Friday, October 25, 2013

Torah Portion this Week: Chayei Sarah

The life of Sarah the Matriarch. So much important stuff happens in this portion.

It's also fuunny, I blogged earlier about Rabbi Sacks, and then ran across this excellent Dvar Torah.

"If you ensure that your children will continue to live for what you have lived for, then you can have faith that they will continue your journey until eventually they reach the destination. Abraham did not need to see all the land in Jewish hands, nor did he need to see the Jewish people become numerous. He had taken the first step. He had begun the task, and he knew that his descendants would continue it. He was able to die serenely because he had faith in God and faith that others would complete what he had begun. The same was surely true of Sarah."

And:

"To be happy does not mean that you have everything you want or everything you were promised. It means, simply, to have done what you were called on to do, to have made a beginning, and then to have passed on the baton to the next generation.

The righteous, even in death, are regarded as though they were still alive” (Berakhot 18a) because the righteous leave a living trace in those who come after them."