26 Oct CHAYEI SARA: COMMUNITY PRESSURE

The story is
told of an Orthodox Jew
who went on
a business trip
and was at the
airport for his
flight home. As we he went through security, he experiened everyone’s nightmare – after he took off his shoes and
his belt and went through the metal detector, his shoes were gone. He looked
everywhere, the security personnel
looked everywhere, but the shoes were
nowhere to be found. There was nothing he could do – he needed to rush to
the gate for his flight.
He walked barefoot to the gate, and he
saw that the passengers would have to
walk outside on the tarmac to get onto
the plane – and it was raining.
A fellow passenger, a woman, saw his
predicament and offered to help. She
said she had a pair of slippers with her
that she’d be happy to lend him. The
woman pulled them out of her bag –
and the man saw a pair of bright pink,
fluffy slippers. He had no choice, so he
put them on, and wore them onto the
plane.
Needless to say, he felt very self-conscious, walking around in these bright,
feminine slippers…
As he was sitting on the plane, he overheard two passengers talking.
“Look at this guy, his shoes were lost,
so he needs to wear women’s slippers!”
The man said to himself, “As I thought,
everyone’s looking at me and laughing
at me.”
But then he heard the other passenger
say, “I’m amazed. The whole time, he
was perfectly calm. He didn’t angry, he
didn’t get upset, he didn’t lose his cool.
It’s amazing.”
The man was afraid he was being humiliated – but in truth, he was creating
a beautiful kiddush Hashem.
Parashat Hayeh-Sarah begins by telling
us that Sarah lived for 127 years, concluding, שרה חיי שני” – these were the
years of Sarah’s life.” Rashi explains
that this seemingly unnecessary phrase
was added to teach us that -שוין כולן
לטובה” – they were all equally good.”
All of Sarah’s days were “equally
good.”
Sarah actually went through some very
difficult hardships over the course of
her life. She moved many times. For
decades, she could not conceive. She
was twice abducted by a foreign ruler
(Pharaoh, Avimelech). Yet, all her days
were “equally good.”
The name שרה means “authority” or
“royalty.” Each day of her life, she
lived with a sense of pride and dignity.
She saw herself as regal, as being the
matriarch of Hashem’s special nation.
And in this sense, לטובה -שוין הכל – all
her days were equally good. Because
throughout her life, she lived with this
feeling of self-worth and pride. Nothing that happened could upset her, because each day, she felt proud about
who she was.
We all need to live each with this feeling, a feeling of pride over being who
we are. And when we live this way, it
won’t bother us if we find ourselves
“wearing pink slippers,” doing things
differently, not fitting in, not doing
what everybody else does.
Many people in our community live
with an enormous amount of pressure.
They look around and see what everybody else does, and they feel pressured
to do the same. They look at what
schools people enroll their children in,
the affairs they host, the vacations they
take, the cars they drive, the houses
they buy and build – and they feel they
need to do all that. They’re afraid of
walking around in “pink slippers,” of
doing things differently. Like that passenger, they feel self-conscious, worried that everyone is looking at them
and talking about how they’re strange.
We can avoid all this if we follow the
example of Sarah Imenu, and live with
a sense of personal pride in who we are.
Each and every Jew is precious. Being a member of our community should
never be our only identity. Every person is unique and special. It’s ok if we
wear “pink slippers.” We don’t have
to worry about what other people are
thinking or saying about us.
If we live with this mindset, then truly,
לטובה שוין כולן – we will feel happy and
content each day of our lives.