I delivered this d’var Torah on this week’s parashah of Hayei Sarah, without the final paragraph, twenty years ago. I found it in my files recently t and I realized how significant the topic is to me and I hope to others as well.

We all know that Jewish tradition loves to debate the meaning of verses from the Torah. Even verses which appear simple and straightforward are open to multiple interpretations and our texts are full of discussions among Rabbis as to which interpretation of a certain Torah verse is correct.

But, what is not as well known is the fact that the interpretations themselves often become the subject of great discussions. There are many interpretations which are as well known as the verses that inspired them and Rabbis endeavor to debate and discuss these interpretations as sacred texts in and of themselves.

A perfect example of this can be found when studying this week’s Torah portion. In the first verse we read of the death of Sarah and the Torah says that the years of Sarah’s life were one hundred years and twenty years and seven years.

So, naturally the Rabbis have to ask why the word year appears three times, when one mention of the word years would have been sufficient.

In reality, the language is not odd for the Torah. In fact, we read the same expression about Ishmael. He lived one hundred years and thirty years and seven years. 

But the Rabbis still wonder whether we can learn anything from the rather clumsy construction of language concerning Sarah.

There is a beautiful Midrash on this question which has become the standard interpretation for this verse which is that the Torah expresses the idea of Sarah’s age in this way to connect different periods of her life. The commentary teaches that regarding beauty, Sarah was the same at age 20 as at age 7 and regarding sin, she was the same at age 100 as she was at 20. 

This is a very well known commentary found in many sources in the tradition but it is not accepted at face value. The Rabbis of the tradition start dissecting it and debating it as if it were Torah itself. 

The first question that they ask is why is beauty mentioned at all? After all, don’t we teach in Eshet Hayil, the beloved section of Proverbs describing the Woman of Valor, that beauty is vain and is meaningless? Why highlight it here? 

One creative answer to this is that the point about Sarah being the same at 20 as at 7 regarding beauty is offered by Rabbi Yehoshua of Kutna. He points out that just as at age 7 Sarah didn’t have any awareness of or concern for her own beauty, she didn’t at age 20 either. She never paid attention to the beauty she possessed and the message of the commentary is that none of us should ever be concerned about physical beauty.

Another Rabbi actually offers a proof of this. If you were to look at the Torah scroll, you would notice that there is a letter in this section of the Torah which is smaller than any of the others. When Abraham comes to mourn Sarah, the Torah says that he came livkotah, to cry over her. The letter kaf in livkotah is smaller than the rest of the letters. This Rabbi reminds us that kaf in gematria, the numerical system attached to the letters is 20. This, says the Rabbi, proves that Sarah minimized the aspect of her life most prominent at 20, namely her beauty. 

But, other Rabbis add another piece to the entire discussion. They question whether in fact the original commentary has been in fact misquoted.

Rashi, for example, states the commentary should be stated in the opposite way. Sarah was the same regarding sin at age 20 as she was at 7 and the same regarding beauty at age 100 as she was at 20. 

This is more satisfactory to some commentators for two reasons. First, it would seem that describing an individual as beautiful would be more appropriate for a 20 year old than for a 7 year old. Thus, stressing her beauty at ages 20 and 100 is more reasonable. 

Secondly, perhaps, and this is my personal commentary, pointing out that a person was able to navigate the adolescent years between 7 and 20 and come out of them as innocent as she or he was at age 7 is a remarkable accomplishment, at least one which is important to note. 

But reading the commentary this way, we encounter the issue of whether this means she was not as free from sin at age 100 as she was at 20 and that might be problematic. 

The conclusion is that both approaches to this midrash are not completely satisfying .But, it is at this point that a beautiful commentary on the commentary on the Torah verse helps us to understand a wise, critical lesson.

In a collection of texts called May’anah shel Torah, a rabbi teaches that with advanced age comes several notable characteristics: experience, wisdom, calmness of demeanor among others while with youth comes other notable characteristics: passion, strength, seemingly boundless energy. Thus the commentary teaches us that in Sarah, those qualities, both of youth and of advanced age were mixed together as one. When she was 20, she was already blessed with the characteristics one would associate with an older person, and at 100, she had not lost the characteristics identified with youth. 

I find this be a beautiful commentary on the commentary and a beautiful teaching for us all. 

When Pharaoh responds to Moses’ demand to allow the Hebrews to leave Egypt, Pharaoah says: Mi va mi haholchim: Who is going to go? And Moses says biziknaynu ubinuraynu nelech, we will go with our old and our young. 

Of course, Moses meant that everyone was going to leave Egypt together but he also might have meant that we will leave Egypt with all of the characteristics necessary for such a journey, passion and experience, energy and patience.

Whether we are talking about our own lives, the lives of an institution, certainly a synagogue being an example, or the lives of a nation, it is critical that both types of characteristics be honored, embraced and displayed. We must find the passion, excitement and energy we had when we were younger and not lose sight of the wisdom, experience and maturity we have gained along the way. 

Last year, I came across a quotation from the ancient Roman author Cicero. I love the quotation and taped it to my office desk at home. It serves as a great postscript to this d’var Torah: “As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.“

Cicero was one wise man.