Writing the Waves

Chayei Sarah is this week’s Torah portion. It opens with describing Sarah’s life span – “100 and 20 and 7,” is how the Torah enumerates the years of her life. And of course, given this tripartite division of her years, the Rabbis jump in with a midrashic interpretation. The most well-known is this: that Sarah was as innocent at 20 as she was at 7, and as wise at 20 as she was at 100. Which sounds great, but let’s be honest. If they’re right, wouldn’t that mean her life was pretty boring and pretty unenlightening?

This is someone who really lived! She left all she had ever known to stand for a truth for which she and Abram, were willing to sacrifice everything. That leads them to become the greatest of boundary crossers- to stand up for a oneness in the universe, too often obscured by proprietary worship, password enforced community, and taxed entry.

Sarah was a border crosser who had to become her own best advocate – in the face of God, kings, and her own husband. She knew the heartache of barrenness, the deep pangs of jealousy, the triumph of birth, and the battle between scruples and self-defense that only a mother bear can fully comprehend. She was a sage and a sinner, she was a prophet and a pawn, and in the face of all that she has seen, she is finally gathered to her ancestors and buried in sacred ground.

To our dearest and “sainted” rabbis, I tell you that our “sainted” teachers, nobody undergoes “The Life of Sarah” without losing their innocence and developing a beauty that betrays the perfect aesthetics of the classical framing of human life.

This Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, was the parashah for my Bar Mitzvah. Back then, 43 years ago today, I couldn’t possibly have seen this parshah with these eyes in this way. And that is precisely the point. Torah remains as a singular beacon calling out to our souls, each and every week of each and every year, of our lives; it’s sonorous waves falling upon our eardrums from stage to stage of life.