Thanksgiving and Sarah’s Death
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s sermon in 5766
They say that no good deed goes unpunished. According to the Midrash that is exactly what happens to Abraham after he performs what might be the greatest and most difficult deed in the history of the Jewish people.
As Rashi simply records, Why did the Torah juxtapose the binding of Isaac, Akeidat Yitzchak to the death of Sarah? To teach us that when Sarah heard that her son had almost been killed, פרחה נשמתה ממנה ומתה her soul flew out of her body and she died.
This Midrash has always bothered me for a number of reasons.
- It is not really true that the two texts are juxtaposed. At the end of last week’s parsha we read the story of the akeidah. After that story there was one more paragraph recording the lineage of Nachor and Betuel, Abraham’s family that he left behind. Only then does the Torah continue with the death of Sarah. Usually when this type of question is asked, why are these paragraphs juxtaposed, it is when there are connected directly.
- According to the version of events that Rashi records, Sarah only finds out about the akeidah after the fact when everything is all right. The sheep is dead but Isaac is not. I understand that she might not have been particularly thrilled with the news and you could imagine the earful that Abraham would have gotten when he returned home but is it that bad after the fact to cause her to die on the spot?
- HOW can it be that this, Sarah’s death is a direct result of akeidat yitzchak. Is this Avraham’s reward? Is it right or just that a great deed should lead to such disastrous results?
To answer these questions it is necessary to look at the Midrashim that Rashi is quoting. Very often Rashi quotes a snippet or a piece of a Midrash and really understand what is going on you must look back at the full text of the Midrashim that he is quoting from.
In both the Midrash Tanchuma and Pirkei Derabbi Elazar, the version is as follows: When Samael, the ministering angel of Ishmael and Esau saw that he would not be successful in deterring Abraham from presenting God with a sacrifice on the mountain of Moriah, he decided to hurt Abraham in a different way. What did he do? He went to Sarah and asked her: have you heard what is going on in the world? No, she responded. Says Samael, your husband has taken your son Yitzchak and has placed him on the altar and he is screaming; he cannot escape. Immediately Sarah begins to cry and her soul leaps out of her body.
In these two Midrashim it is not necessarily the trauma of the ordeal that kills Sarah, rather it is the belief that her husband is about to sacrifice her son.
That however does not seem to be the approach that Rashi has taken. It appears from Rashi that Sarah knows that Yitzchak is ok and yet she dies anyways.
That version of the Midrash is found in Avot Derabbi Natan where it is Yitzchak who delivers the news to Sarah.
To tell you the truth I am not sure which version of the Midrash is more problematic in this sense. According to the versions containing the Satan or Samael the question is, how could God let these angels use the akeidah to kill Sarah? According to the version that Rashi is building off, the question is how it could be that the accurate reporting of the akeidah, possibly by Yitzchak himself, is the cause of Sarah’s death.
How could it be? How can Sarah’s death be a direct result of Avraham’s great religious deed?
I think that I have the answer. I believe that we are asking the wrong question and working with the wrong assumption. Our assumption is that this Midrash is interested in recording a real historical episode. That need not be true.
- Other Midrashim actually put Isaac at age 26 at the time of the akeidah and not 40 as many would have it. That would leave 14 years between the two events.
- Every time you approach a Midrash you must ask yourself – what type of Midrash is this? There are many different types of Midrashim- some are meant to portray real historical events and others tell stories that are not meant to be historical records but to teach lessons.
Based on our original assumption the question that we ask is “why did it happen that way.” But if we are willing to entertain the possibility that this is not a historical Midrash, then the question that we should be asking is “why does the author of these Midrashim choose to link these two events?” What is the message that he wants us to hear? Or more poignantly, what is the message that the generation he was speaking to needed to hear.
Allow me to suggest the following. While it is hard to date the Midrashim many of the Rabbis quoted are from the Tannaitic period, they lived under Roman rule around the destruction of the second temple.
These were times that Jews were punished and tortured for during the right thing, for learning Torah for circumcising their children, for following God’s commandments. Very often staying the course and faithfully abiding by God’s commandment had terrible results. People died, there family members died.
Maybe these Midrashic authors are using this story to provide some comfort and solace to those staying true to their principles and to God. Yes it is true that sometimes following God’s commandments had terrible consequences. But do you know what, it happens to the best of them. It happened to Avraham Avinu, there is a precedent.
And with this the baal hamidrash accomplishes two things.
- He puts his people’s pain and suffering in historical context. That alone provides some level of comfort.
- Maybe more importantly he subtly compares the actions of those who sacrifice for Torah to the actions of Avraham Avinu. When you fight for Torah, you are just like Abraham. Maybe he is looking to provide incentive and encouragement for those following the Torah.
I have no way to prove this to you but it strikes me as a beautiful and meaningful way to read the Midrash. Not only does it remove all of the difficulty associated with a more literal meaning of the Midrash, it gives us a glimpse into the mindset of the rabbi and his followers who were being persecuted for maintaining their Jewish identity.
These messages and feelings are appropriate and reverberate for so many generations of Jews who have lived in times when they too were persecuted for learning Torah and living Jewish lives. They too were comforted by the knowledge that they were in the same boat as Abraham avinu and that they struggled and succeeded as did Abraham avinu.
We are fortunate that while we can intellectually appreciate the Midrash and its message, we do not relate to it experientially here in America. We live in a society where we are free to practice religion as we like; we are free to live as Jews and to participate fully in society. It is a rare and unique opportunity that not many Diaspora Jews have enjoyed.
And it is that opportunity that we are truly thankful for on this Thanksgiving weekend.
