No One Is Spared

Last week’s parashah, Vayera, ended with the story of the Akedah, the binding of Yitzḥak (Isaac), a divine command that could have ended with Yitzḥak’s tragic death at his father’s hands, a fate ultimately averted by divine intervention. This week’s parashah, Ḥayyei Sarah, opens with the death of Yitzḥak’s mother, Sarah:

Sarah died in Kiryat Arba—now Hevron—in the land of Canaan, and Avraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her. (Genesis 23:2)

The juxtaposition (semikhat parshiyot) of these two episodes prompted an early rabbinic midrash to see them as interconnected:

“‘Abraham came to lament for Sarah and to weep for her’—from where did he come? Rabbi Levi said: He came from Terach’s burial to [that of] Sarah. Rabbi Yosei said to him: But is it not so that Terach’s burial preceded Sarah’s by two years? Rather, from where did he come? From Mount Moriah. Sarah died as a result of grief over that incident. That is why the Akedah is adjacent to ‘Sarah’s lifetime was (the first verse of Parshat Hayei Sarah)…’” (Bereishit Rabbah 58:5, Theodore-Albeck ed. pp. 623-4)

This midrash is terse and technical, offering little beyond a causal link between the two events. A later version, however, expands the story, filling it with emotion and theological purpose:

The Holy One, blessed be He said to the wicked: “The righteous did not rejoice in My world, and you seek to rejoice?” …

Avraham did not rejoice in My world and you seek to rejoice in My world? A son was born to Avraham at the age of one hundred, and ultimately the Holy One, blessed be He said to him: “Take now your son… [and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains that I will tell you]” (Genesis 22:2). And our father Avraham went on a three-day journey. After three days, he saw a cloud fixed upon the mountaintop. He said: “It seems to me that this is the place that the Holy One Blessed be He said to me to bring up my son Yitzhak before Him.” He said to Yitzhak: “Do you see anything?” He said to him: “A cloud fixed upon a mountaintop.” He said to Yishmael and Eliezer: “Do you see anything?” They said: “No.” He said to them, “Since you do not see anything—and this donkey does not see, ‘stay here with the donkey.’” (See Genesis 22:5) … He took Yitzhak his son, took him up mountains and down hills. He took him up one of the mountains and built an altar, arranged the wood, and took the knife to slaughter him. Had had he not been answered from Heaven, and it said to him” “Do not raise your hand against the boy” (Genesis 22:12), Yitzhak would have been slaughtered.

Know that this is so, for when Yitzhak returned to his mother, she said ti him: “Where have you been, my son?” He said to her: “My father took me up mountains and down hills…” She said: “Woe to the son of that grief-stricken woman! Had it not been for the angel from Heaven, you would already have been slaughtered.” He said to her: “Yes.” At that moment, she cried out six cries, corresponding to the six shofar blasts (tekiyot). They say she did not finish them before she died. Thus, it is written: “Avraham came to lament for Sarah and to weep over her” (Genesis 23:2). (Vayikra Rabbah 20:2, Margulies ed. pp. 447-449)

This remarkable retelling of the Akedah conveys two interwoven messages: one existential, the other liturgical. The first, and likely the more central to the author (given that the midrash appears in a homily on the deaths of Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu), underscores that no one escapes suffering in this world. The wicked may imagine that they will, but experience proves otherwise: even the most righteous suffer. Avraham and Sarah, paragons of faith, endure anguish; first in the Akedah, then in Sarah’s death. The midrash insists that any expectation to the contrary is illusory.

At the same time, Sarah’s cries link her grief to the shofar blasts of Rosh Hashanah. Her wails become the archetypal expression of human anguish before God—a plaintive plea that pierces the heavens, calling upon the Divine to alleviate human suffering. In this way, Sarah’s voice echoes through Jewish liturgy and history, embodying the soul’s yearning for compassion and redemption.

Thus, Sarah, our matriarch, stands as both a model of human suffering and of sacred resilience—her cries transformed into prayer, her pain into the sound that calls Israel back to God.