One Ending Another Beginning on Chayei Sarah

Parashat Chayei Sarah begins in a strange place. Its name means the life of Sarah, and its first verse tells of her death. The Torah does not give us a single scene from her life, it only counts her years. One hundred years, twenty years, seven years. Then the same words come again. Shnei chayei Sarah. The years of Sarah’s life. From this repetition Rashi learns that all her years were equal in goodness, the long childless years and the roads that stretched to Egypt and Gerar, all on the same scale.

Reading it this week, I found myself caught less by Sarah than by her name. She had once been given a letter. In Lech Lecha, HaShem tells Avraham, do not call your wife Sarai anymore, for her name is Sarah. A Yud goes out and a Heh comes in. Rashi reads the difference in the Yud. The Yud at the end of Sarai reminds him of the ending that means “my.” Sarai was a princess for me and not for others. Sarah is a princess for everyone. The Talmud says the same thing. Sarai was a princess to her own people, Sarah to the whole world. In the same chapter a Heh enters Avram’s name too, and he becomes Avraham. One letter takes two people out of their own home and opens them to the world.

In my work as a counselor there is something I see very often, possessiveness toward a partner. We add an invisible “my” to the end of the name of the person we love. HaShem takes exactly that letter out of Sarah’s name.

So where did the Yud go?

The Midrash does not forget it. According to Bereshit Rabbah, the Yud comes before HaShem with a complaint. Is it because I am the smallest letter that You took me from that righteous woman? No answer comes right away. The Yud waits.

Rashi points out that Sarah’s death is written right beside the Akedah. She hears that her son was bound on the altar, and her soul leaves her. Avraham comes to mourn and to weep. Lispod leSarah velivkotah. In the Torah the Kaf in that last word is written small. According to the Baal HaTurim, Avraham did not weep much, because Sarah was old and had completed her life. The Be’er Mayim Chayim reads it the other way. Kaf is the first letter of keter, crown, and a woman of valor is her husband’s crown. With Sarah gone, Avraham’s crown grows smaller. Avraham weeps, but with a small letter.

The Midrash also describes Sarah’s tent. While she lived, a candle burned there from one Shabbat eve to the next, there was blessing in her dough, and a cloud rested above her tent. In the Torah a cloud is often the sign of HaShem’s presence, and when the Mishkan is set up a cloud covers the Tent of Meeting as well. In Kabbalah the final Heh of the Name is the Shechinah, HaShem’s dwelling place in this world. When Sarah dies the cloud lifts, and the Shechinah withdraws from the tent of the woman who carried the Heh. The letter that entered Sarah’s name and the cloud above her tent feel to me like two faces of the same thing.

Avraham asks for land to bury his wife. Ephron the Hittite starts out generous. I have given you the field, and the cave that is in it I have given you. Then he adds, four hundred shekels of silver, what is that between you and me? Avraham weighs out the silver at once and pays. According to Rashi these were no ordinary shekels, they were large ones. When the deal is done, the Torah writes Ephron’s name without a Vav. Rashi says he promised much and did not do even a little. Without the Vav, the remaining letters add up to exactly four hundred, the very sum he took. In Hebrew Vav means “and,” the letter that joins two things together. The letter that fell from Ephron’s name is the joining letter. Ephron saw only a price in that field.

The Zohar looks at the same silver from another place. Kesef, silver, and kisuf, longing, share a root. According to the Zohar those four hundred shekels are the four hundred worlds the soul longs for. The same silver is a price in Ephron’s hand and a longing in Avraham’s. Why does Avraham pay the full price without bargaining? The Midrash offers an answer. There are three places about which the nations of the world cannot say you stole this, because all three were bought at full price. The Cave of Machpelah, the site of the Temple, and the tomb of Yosef. Avraham had been promised an entire land, and the first piece that comes into his hands is a grave, bought at a price no one can dispute.

The Torah also gives the place its old name, Kiryat Arba, the city of four. The Talmud reads the four as the four couples who would lie there. Adam and Chava, Avraham and Sarah, Yitzchak and Rivka, Yaakov and Leah. When I wrote these names one under the other, I noticed something. Chava, Sarah, Rivka, Leah. All four names end with a Heh. Rachel is not in this cave, she lies by the side of the road to Efrat. Her name does not end with a Heh. According to Rashi, Yaakov buried her on the road on purpose. Centuries later her children would pass along that road on their way into exile, and Rachel would weep for them. Yirmiyahu hears that voice. Rachel mevakah al baneha. Rachel weeps for her children. HaShem answers her. Keep your voice from weeping, veshavu vanim ligvulam, your children will return to their own borders.

One ending, another beginning. Right after the grave, Avraham sends his servant to find a wife for Yitzchak. At a well, the servant asks a young woman for a little water. Hagmi’ini na me’at mayim. These are the same words Avraham spoke to his guests in front of his tent, yukach na me’at mayim. She gives more than she was asked, drawing water until the camels too have drunk their fill. Before sending her off, her family asks the young woman herself. Telchi? Will you go? Elech. I will go. From here Rashi learns that a woman may not be married without her consent.

Rivka first sees Yitzchak toward evening, as he prays in the field. She gets down from the camel, and when she learns who he is, she takes her veil and covers her face. The Netziv reads an entire marriage in this small gesture. In his view Rivka covered herself out of awe and a sense of being unworthy, and that reserve settled within her. Sarah could speak openly with Avraham when there was a problem, Rivka could not speak that way with Yitzchak. According to the Netziv the price of this reserve would be paid years later. That story belongs to next week’s parasha.

To me, a relationship needs open communication. Each partner should be who they are, wear no mask, play no role. When they look at each other, speak to each other, serve each other, they should act as though they were serving HaShem. What I see most among the people I counsel is a lack of open communication. When I look at Rivka’s veil, I think of the people in that room.

Still, something happens in the tent that day. Yitzchak brings her into his mother’s tent. The order of the verse is this. He took her, she became his wife, and he loved her. Vaye’ehaveha. It is the first explicit statement in the Torah of a man loving a woman, and it comes in the midst of mourning. Yitzchak is comforted after his mother. According to Rashi, on that day the candle burns again, blessing returns to the dough, and the cloud comes back over the tent. The young woman’s name is Rivka. Her name, too, ends with a Heh.

When Avraham dies, his two sons bury him in the same cave, beside Sarah. The Torah names Yitzchak first and then Yishmael. According to Rashi, Yishmael had repented and let his younger brother go before him. The son who was sent away from home stands beside his brother at their father’s grave.

Centuries later, before sending the spies into the land, Moshe changes the name of Hoshea son of Nun. The Yud taken from Sarai takes its place at the head of his name, and Hoshea becomes Yehoshua. According to Rashi, Moshe prayed for him. Yah yoshi’acha, may Yah save you from the scheme of the spies. Hoshea’s name already began with a Heh.

A Yud taken from a woman steps in front of the Heh in a man’s name, and together they become Yah, the first half of the Name. The man who carries that name leads the people into the land that Avraham began with a grave.

The letter that fell from Sarai’s name meant “my.” Centuries later that letter stands inside the Name.

Sarah’s Heh stayed in the cave, Rivka’s came into the tent. And the Yud still feels to me as if it is waiting at the gate.

When the cloud returns over the tent, Sarah is not there. Still, the Torah gives that portion her name.

Sources

1. Bereshit 17:5 and 17:15, a Heh added to the names of Avraham and Sarah. https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.17.15
2. Rashi on Bereshit 17:15, Sarai and Sarah. https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Genesis.17.15
3. Bereshit Rabbah 47:1, the complaint of the Yud taken from Sarai.
4. Bamidbar 13:16 and Rashi, Hoshea becomes Yehoshua and Moshe’s prayer. https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Numbers.13.16
5. Bereshit 23:1 to 23:20, 24:17 to 24:19, 24:57 to 24:58, 24:63 to 24:67, and 25:9. https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.24
6. Rashi on Bereshit 23:1, 23:2, 23:16, 24:57, 24:67, and 25:9. https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Genesis.23.16
7. Zohar, Chayei Sarah, the four hundred shekels and the four hundred worlds. https://zohar.com/zohar/Chayei%20Sarah/chapters/15
8. Bereshit Rabbah 79:7, the three places bought at full price.
9. Bereshit Rabbah 60:16, the signs in Sarah’s tent. The Midrash lists four, including the open doors. Rashi on 24:67 names three.
10. Shemot 40:34, the cloud that covers the Tent of Meeting. https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.40.34
11. Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 53a, Kiryat Arba and the four couples. https://www.sefaria.org/Eruvin.53a
12. Bereshit 35:19 and Rashi on Bereshit 48:7, Rachel’s burial on the road to Efrat. https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Genesis.48.7
13. Yirmiyahu 31:14 to 31:16, Hebrew numbering. In some English Bibles 31:15 to 31:17. https://www.sefaria.org/Jeremiah.31.14
14. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 13a, Sarai and Sarah. https://www.sefaria.org/Berakhot.13a
15. Baal HaTurim on Bereshit 23:2, and the Be’er Mayim Chayim, on the small Kaf, the Baal HaTurim checked in Hebrew, the Be’er Mayim Chayim as cited in a secondary source. https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/424438
16. Netziv, Ha’amek Davar on Bereshit 24:65. https://outorah.org/p/79047
17. Bereshit 18:4. https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.18.4
18. Mishlei 12:4, a woman of valor is her husband’s crown. The verse uses the word ateret for crown. https://www.sefaria.org/Proverbs.12.4
19. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 26b, lasuach read as prayer. https://www.sefaria.org/Berakhot.26b