Rabbi Simon Jacobson- Parsha Chayei Sara

the chapter K its central theme of the opening chap part of the chapter most of the chapter is the death of Sarah Sarah is the wife of Abraham together they built a home a beautiful home affected thousands and thousands of people and in essence are really the the parents of monotheism of Faith the modern world would not be the world that we know it if we did not have Abraham and Sarah two people a couple who paid the price and embarked on a journey to defy paganism to defy Duality and to embrace a higher unified God what we call Hashem the one God and more importantly they committed to teach it to their children so this story and this chapter is the story of Sarah's death but here we find a very fascinating and again paradoxical element the name of the chapter the opening of the chapter is Kar which means the life of Sarah now the life of Sarah was documented in last week's chapter and two weeks ago so why would a chapter that talks about her death it opens up and these are the 127 years of the life of Sarah meaning a eulogy for her passing so why would a chapter that talks about her death be named the life of Sarah then the Continuing Story is how Abraham goes out to find and search a for a burial place for Sarah he finds Kevon Kon that till today is in in the in the news is the the special cave in Kon in Israel where Sarah is buried and later Abraham was buried tradition says that Adam and Eva are buried there Isaac and Rebecca would be buried there and Jacob and Leia would be buried there and then it continues how after she died Sarah Abraham sends his Messenger to go find a sh to go find a soulmate for Isaac so the the theme of this chapter is all about her death and the events that happened subsequent to her death yet the chapter is called the life of Sarah why so I remember once being invited to give a eulogy at the passing of a friend in the in Manhattan and I wasn't sure what I was going to speak about so as I was driving up the up Westside highway I saw a big billboard and the billboard gave me my theme for my speech what was it it was an advertisement for Newport cigarettes and it had these two most beautiful faces you've ever seen smiling with these white the whitest teeth you've ever seen I don't think anybody has such white teeth and you know flashing across the the West Side Highway and then the words were alive with pleasure but of course there's the box down on the bottom left that says that smoking is hazardous to your heal will kill you carbon monoxide dangerous for pregnant women you know all that which is of course the one of the paradoxes of our modern society that they're selling something then they tell you it's going to kill you you know anyway so I said to myself it's interesting how this world works here you have these two be everyone wants to look like this couple which is why they advertise them you want to have teeth like that but they're not showing you what their teeth really look like after smoking so many years they don't also show you an x-ray of their lungs they just the image and they say not only you're alive you're alive with pleasure and I realized the answer to my question about Kar the life of Sarah what is life what does it mean to be alive with pleasure so a doctor would tell you life means biological life you know you can breathe you can walk you can talk you can do business you're alive but I know many people who do all of that and they say they feel like zombies you know they don't feel emotionally alive they don't feel intellectually alive they don't feel spiritually alive the Torah in its succinct way in one word says you want to know the life of someone you have to look at what impact they have after they passed away very powerful people have lived in this world in history history and after they passed many people were very happy that they were gone their impact was only while they were around and they drove fear into other people's hearts then there are people who were so beloved and their impact was so powerful that they don't have to be there physically to continue to influence us you want to really see what life is you can't let look at the moment because you can have someone who's holding a gun to your head and they're in control that doesn't mean that they're they're powerful it just means at the moment they have power here's Sarah someone that lived thousands of years ago we still talk about her with such love our mother Sarah because her inspiration that she left the impact she had on Abraham on her son Isaac was such that it did not die when her body died so the Torah is telling us you want to truly see life you have to look at the spiritual life of a person a spiritual life lives on that's why it says in the talmud that the the wicked even in their lifetimes are called dead and the righteous even in their death they're called alive cuz life is not about just biological uh biological life it's not just a heartbeating and and and a brain functioning it's about the emotional spiritual psychological influences you have in life and as the talud says as his children are alive so too he is alive that is the secret of Jewish survival as well that thousands of years later we live by the ideals by values of people that lived so long ago they are essentially alive through us when we when if they leave no values then of course they die and they were dead and they were dead even when they lived so in a sense the Romans the Egyptians the Persians the Babylonians there's no one claiming to be their grandchildren because they were powerful Empires at the time but it was just momentary it was just a temporary experience so when you want to know the life of Sarah you begin to recognize it the day she passes away and the impact that she had once she's not there physically