26 Oct PARASHAT HAYEH-SARAH: THE DANGERS OF VANITY

The opening
verse of Parashat Hayeh-Sara
tells us that our
matriarch Sara
lived for “one
hundred years,
twenty years, and seven years.” This is
an unusual way of telling us how long
Sara lived, as rather than simply stating
that Sara’s life spanned 127 years, the
Torah speaks of three different units of
time – one hundred years, twenty years,
and seven years.
Rashi explains that the Torah presents
the number this way to allude to the fact
that Sara’s life was consistent. She was
free of sin at 100 years old just as she
was when she was 20, Rashi writes, and
she was as beautiful at 20 as she was
when she was 7.
Many later commentators noted the difficulty in the second segment of Rashi’s
comment, where he writes that Sara’s
beauty at age 20 equaled her beauty at
age 7. The implication of this remark is
that normally, a twenty-year-old woman
is less beautiful than a seven-year-old
girl, and Sara was unique in featuring
the same beauty at age 20 that she had
at age 7. Of course, we normally think
of twenty-year-old women as being
far more beautiful than seven-year-old
girls. Why, then, does Rashi imply that
a girl is usually more beautiful at age 7
than at age 20?
The answer, apparently, is that Rashi
refers here not to the beauty pf physical appearance, but rather to the beauty
of innocence. Twenty-year-olds are far
more prone to paying an inordinate
amount of attention to their appearance
than seven-year-olds are. Unlike many
twenty-year-olds, seven -year-old girls
do not generally spend a long time in
front of the mirror before leaving the
house, and do not fuss over their clothes.
They can enjoy life without feeling pressured about their physical appearance,
without the vain obsession over their
looks. Rashi here is telling us that although Sara was an exceedingly beautiful woman, as the Torah itself mentions,
nevertheless, she was not vain. She was
not preoccupied with her looks. Even at
age 20, the age when women tend to pay
a great deal of attention to their appearance, she had the beautiful innocence
of a seven-year-old, and was not overly
preoccupied with her looks.
This insight is especially relevant today,
when, unfortunately, many even within
our religious communities are preoccupied with vanity. Too many young
women feel undue pressure to appear
beautiful, and oftentimes, it is their parents who apply this pressure. The Torah
does not frown upon beauty – indeed,
Sara, Ribka and Rahel are all described
as having been very beautiful – and it is
certainly important to look presentable.
However, there is a huge difference between ensuring to look presentable and
preoccupation with one’s looks. The
bulk of our attention should
be focused on our inner
selves, not our outer appearance. What we are inside is
infinitely more important
than the way we look outside. We need to redirect our
priorities away from vanity
and towards the truly significant areas of life.
It is no secret that vanity
poses serious dangers. Girls
and women who feel inordinate pressure to have the perfect appearance develop low
self-esteem and insecurity as
they helplessly compete against other
girls and women. And tragically, many
develop very dangerous eating disorders
in their frantic attempt to look good. We
must be extremely careful in the way we
speak and think about physical appearance, and see to it that physical beauty
is never given higher priority than the
beauty of character. As with most things
in life, we need to apply common sense
and moderation, ensuring to look respectable as befitting Torah Jews, without paying excessive attention to external beauty.