22/23 November 2024, 22 Cheshvan 5785

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young 

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

As we move from last week’s story of the Akeidah, falling as it did in remembrance season, I can’t resist this poem from Wilfred Owen, which feels alive right now as we witness yet more war and death. This week, I am watching those close to me mourn the most tragic and sudden death. It is heartbreaking, especially when children are suffering. As usual, we surround with the supportive and helpful rituals we have inherited in our Jewish lives. But simultaneously we feel the fragility of life and the closeness and horror of unexpected death.

I have always found this week’s Torah portion speaks so strongly to grief and the impossible reminder that there exists only a hair’s breadth of distance between life and death. Parshat Chayei Sarah, ‘Sarah’s Life,’ opens by immediately announcing Sarah’s life span and then, abruptly, her death. Although no reason is given explicitly, the connection to the previous narrative is implicit. Many commentators, Rashi most of all, link her dying to the Akeidah. Rashi explains: ‘The death of Sarah follows the binding of Isaac, because through hearing of it – that her son has been made ready for slaughter and had almost died – her soul flew from her and she expired.’

The wonderful commentator, Dr Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, explains that life hangs by a thread each and every day for every single one of us. Some might feel closer to death than others of us, perhaps because of age, illness or disposition, but the truth is that we all stand one breath away from our last breath of life. There is almost nothing, just a hair, that separates living from dying.

We all feel deeply and because of that, life and its transitions are impossibly hard. Like Abraham and Sarah, some manage to make sense of it all. Sarah couldn’t and Abraham did:

“Abraham was old, well advanced in years, and God had blessed Abraham with everything…Abraham breathed his last and died at a good age, old and satisfied, and he was gathered to his people.”

Biblical narrative is, as Erich Auerbach said, “fraught with background,” meaning that much of the story is left unstated, and so it is in our own lives, our own grieving and our own observations.