D’var Torah - Toldot

עץ חיים היא למחזיקים בה, ותומכיה מאושר!

She is a tree of life to those who hold fast to her, and those who support her are fulfilled and happy.39 Proverbs 3:18.

 

The Hebrew word Lehakzik in English means to hold, to maintain, etc. and it shares the same root as the word Hazak which means strong! It is when we hold something close to us, we help it to remain strong or get stronger!

It can only happen when we truly love and support something, like our Torah or someone like our daughter when we hug it or her close to our heart and while, when we do so, we don’t only strengthen the other side, but we also become happy and fulfilled!

 

I love helping people to make connections of love and care. In days of war, I wish I could do that between countries and people all around the world. In Hebrew the word for feeling is Regesh and we use those same letters just in a different order to write the word bridge – Gesher. It is through human connections with feelings of love and care that we can build bridges in this world. And we all know already the great song of the Hasidic Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: The whole world is a narrow bridge. Kol haholam kulo gesher tzar mehod! And the main thing is to have no fear at all!

 

 

I believe that LOVE is an important feeling we should all be surrounded with for our existence and for us to achieve our full potential in life. Love goes hand in hand with happiness and when you have these two feelings stapled together you can achieve almost everything you put your heart to!

 

Life has many challenges along the way and we should remember that when those hard times come our way it is very important how we deal with them.

In this week’s Torah portion, we find out that Sara dies right after she hears about her only son being sacrificed to G-D. The portion starts with the sentence: “Sarah’s lifetime was 127 years; the years of Sarah’s life” (Genesis, 23:1).

 

Rashi explains that the text implies that at the conclusion of her 127 years, all the years of her life were equally good. How can that be?

Recalling all the difficult episodes in her life, how is it possible that all the years of Sarah’s life were equally good?

 

 

Rabbi Sacks suggests an answer, saying: to understand a person’s death, we must understand his/her life. Rabbi Sacks asks why the Torah portion, which begins with the death of Sarah, is called the “Life of Sarah.” Sacks suggests that death and how we face it is a commentary on life and how we live it.

 

Rabbi Sacks quotes the 19th-century thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote, “He who has a why in life can bear almost any how.” Abraham and Sarah, writes Sacks, were among the supreme examples of what it is to have a “why” in life. Their lives were lived as a response to a divine voice, Sacks explains, that told them to leave their home and family, abandon their security, and “have the faith to believe that by living by the standards of righteousness and justice, they would be taking the first steps to establishing a nation, a land, a faith and a way of life that would be a blessing to humankind.”

 

Abraham knew, continues Sacks, that everything that happened to him in life – even the bad things – were part of the journey on which God had sent him and Sarah, and he had the faith to continue, knowing that God was with him.

Rabbi Sacks concludes his commentary on Chayei Sarah by mentioning a book, The Choice, written by Edith Eger, who was taken to Auschwitz as a teen in May 1944 from her town in Hungary. On the way to the camps, her mother said, “We don’t know where we are going, we don’t know what is going to happen, but nobody can take away from you what you put in your own mind.” 

 

Her mother’s last words helped Eger survive, and she later became a well-known psychotherapist. In her book, she distinguishes between victimization (what happens to a person) and victimhood (how a person responds to what happens to him/her). Everyone is likely to become victimized at some point in their lives, but how we react to that occurrence is up to us. “No one can make you a victim but you,” she wrote.

 

THE MINDSET of Holocaust survivors such as Edith Eger, was present in Abraham and Sarah, who were able to withstand the challenges and disappointments that their lives presented, and ultimately found serenity at the end of their lives. “I believe,” Sacks concludes, “that faith helps us find the ‘why’ that allows us to bear almost any ‘how.’ The serenity of Sarah’s and Abraham’s death was eternal testimony to how they lived.”

 

As we count the days of this war, a month into our new and very sad reality, I was thinking about my purpose and HOW I can help or make a difference in this world. I might never understand WHY this horrible thing happened and accept it, but I want to believe that if it happened, that it was meant to be and now our role should just be to help one another to get stronger by holding each other and lift our spirits as high as possible since there is no other option.

 

We keep on counting days, months and years from moments in our history that changed us forever. One of which is today, November 9, when we commemorate, Kristallnacht, The night of broken glass which occurred 85 years ago, when German Nazis attacked Jewish people and property. The name Kristallnacht refers to the litter of broken glass left in the streets after these pogroms. After WWII we at least got our own home to live in peace and tranquility, and what now?

 

Rabbi Akiva was teaching his students once, when he noticed that they were dozing off. He wished to rouse them and said: “why was Esther given to rule over 127 provinces? It was fitting that Esther who was the descendant of Sarah, who lived 127 years, should rule over 127 provinces” (Bereshit Rabbah 58).

 

What is the logic involved in drawing this comparison? The answer is that in Rabbi Akiva’s generation it was difficult to arouse the people to observe the commandments and to good deeds, because they were persecuted mercilessly by the Romans. Many of the best people had been killed. The masses had come to despair, as they saw no end to their suffering and didn’t know why they had suffered this terrible fate. In fact, the belief in reward and punishment had become weak. Rabbi Akiva, then wished to comfort them and to encourage them, and to arouse them to observe the commandments. He therefore told them that reward and punishment do not necessarily follow immediately, and sometimes many generations pass until either comes about. This is what he hinted at in comparing Sarah and Esther, namely that the reward for Sara’s good deeds came in Esther’s generation.

 

As the days go by, as we wait so patiently for our loved ones to be back home. May our spirits get stronger, strong enough to hold ourselves, support and lift each other’s spirits!

 

May we be as strong as the Tree of Life!