Parashat Chayei Sara

Genesis 23:1 - 25:18

The stubbornness of the optimist

A midrash tells how Sarah's heart stops beating when she sees Abraham appear alone after the Akedah episode. The thought that her son could have died is too much for Sarah and she dies. And yet, Yitzchak did not die, and the parsha that begins speaking of Sarah's death is titled “Jayei Sarah” [life of Sarah]. If it were the title of a book chapter we would expect a biography of Sarah, but what we read are the preparations for her burial and about the mourning of Abraham and his son Isaac. But life goes on, and Isaac falls in love and gets married, we even read that his widower Abraham remarries and has more children, and how Isaac opens wells again to provide water and life to the desert lands where they are. At the end of this parsha Abraham will also die, thus culminating an enveloping narrative structure that begins with the death of the first matriarch and ends with the death of the first patriarch. The first cycle of the patriarchs closes with a reconciliation between brothers, between Isaac and Ishmael who stand together at their father's tomb mourning the loss of the father they shared. That is the legacy of a parasha whose title is the word life, a legacy of optimism that despite the loss, the confrontations, and the pain over the death of a loved one, teaches us not to lose hope and move forward.