This phrase could not have been mentioned to teach how old Sarah was when she died because the verse just said she was 127. Rashi explains the phrase to mean that “all of her years were equally good.” And so, the words “these were the years of Sarah” are not answering a numerical question as to how old Sarah was but rather who Sarah was. What kind of life did Sarah lead? And the answer to that question is also contained in that same verse: Sarah was a hundred; she was twenty; she was seven.
In the words of Rabbi Soloveitchik: Sarah was a seven-year-old innocent child when she reached the age of twenty and a twenty-year-old lovely woman when she reached the ripe old age of a hundred. … The adult in Sarah did not destroy the child. Maturity did not do away with childhood. No matter how developed, no matter how capable and experienced a woman Sarah became, in the deep recesses of her personality there still existed an innocent child. This did not mean that her mind did not ripen with age, that she did not benefit by repeated events in her life or that her personality was not enriched by wisdom and life experience. However, Sarah still retained within her personality the young girl she once was.
Rabbi Soloveitchik continues to say that the three traditional periods of life, namely, childhood, youth and adulthood need not be mutually exclusive. They are not just successive experiences in which we exchange one for the other. Rather, childhood, youth and adulthood can all be experienced simultaneously. Sarah was at the same time a child, a youth and an old person.
Most of us proceed through life by replacing one stage of life with another instead of joining them together. When we leave our childhood and develop passion and enthusiasm for causes and ideals, the innocent child is often left behind. Some of the great social movements in America were borne out of the idealism and passion of university students on college campuses. But it is also on those same campuses where so many lose their innocence and purity. And so, when we reach adulthood and start developing life experience and wisdom, the enthusiasm and idealism of our youth are often left behind.
In one of my favorite Billy Joel songs, “Angry Young Man,” Billy Joel writes: “I believe I’ve passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage, I found that just surviving was a noble fight. I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point of view, and life went on no matter who was right or wrong.”
It’s not like we become more selfish as we get older, or that we no longer care about important causes or movements. It’s just a natural part of maturation. As Winston Churchill famously remarked: “Anyone who is young and not a liberal does not have a heart. Anyone who is old and not a conservative does not have a brain.”
But imagine if we could have it all. Imagine a 100-year-old person filled with the wisdom of someone with 100 years of life experience, who still has that passion and idealism of youth and the innocence and naivete of their childhood. That was Sarah.
Sarah was able to maintain the purity of her childhood and the idealism of her youth well into her adult life. And so, as she got older and developed the wisdom only a person with so many years of life experience could have, she was still innocent and passionate, making her a very powerful force in the world.
Sarah is thus a model for us in a few ways: First, for young people graduating university life and entering the working world it may take effort to maintain that sense of idealism, but Sarah taught us that it can be done. Even though our lives may be consumed by professional aspirations or by the simple everyday concern of earning a living, we can still preserve that passion for noble causes, whether it’s our love for Israel or anything else that moves us — provided we have the right teachers and mentors. We have seen what happens when young men and women on campus have teachers who espouse a corrupt ideology. Their passion and idealism to make the world a better place can be misguided into promoting an unjust cause like supporting Hamas.
Combining the innocence of our childhood with the wisdom of adulthood is also important since Torah study and prayer are essential parts of living a religious life. Rabbi Soloveitchik explained the mitzvah of Torah study requires the ability to think conceptually and critically — not to accept things at face value but to challenge and question, something a child is less capable of doing. On the other hand, says the Rav, when the Jew puts down the sefer and picks up the siddur it is now the adult who is at a disadvantage and the child who becomes the expert. Whereas Torah study requires self-confidence and self-assertion, prayer requires self-negation. To pray means to surrender, to feel dependent on a greater force, something an adult with their highly developed mind and confident stature has difficulty doing. Only an innocent child with his heightened sense of helplessness can come before God and pray in the ideal way Judaism demands.
As Jews privileged to engage in both Talmud Torah (study) and tefillah (prayer), we require both the innocence of childhood and the sophistication that comes with age. Let us follow Sarah’s example of not replacing but combining the different aspects of our lives. In doing so, we will not only be able to engage all parts of our Jewish tradition, but we will stay young, incorporating every quality of our development into every moment of our lives.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Mark Wildes, founder, Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE), a highly successful Jewish outreach program which engages 20’s/30’s in Jewish life and which has facilitated 383 marriages.
