Shalom. We should be able to learn very good lessons from our ancestors about our own lives. And one of the things we can learn about the relationship between Abraham and Sarah is perhaps, how to improve our relationships and our marriage. Now, there are definitely sources that save that a great marriage, and they interpret all the things in the Torah to say that he was bewailing her when she suddenly died.
But, I think if you take a good hard look at the Pashat, the basis of the story, you will see they did not have a very good marriage and we can learn things from it. The key in understanding this is that in every relationship, think about it as a bank account. You either make deposits, or you take withdrawals. And there is always going to be times when you want to take a withdrawal, when you are not feeling well, or you are upset, but you need to have a very solid foundation of positive deposits in order to withdraw without ruining the relationship. I think if you look it at that way, you will see that Abraham made a lot of withdrawals and very few deposits, and then they did not have a good relationship. For example, in the week in which I am recording this, it is Parsha Chaye Sarah, and which means the life of Sarah, but actually, it is the story of her death.
Now, it does say some beautiful things about her. It says that she was a hundred and twenty and seven years, and use of the years where the years after each one of those phrases, the Rabbi said that the reason why the Torah does not say a hundred twenty seven years, which is a hundred years and twenty years, and seven years, is to make the point that at hundred, she was as beautiful as twenty, and at twenty she was as pure as when she was seven.
But, just think about their relationships, it starts in Lekh Lekha two weeks ago, when God says, “Abraham, go forth and go to a new land, or a land where I will show you”. Now, in the text, does Abraham consult to Sarah before saying, I am going to go? No, he does not consult with her own (foreign language) and then, we have all these other stories where things are not very good from there.
For example, we have the story where he is threatened, he feels threatened by the King, and so, when the King says, “who is this woman”? Instead of saying it is my wife, he says, “It is his sister”. Therefore, suggesting the King could be intimate with her and really was putting her in grave danger. And then, in Genesis 22, when God says, “take your son Isaac and sacrifice him”, does Abraham consult with Sarah? No.
In fact, one of the Midrashim says that she dies in this Parsha and Abraham and Sarah never talked again because he never consulted her and she woke up and found out that he had taken her son to be sacrificed. In addition when she dies, she dies in Beersheba, in Hebron, and the Torah text says, that Abraham came to Hebron to cry about her. So, where was he? They were living apart. And then it says, “lispod velivekotah” which is a small half in the word lispod velivekotah to cry. Now, one traditional commentary says, because he kept most of his grief private. But, there is another standard Midrash that says the reason it says lispod velivekotah is to tell us the obvious truth that he did not cry fully. That they did not have such a good relationship, and so he was not totally desolate when she died. And so, you think a lot of all of these stories were they did not have a very good relationship and he kept taking withdrawals, he decided to leave their homeland without control of her, he decided to sacrifice Isaac, without consult of her.
He says that she is his sister and not his wife to put her in grave danger. And so, what we can learn from this is; and also she paid him back one of the - you think about the story last week where God sends his angel to tell her she is going to have a baby and they are both in their 90’s, and she says, I am to old and my husband is to old, so she is making fun at him too, no, God does not tell Abraham that. When Abraham asks, God tries to keep domestic peace in harmony.
And so, what are the things we need to learn from the story is how to improve our own relationships, continue to make positive deposits, consult our spouses have a love and warm sense of Shalom. Do not be startled by the idea that our biblical characters were not perfect. We do not believe in perfect human beings, everybody makes mistakes. But, one of the legacies that they can give us, even though Abraham was one of the great people in all human history. Maybe he was not such a good husband, and the text seems to indicate that, and so we need to learn from that. The Parsha Chaye Sarah, they pay tribute to Sarah in this Torah portion is she now leaves us after being the first Jewish woman and the first Jewish matriarch.
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