Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
Are you acquainted with certain young people who are very old? And very old people who are actually young? This week's Torah portion opens with a reminder that biological age is sometimes only a number.
"And the life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years; [these were] the years of the life of Sarah" (Genesis 23:1) – Why is our Mother Sarah's age written in this detailed manner – a hundred years, twenty years, and seven years? Our commentators explain: "At the age of one hundred she was like twenty, and when she was twenty, she was like seven". Always young, always with a feeling that life is a clean, blank page waiting for her.
The era of the corona is likely to change all of us into old people. To cause us to lose our vitality and our hope. Rebbe Nachman of Breslav, the champion of new beginnings, writes the following regarding Mother Sarah and us: "This is the essence of perfection – to begin to live over and over again. And then, even when we reach old age, we will be in our own eyes nothing more than a young child, as if we have not yet begun to live or worship HaShem at all, and we will begin to worship Him, may He be blessed, all over again. And so it was with our Mother Sarah. For no matter how old the righteous become, they remain a young child in their own eyes and in this way continuously renew their worship of Him."
If only.
