Chaye Sarah

The sicha for parshas Chaye Sarah is in Vol. III of Likkutei Sichos

The Rebbe begins with the statement from the Midrash on the posuk, “veyehu chaye Sarah,” that the Midrash says that Sarah’s life was complete in its days, and the Midrash says, “k’shem shehem tmimim kach shnosam tmimim”, that just as the tzaddikim are tmimim, complete and whole, also their years, their lifespan is complete and whole.

The Rebbe asked, why is the statement made dafka about Sarah? What was it about Sarah that made her the example of being whole and having her lifespan be whole.

Another question the Rebbe asks is, what is the Midrash saying that because they are whole, that’s why their lifespan is whole and complete. Shouldn’t it be that their lifespan is whole and complete because they are tzaddikim? It would seem to be that when talking about tzaddikim, the Midrash says because they are tmimim, because they are whole, that’s why their lifespan, their years are also tmimim. So it seems that tmimim is some kind of a virtue in addition to being tzaddikim and it is because they are tmimim that their lifespan is tmimim and not because they are tzaddikim.

To understand this, the Rebbe turns to another posuk in the parsha, concerning Avraham, where is says, Avraham zaken bo b’yamim, Avraham was old and had come to fullness of days. And here also the Midrash says, that there are people who have this quality of age but not days, and then there are those that have life, many days, but there they are not old. Here with Avraham, you have both - age and days/years. So the simple meaning is that a person can be aged, even though he hasn’t lived long, for example in the Haggadah, Elazar Ben Azariah who was aged even though he was only eighteen years old. And then in reverse, you can have a person who has lived long but hasn’t aged he looks young.

But the Rebbe says that there has to be a deeper meaning to these two qualities of aged and days, if we are using it to compliment Avraham. He had so many great attributes, he was the first and the only man in his generation to reveal the oneness of G-d and the first to illuminate the world with G-dliness.Avraham was at the beginning of the time of the two thousands years that are called “ Schnay Alafim Torah”. The six thousand years of history are divided into three parts, the first two thousand years are called the years of tohu, of chaos and darkness, the second two thousand years are the years of Torah, of the preparation for the Giving of the Torah and of the Giving of the Torah, of the study of Torah, and the last two thousand years are called the Days of Moshiach, the long golus which is the preparation for Moshiach.

So the beginning of the two thousand years of Torah was at the time of Avraham; he launched them.  And since there are so many great things about Avraham, how can we complemented him by saying he was old and aged, if we take it only in its simple meaning.

The Rebbe explains as follows.

The word zaken we find in the Gemarrah refers to wisdom, that who is a zaken, mi she kona chochma, one who has acquired chochma, wisdom, that’s a zaken. Bo b’yamim, literally come with days, this quality of having long days or many days means on the deeper level that every day of his life has been filled with mitzvahs, so that he can account for every day, and every day was a step and growth in the performance of mitzvahs, every day was filled with G-dliness.

In other words, these two virtues can be divided into two categories of nefesh and olam, zaken is the perfection all of the nefesh, that when a person acquires wisdom, he is absorbing, internalizing, and acquiring for himself, for his nefesh, a quality and elevation called chochma. And that is referred to as zaken. It is a personal growth, a personal benefit to his neshama.

Bo b’yamim belongs to the category of olam, where you are doing something to elevate the condition of the world.  And that is why is referred to as yamim, because it describes the physical condition, the condition of time.  That's why affecting the world is described as days, because when you do a mitzvah that affects mainly your own neshama, that growth is really completely independent of the days, of the time in which they occur.  In fact, they are certain mitzvahs that don't really apply to the time or to the day. For example, ahavas Hashem, or ahavas Israel, loving G-d or loving your fellow Jew, has nothing to do with beginning of the day or with the end of the day, it is constant and unchanging, and does not apply to time, because it is timeless.

So those things that benefit the neshama are completely independent of the condition of time.  And therefore, when you talk about mitzvahs that are outer-directed, affecting the world around you, then it is described as bo b’yamim, having affect on the days because they affect and address the day and the time in which they are being performed.

This is the general difference between Torah and mitzvas.  Torah, which is the wisdom of Hashem is primarily wisdom, is a spiritual and an intellectual pursuit. And through the study of Torah, one elevates, inspires and purifies one’s own neshama, because it is the neshama, the soul that gets the most benefit from the study of Torah.

Mitzvas, on the other hand, are generally speaking connected to physical objects, to the gashmiusdike world. Their function or purpose is primarily to bring about an elevation and a refinement in the physical world, to make the world a dira b’tachtonim, to make the lowest existence a dwelling place for G-d himself.

And that's why when it talks about chochma, it refers to it as zaken, because a zaken is one who kona chochma, he acquires chochma, meaning to acquire, to absorb, to internalize, to benefit personally. When it talks about mitzvahs, there it uses the expression bo b’yamim, he is affecting the days, he is affecting the condition of the world, which is time. Of course the physical world is governed by time and space; here it is referring only to time. And this is because, of the two realities of time and space, time is the lower and the more physical, the more mundane.  It represents that part of the physical world that is constantly changing.  It doesn't have the stability or the permanence of space.  So that even in the physical world, time or days represents the lower part of the physical world, the unstable, the changing, the short-lived, the temporary. We find in the physical world, that there exists certain creations that are unchanged, unaffected by time, as the Gemarrah says concerning the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon and so on, that they are as strong as they were when they were created. So time has had no effect on them. 

We also find on earth that there are objects unaffected by time, as the Gemarrah tells us that the Mishkan, which Moshe built, or the aron or the oil of anointment, all of these things which were made by Moshe Rabbeinu, because he made them, are unaffected by time, they cannot be destroyed, and are buried somewhere underneath the Bais HaMikdash and had remained physically intact.

In fact, this is one of the reasons why Moshe could not go into Eretz Israel, and build the Bais HaMikdash because if he had built it then the building itself would not have been able to be destroyed, and G-d’s anger that was vented on the stones and the wood of the Bais HaMikdash rather than on the people who had sinned, wouldn’t have that outlet and the disastrous results would have been that the people would have been destroyed instead of the building. And so Moshe could not build the Bais HaMikdash, because it would make it permanent if he built it and the Bais HaMikdash was meant to absorb the punishment, to absorb the anger in the times of the churban. But those things that Moshe did make are unaffected by time.

So that which is affected by time, yamim, that refers to that part of the physical world, that doesn't even have the quality of permanence, but is constantly undergoing change and is temporary by its very nature.  And there Avraham brought the light of G-dliness and the effect of mitzvahs.

So the greatness of Avraham consists of the fact that he was able to combine both the zikna, the personal growth, the internal growth, the elevation of his own neshama, and bo b’yamim, being able to affect also the physical world in making the physical world more G-dly, even the lower part of the physical world.

And having these two qualities excelling in these two areas is a rarity because of the type of personality and the type of avodah that is necessary for these two forms of growth are very different, and almost exclusive. If you have one, you are not likely to have the other.  A person, who is basically introverted and grows internally, doesn't have that much of an affect on the world around him and a person who is extroverted usually doesn't have a great amount of internal growth.

But by Avraham they were both – he was zaken and bo b’yamim.

We find that the Bais Yosef, the author of the Shulchan Aruch, was originally destined to die al kiddush Hashem, to die a martyr’s death.  But because of some failure on his part, he was punished and that privilege of dying al kiddush Hashem was taken away. The result was that he lived longer and during that time composed the Shulchan Aruch, which was an awesome, magnificent accomplishment. However this is still considered a punishment in that he did not die al kiddush Hashem, because for his neshama it would have been better to die al kiddush Hashem than to live and write the Shulchan Aruch. Having not benefited in his neshama from the martyr’s death, he was then able to live and affect the entire world for all generations to come by writing the Shulchan Aruch. So we see that when there’s one the other is taken away. In order to affect the world, he had to lose some benefit to his neshama.

But by Avraham, he didn't compromise either dimension and excelled in both.  On the one hand, his neshama was complete and whole, and on the other hand as the Midrash says, he illuminated the world as well.

Now we will be able to understand better the statement in the Gemarrah that from the times of Avraham, the two thousand years of Torah were launched. Because the great accomplishment of Torah is that Torah makes peace. Torah was given to bring peace. The Midrash gives a moshul of a king who made a decree that the people who live in Rome may not go down to Suria and the people who live in Suria, may not go up to Rome. In the same way when G-d created the world, He made a decree that the heavens belong to G-d, and earth belongs to people. The heavenly may not go down to earth, and the earthy cannot rise to heaven.

But then when G-d came to give the Torah, He nullified the first decree and said that the lower world, the tachtonim, should come up to heaven and the elyonim, the heavenly, should go down to the tachtonim. And so G-d came down to Har Sinai, and Moshe was called up to go to heaven. So before the giving of the Torah, heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical could not meet, could not be combined, but the Giving of the Torah changed that and made it possible for a combination and a wholeness and a unity between the spiritual and the physical.

The same is true also in the avodah of Avraham. Because Avraham lived in the time of the beginning of the two thousand years of Torah, that quality that was accomplished at the Giving of the Torah, began as a preparation, on a subtle level with Avraham, and that’s why Avraham was able to combine the physical and the spiritual within himself. He was zaken, he acquired spiritual growth and spiritual perfection, that he completed his own neshama, and the physical, the matah, he was able to effect the gashmius and the days of his life.

We might say that when a person does mitzvahs in response to time, in other words he takes into consideration the fact that this is morning or afternoon or evening, and accordingly performs a mitzvah or does something G-dly or the fact that today is Shabbos, or it’s Monday, or Tuesday, the fact that he is motivated in his mitzvah by consideration of what day it is or what part of the day it is, then the mitzvah has an effect on the time and influences the time. Whereas if he is above time, or beyond time, his mitzvahs are timeless, and his observance and practice of mitzvahs are not at all influenced and affected by the day or by the time, and then in turn the mitzvah he performs doesn’t effect the day or the time. So bo b’yamim would mean not that he was timeless and did mitzvahs constantly every single day, but that he did mitzvahs in response to the day, or the time of day, or week or month, and so on. And that’s how he was able to affect the physical world.

Now the tzaddikim, those tzaddikim who lived before Avraham, like Noach, they lived in the two thousand years of tohu, the two thousand years of darkness, and they were not able to combine these two qualities of internal growth of neshama and affecting the world. So that although they were tzaddikim, they were tzaddikim in only one of the two categories. As it says by Noach, Noach was a tzaddik, but his effect on the world was very minimal.  And that is the quality of tohu, in tohu the emotions do not combine.  In the world of chaos, the chaos is caused by the exclusivity that each emotion or each attribute is stark and exclusive and doesn't combine with other attributes. And so that lack of harmony that existed in the two thousand years of tohu, made it impossible even for the tzaddikim of that time, to be able to combine heaven and earth, and neshama and the world.

So they had either the benefit of zaken, without the benefit of yamim, or benefit of yamim without the benefit of zaken. We find later in history an example of this avodah of tohu, of this tohu level of G-dliness, in the Gemarrah, with Ben Azzai who said he couldn’t get married because his devotion and passion was in Torah exclusively and therefore didn't want to have any distractions nor get involved with the physical world.  That is an incompatibility between the spiritual and the physical, which reflects the state of tohu. By Avraham, because it was the beginning of the 2000 years of Torah, he was able to combine and harmonize the two.

That's why the Torah tells us that by Avraham, they were both virtues, both forms of avodah, the zaken and the bo b’yamim at the same time, and although we find it by tzaddikim later after Avraham, by Yehoshua and by David, however Avraham was the first. He made it possible - he paved the way to combine the neshama with the days.

And that is the essence of Torah, as we said before, because as the Rambam says, that Torah was given to bring peace into the world, and order to bring peace you have to have the harmony between heaven and earth.

Now as with every story in Torah, there has to be a lesson for us in our avodah today.

There are people who claim that certain mitzvahs seem to stick with them -they do certain mitzvahs consistently and effortlessly, it seems that these mitzvahs belong to them.  Then there are other mitzvahs that give them a hard time - they try, they do them for a while, then they find themselves slipping and they have to start over again and work on it, so a person can say, why should why I invest my time in those mitzvahs that are giving me a hard time, why should I invest my efforts in a mitzvah that doesn't seem to stick or stay with me? I should instead put all my efforts into those mitzvahs that I see work for me.  So the lesson from this statement about Avraham is, it is not enough to do those mitzvahs that seem compatible to your neshama and therefore are permanent and stable in your life, but you also have to effect the yamim, you have to put effort into those mitzvahs that seem to come and go, or that undergo change and are vulnerable to change which are the yamim, which is the more earthy part of you, and that too has to be elevated.

Now although in general, these two avodahs, these two forms of service, of zaken and bo b’yamim, have to coexist and have to be in harmony, yet Chassidus puts a greater emphasis on the yamim than on the zaken. Our need to affect the world and elevate the world takes certain precedence and gets more emphasis than the zaken.

And the reason for it is that when you elevate your neshama, you are benefiting and causing pleasure to a created being and that pleasure is finite. Like it says about the world to come in Gan Eden, that all the pleasure in Gan Eden doesn’t equal one hour of doing mitzvahs on earth.  Because the pleasure of the neshama can't compare or compete with the pleasure of the Creator and His pleasure, and G-d’s pleasure comes from the doing of the mitzvah.

That's why the Rebbeim, the Rebbes of the past put so much emphasis and so much energy into making the world of dwelling place for G-d.

And necessarily in our time, meaning today in this last generation, there needs to be a greater emphasis on bringing G-dliness into the yamim, because we find particularly in America, life is full and dominated by things that change.  Even in our clothing, the Rebbe says, we find that there is a great desire or a great emphasis on constantly having new clothing, constant change.  This is a characteristic of modernity, that we are constantly replacing things.  There is a lack of permanence.  And in this impermanence, we have to bring in the G-dliness that is permanent.

So a person should not be discouraged when he finds that his efforts at Torah and mitzvahs get interrupted and there is an ebb and a flow and there is a lack of consistency in his G-dliness. This shouldn’t be discouraging, on the contrary, this is the challenge of our generation.

And with this, we will understand also why the Torah says about Sarah davka that her days were complete because she was complete.

We already know that being a tzaddik doesn’t necessarily mean that you can affect days, because you can be a tzaddik in your neshama without being a tzaddik in the days. So the fact that the days are complete, comes not from the quality of tzaddik but from the quality of completeness in the tzaddik.  The tzaddik that can combine, with those tzaddikim who have combined both the zaken and the bo b’yamim, they were able to have days that were tmimim, their days were full.

And particularly concerning Sarah, because we are told that Sarah died because her neshama left when she heard about the akeida. And the leaving of the neshama is a form of klos hanefesh, a soulful expiring and merging into G-dliness where the neshama becomes so heavenly that it can no longer be contained in the body.

So you might think that because she had klos hanefesh, because she died a martyr’s death so to speak, a spiritual death, that her neshama was so inspired that it left the body, you might think that her avodah, or her greatness consisted of the qualities of zaken, the soulful perfection, the soulful avodah. So the Torah tells us, that by Sarah, there was a combination, not an exclusive avoiding of zaken, the combination of klos hanefesh and bo b’yamim. So that her days were complete, as well as the neshama.

And this has a particular relevance to the time of year when we read this parsha which is around the month of Kislev, which is the New Year for Chassidus, and in Chassidus this ability to combine the physical and spiritual comes to its fullness, to its greatest fulfillment until the time when pnimiyus HaTorah, concerning which it says, that in Kabbalah and in Chassidus, in the inner part there are no questions and no contradictions and no arguments, because there is total harmony, when that becomes also the quality of the world, when in the world itself there is no unholiness in conflict with holiness, then the world has become a dwelling place for G-d Himself.

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