Imu Shalev: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha … diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself. Hi, I’m Imu Shalev. 

Ari Levisohn: And I’m Ari Levisohn, one of the scholars at Aleph Beta.

Imu: And we have a special announcement today. Unfortunately, this will be my very last episode hosting Into The Verse. Aleph Beta is gearing up to launch two new, incredible podcasts, and I am going to be focusing my energy on getting those off the ground.

Ari: Imu, Rabbi Fohrman, and the rest of the team have been doing some really cool brand new scholarship that you all are going to love. Imu, why don’t tell everyone a bit about those podcasts?

Imu: Sure. The first one is going to be called A Book Like No Other, and it’s actually going to be Rabbi Fohrman’s main podcast. It’s going to be the place for him to showcase his latest and greatest research. It’s not going to be timely topics like Into The Verse, but, instead, it’s going to allow Rabbi Fohrman to spend multiple weeks on a topic and really explore some of Torah’s most incredible secrets with a depth that he just can’t do on Into the Verse.

Ari: Not only am I psyched about this, but I have even heard Rabbi Fohrman talk about how excited he is for this new platform to teach Torah. So, what’s the second podcast?

Imu: Yeah, the second one is something that I’ve personally been dreaming about for a very long time. It’s an effort to explore the meaning behind the laws and mitzvot we practice – sort of an attempt to get at the why behind what we do. So, like - mikvah, tzitzit, niddah, Shabbos - what’s the meaning behind those mitzvot? And what I think makes it really special is that we’re going to use classic Aleph Beta methodology, a close read of Biblical text, to see if the Torah intends for us to know some of that meaning. The hope is that once we understand those mitzvot better, we can renew our passion and enthusiasm, and hopefully… hopefully improve even our relationship with our Creator. I’m really excited about it, and I hope our listeners will enjoy. But in the meantime, I’m going to be handing over the reins of Into the Verse to our very capable Ari Levisohn.

Ari: You’re doing…what?! Just kidding. I knew that already. I am really excited for this! We have some incredible Torah in store, and I cannot wait to share that with you.

You might be wondering if things are going to change here at Into The Verse. There’ll be a few changes. We are going to do some more conversational style episodes, and we may try out some new things for the outros, but for the most part, it’s going to be the same great Aleph Beta Torah, you keep coming back for.

Parshat Chayei Sarah opens with the death of Sarah Imeinu, our matriarch Sarah. I always expect this moment to hit me in a really momentous way. This is the first loss of one of our nation’s leaders. A time to pause and reflect on the incredible impact Sarah had on shaping who we are as a people. But, see, that’s just it. When you stop and think about Sarah, it’s hard to put your finger on what that impact was. Sure, on the family tree of the Jewish people she’s right at the top, but what is it about her as a person that we’re supposed to remember and emulate? 

Well, In this week’s episode, Rabbi Fohrman finds a clue to the lasting legacy of Sarah’s life by looking, in all places, at the Torah’s description of her death. That clue hinges on a seemingly technical fact found in the parsha’s opening verse: the number of years Sarah happened to live. Here is Rabbi Fohrman.

Sarah's Age and Rabbi Akiva’s Riddle

Rabbi David Fohrman: The opening verse of Chayei Sarah talks about the amount of years that our matriarch, Sarah, lived. And as it happens, that verse gets featured in a famous rabbinic riddle. Let me tell you about it.

The immortal sage, Rabbi Akiva, we’re told, once saw his students dozing off in class, and he decided to shake them back awake with a challenge, a question he posed about Sarah’s lifetime.

We’re told she was 127 years old, and Rabbi Akiva picked up on that. He challenged his students with this query:

מָה רָאֲתָה אֶסְתֵּר שֶׁתִּמְלֹךְ עַל שֶׁבַע וְעֶשְׂרִים וּמֵאָה מְדִינָה אֶלָּא תָּבוֹא אֶסְתֵּר שֶׁהָיְתָה בַּת בִּתָּהּ שֶׁל שָׂרָה שֶׁחָיְתָה מֵאָה וְעֶשְׂרִים וָשֶׁבַע וְתִמְלֹךְ עַל מֵאָה וְעֶשְׂרִים וְשֶׁבַע מְדִינוֹת

(Bereishit Rabbah 58:3)

Why was it, exactly, that Esther ended up ruling over 127 provinces? It came about because Esther was a descendant of Sarah. Sarah lived to 127. Therefore, let Esther, her descendant, come and rule over 127 provinces. 

But, you know, what’s the deal with this riddle? At face value, Rabbi Akiva is making this strange, almost humorous, logical leap. Yes, Sarah’s age happens to correspond to the number of provinces ruled over by Esther, and that’s sort of an intriguing coincidence, but does Queen Esther, this heroine of the Purim saga, have anything really to do with Sarah, Abraham’s wife?

And so the question really is: Was Rabbi Akiva just joking here – was this really just a harmless little stunt to wake up his sleepy students? Or did Rabbi Akiva’s little “wake-the-students-joke” conceal a hidden meaning that his students, and we, might eventually glean from it?

In Search of Connecting Sarah to Esther

To begin to see what Rabbi Akiva might have been getting at, let’s start with this question: Did Sarah and Esther truly have anything fundamental in common with one another?

At face value, not so much. They’re notable figures of the Bible. They’re both women, but a lot of other women are also notable in the Bible: Miriam, Deborah, Yael, Ruth, to name just a few.

And yet, in Rabbi Akiva’s mind, there was actually something particular about Sarah and Esther that seems to have bound them together. Their respective hundred and twenty-sevens were somehow aligned with one another. What was that quality that bound these women together?

The Years of Sarah’s Life

To get a clue, I want to take you back to what Rashi actually tells us was Abraham’s eulogy, as it were, for Sarah. Now, to be sure, although the text of the Torah tells us that Abraham did eulogize Sarah, it doesn’t tell us what he said. Rashi surmises, though, that the way the Torah counts Sarah’s 127 years alludes to the essence of Abraham’s eulogy.

וַיִּהְיוּ חַיֵּי שָׂרָה מֵאָה שָׁנָה וְעֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה וְשֶׁבַע שָׁנִים שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי שָׂרָה

(Genesis 23:1)

And the life of Sarah was a hundred years, twenty years, seven years. Those were the years of the life of Sarah.

So Rashi, when he interprets the breakup of these years into groups, he suggests that there were actually three groups of years, each connected to each other. When Sarah was a hundred, Rashi says, she was as guiltless, as free from sin, as when she was just twenty. And when she was twenty, she was as beautiful, as innocent-looking, as when she was just seven. And that, Rashi says, was the essence of Abraham’s eulogy.

I heard an idea a long time ago quoted in the name of Rabbi Soloveitchik, zt”l. The idea resonated with me, and I want to share it with you. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik saw in Rashi a kind of path through time that Sarah charted: 7…20…100. Three stages...

You see, as we go through life, Rabbi Soloveitchik said, we all go through stages. Earliest youth is filled with innocence, exuberance, and curiosity. We’re discovering ourselves. And when we become adolescents, we start prizing independence. And as we get older we find ourselves responsible for others, focused on the future. And, eventually, adulthood gives way to middle age, and middle age gives way to our sunset years. Each of these stages comes with new priorities, new ways of looking at our lives, new ways of looking at the world.

Now, most of us go through life living each stage, and then leaving it behind as we experience the next one. But there’s another way to go through life, an extraordinary way. And it’s the way Sarah did it, Rabbi Soloveitchik says — and that’s what Rashi was getting at with his cryptic comment.

Living an Extraordinary Life

You see, the way Sarah did it, you don’t just passively travel through life’s stages, discarding the past for the more immediate stage of the present. No, you build as you go: You take each stage with you as you encounter the next one.

So, you know, you’re seven, you’re wide-eyed, you’re curious. But as the years pass and you approach 20, you don't exchange that curiosity of youth for the independence and self-discovery of your new adolescent self. No. You take with you that curiosity. You merge it somehow into your new, teenage self.

And as you progress further, towards adulthood, and you start attaining a little bit of wisdom, you merge that wisdom with the independence of your earlier stages. And that kind of synthesis, it continues – through adulthood, through middle age, through your later years.

And that, Rabbi Soloveitchik says, is what marked Sarah, in Abraham’s eyes, as so extraordinary. She was able to bring all of her earlier selves with her, as she aged. It made her years more powerful, more potent.

What Really Connects Sarah and Esther?

Okay, so with this in mind, let’s come back to Rabbi Akiva and his sleepy students.

Rabbi Akiva connected Sarah’s 127 years with Esther’s 127 provinces. And I had asked you: What quality seems to unite Sarah and Esther? I think we are now in a position to answer that question. The quality was…Queenship. Let me explain.

You see, a queen, when successful, is a uniter. She is not merely someone who makes the rules for a certain territory or decides the fate of her subjects in that territory. A queen does do all that, but if she’s really successful, she also unites her subjects in some way. She transforms a mere territory into a nation. The people that comprise a nation are not just a bunch of individuals, milling around, living in proximity to one another. They have some sort of common cause that binds them together, and the monarch is a living symbol of that cause. Hopefully, she works proactively to advance it.

How does a king or a queen advance that cause? At their best, monarchs find ways to join individual talents to create a larger whole. Bob is a blacksmith, Phil is a farmer, Carol is a shepherdess, Beryl is a tailor... and the monarch? The monarch finds a way to incorporate the energies of Bob, Phil, Carol, and Beryl towards common goals. A king or queen unites unique individuals and inflects their talents towards the service of the nation’s cause.

Esther played that kind of role on the world stage, uniting peoples from across far-flung provinces. She was a ruler of territory, of space. But, Rabbi Akiva argues, she was actually living out a vision first formulated by her ancestor, Sarah. A person who we might call an empress of…time.

You see, what Rabbi Akiva is really saying is that Esther had a teacher, as it were. What Esther did on a grand scale, when she united individual people, Sarah, long before her, did on a much more private, personal level, when she united individual moments – moments of her life.

In doing that, Sarah was a ruler of years. She bound years together so that they weren’t just lost as time marched on. She allowed the whole of her moments to become more than the sum of their parts.

The Meaning of Sarah's Name

And here’s the kicker. Think for a minute about Sarah’s name. Her name actually expresses royalty. Her name was originally Sarai, which can be translated as “my princess,” almost as if it were a term of endearment that Abraham, her husband, had used for her.

But then one day, God came out of the clouds and changed her name. He told Abraham that from here on out, Sarai was to be known as Sarah:

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹקים אֶל־אַבְרָהָם שָׂרַי אִשְׁתְּךָ לֹא־תִקְרָא אֶת־שְׁמָהּ שָׂרָי כִּי שָׂרָה שְׁמָהּ...מַלְכֵי עַמִּים מִמֶּנָּה יִהְיוּ׃ 

And God said to Abraham, “As for your wife, Sarai, you don’t call her Sarai. Her name is Sarah… Rulers of nations shall come from her.” (Genesis 17:15–16)

Sarah. Not Sarai – “my princess,” just “princess.” It was as if God was saying to Abraham: She is not merely your princess. She is more universal than that. Rulers of nations will come from her. She is to be a princess of the world. She belongs to humanity itself.

Queen of Space and Queen of Time

Listen carefully to those words of that verse: “Rulers of nations shall come from her.” Note the plural there: nations. Many of them.

So let me ask you: Historically, when did that prophecy come true? When did a descendant of Sarah live to become not just queen over a particular nation, but a ruler of many nations – an empress, as it were?

It happened in the days of Achashveirosh, when Esther became queen over Persia’s 127 provinces. The largest empire the world had ever seen.

You see, the woman who ruled over 127 territories was the descendant of the woman who, in her own life, had ruled over 127 years. Two queens but of different realms: Years and territories; time and space.

Not all of us can be emperors over space. We don’t have to be. But we can be emperors of time in our own lives. Indeed, Esther is not the only one who can learn from Sarah. Sarah’s example can help us, her descendants, also find ways to become masters of our moments, just like she was.

A Real Life Queen of Time

Ari: Hey, it's Ari again. When I think about this idea of taking the best parts of each stage of life and incorporating them into who we become next, I couldn't help but think of my mom. She's a role model to me in so many ways, but one of them is her refusal to fully grow up and let go of all the amazing traits that define children. She really does follow after Sarah. So, I decided to get her on the phone and ask her how the seven and 27 year old Lisi that she carries with her enriches her life today. I figured I'd share that conversation with you. For context: she spends much of her time working with children, including teaching kindergarten science, which she mentions here.

All right, Mom. So you were telling me what this idea means to you.

Lisi Levisohn: So much of what moves me is kind of seeing kids' eyes open to things that they are just discovering…You know, the kind of the sense of wonder and the sense of discovery…and just taking so much intellectual and spiritual joy in the world because they're discovering things for the first time. 

I'm looking out the window right now, and the leaves here are beautiful, gorgeous. They're yellow and red and orange, and a lot of them are falling, blowing off the trees. So most adults are like…”Yeah, this is what's happened every October of my life.” But there's a part of me that sees it like a child…where it's like the tree got the signal because of the fall, and it's important for the leaves to fall off the tree because otherwise it would be bad for the tree in the winter. The leaves are sort of letting the tree live by falling off. All of the things that I tell the little kids, that is a part of how I see it. And I think that to me that's just as spiritually meaningful in terms of how I see the world as the more grown up ways that I think about the world and learn about things and talk about things.

Ari: So if we think about what happens when you reach that next stage of life, you start to gain a sense of sophistication and you learn about the chlorophyll in the leaves and the science behind the color change, right?

Lisi: Right, like, what are 20 year olds usually doing? They're in university. They're studying things at a much higher level than they ever did before. And in some ways they know more than their parents about certain things because they're taking classes in it. And there's this sense of empowerment in your twenties that you're on your way to, who knows what great things, and what you'll do or accomplish or discover.

Ari: Yeah, definitely. So, Mom, you're well past your twenties although you’re nowhere near a hundred either, but what do you think you gain with more maturity that you don't have at seven or 27?

Lisi: So Savta (grandma)…she posted October 7th on Facebook. She took a photograph of Bullough's Pond with the colors of autumn starting to show. This is her walking route with Saba (grandpa). They've walked around Bullough's Pond how many millions of times, right? And she wrote: “We're leaning into a beautiful New England autumn. At this point, the words of the late poet Howard Nimeroff, my dissertation advisor, resonate: “Once more, great season, play it through again.” Bullough's Pond, moving in all seasons, is at its spectacular best with purple asters and mustardy goldenrod clustered under orange, red, and yellowing trees." So here's somebody who has seen 80 autumns, and I think that when you've seen 80 autumns, there's something about seeing those things that come back every year, the colors of the autumn, rather than appreciating the newness and the wonder and the amazement, there's something about the beauty of the return of things.

Ari: Do you think it's possible to combine all three stages then? Can you grow with that sense of beauty and repetition while still maintaining that seven year old sense of freshness and wonder?

Lisi: Yeah, I mean, I think that especially when you've seen something 80 times or you've learned all there is to know about it, when you discover something new, or see it from a different perspective, I think then it's, like, especially amazing. And I feel this both for myself, and I've heard Saba and Savta say it too. Say I come up with an interpretation for something in Torah and I share it. Or if you do, Ari, if you come up with an idea and you share it and you hear Saba or Savta say, "Huh, I never thought about it that way before. I think that's really good." There's always more to be moved by, to discover, to see in a different way, or just to appreciate how beautiful it is.

Ari: Mom, this was so wonderful. Thank you for sharing all of this.

Lisi: It was super nice to have this conversation with you, Ari. You really just made my day beautiful. So thank you.

Ari: To our listeners, I hope this illustration of what it’s like to maintain that childlike sense of wonder and discovery, year after year, helped bring the ideas of this week’s episode to life. I know it did for me. We all have that inner seven year old or inner 20 year old in us, and we can all be more unified versions of ourselves if we don’t leave them buried, but, like Sarah, embrace those parts of us instead.

Credits

This episode was written and recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman. 

When it originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Rivky Stern. 

Into the Verse editing was done by Evan Weiner.

The senior editor was Tikva Hecht

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. 

Additional audio editing by Veekalp Sharma.

Our editorial director is Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening.