07 Nov PARSHAS CHAYEI SARAH BEING ON GUARD FOR THE SATAN BEHIND US

Sarah is the only one
of our Matriarchs
whose age at the time
of her passing is
documented in the
Torah. We are
explicitly told the age of each Patriarch at
the time of their death, but only Sarah has
this distinction among the Matriarchs.
The Torah tells us at the beginning of the
Parsha that she died at the age of 127.
What is the significance of this distinction?
Furthermore, the pasuk [verse]
documenting Sarah’s age strikes us as
being redundant: “Sarah’s lifetime was
one hundred years, and twenty years, and
seven years; the years of Sarah’s life.”
[Bereishis 23:1] The next pasuk goes on
to say that “Avraham came to mourn for
Sarah and to cry for her.” According to
ancient tradition, the letter chaf in the
word Livkosa [to cry for her] is written
small. The Baal HaTurim explains that the
reason the letter is diminished in size is
that since Sarah lived to such a ripe old

age, Avraham Avinu minimized the
amount of crying he did for her. According
to the Baal HaTurim, it did not suffice for
us to surmise on our own that since Sarah
was 127 years old when she died, it was
probably not such a tragic funeral that
inspired a great deal of crying. For some
reason, it was important for the Torah to
explicitly make note of this fact (by use of
the diminished letter chaf). Why is this so
significant for us to know?
The Nesivos Shalom (the Slonimer
Rebbe) writes the following idea in his
sefer. Every night we say in the Maariv
prayer: “Remove the Satan from in front
of us and from behind us”. It is obvious to
all of us what the purpose of the “Satan in
front of us” is. Many times, we are on the
way to do something positive and we find
it becomes very difficult to accomplish
the task. This is due to the “Satan in front
of us” who tries to prevent us from doing
mitzvos. We do not have to search any
further than last week’s parsha (Vayera)
for an example. Chazal tell us that the

Satan wanted to get in the way of
Avraham Avinu and not let him
accomplish the Akeidah [binding] of
Yitzchak.
But what is the significance of the
prayer to remove the “Satan from
behind us”? How can there be a “Satan
behind us” if the mitzvah has already
been completed? The Nesivos Shalom
explains that sometimes after we have
already completed a mitzvah, or passed
a nisayon [spiritual challenge] things
don’t work out the way we thought they
would and we begin to “second guess”
our righteous acts. We wonder whether
or not we did the right thing. The Satan
never gives up. He may lose battle after
battle, but he does not give up the war so
easily.
I have heard more than once cases of
highly successful individuals who
originally were not observant and decided
to become Baalei Teshuva and fully
Sabbath observant and then subsequently
their business tanked. It creeps up in
people’s minds: Why is it that when
the person was non-religious
everything he touched turned to
gold and now that he is religious,
everything he touches turns to dust?
What does the person think? What
do the people around him think?
This is the idea of “Remove Satan
from behind us.” After the good
deed is done, the Satan does not
want you to be at peace with it.
Even if the person was not
contemplating going back to where
he came from spiritually,
nonetheless, it is no longer the same.
It is with a regret and remorse that
one decided to do the right thing and
become religious.
Our parshios, the Nesivos Shalom
explains, contain a classic example
of Avraham Avinu facing the Satan
in front of him in Parshas Vayera
and then confronting the Satan in
back of him in Parshas Chayei
Sarah. The Satan behind him is, as
Rashi says (based on the Medrash),
that Sarah died suddenly out of the
shock of hearing that her son
Yitzchak was almost slaughtered.
This scenario was an act of the
Satan. Sarah was supposed to die in
any event, no matter what happened.
But the Satan arranged that someone
would come to her door and tell her

about the Akeida and just at that moment,
she would die. Everyone, including
Avraham, could come to the false
conclusion and say “This is what I get for
the Akeida?”
The Satan knows that she would have
died at that time regardless of whether or
not the Akeida took place. It was not the
news of the Akeida that killed her, it was
G-d’s having said that these are the days
of her years. Her time was up. That is
why, says the Slonimer Rebbe, the Torah
writes “one hundred years and twenty
years and seven years.” This is why the
Torah spells out the age of her death – so
that we should not for a minute think that
she died prematurely because of the
Akeidah. That is why the Torah reiterates
“the years of the life of Sarah”. When
Sarah was born, she was given a certain
amount of years and a certain amount of
days and on a specific day and in a specific
place and a specific time she was destined
to die.
Many times there’s an elderly parent
living with one child and then they decide
to move the parent to another child and
then the parent dies. There are typically
all sorts of guilty feelings. ‘If this, if that’,
etc. No! Everyone has their time and place
where they are going to die.
This is the way it was with Sarah. No one
appreciated this more than Avraham
Avinu. That is why the word Livkosa [to
cry for her] has a small chaf. There was
not a tremendous amount of crying
because this was not the case of a tragic
sudden unexpected death, which causes
people to cry. The Torah wants to record
for us that the crying was muted, because
it was part of the natural life cycle destined
for Sarah to die at this ripe old age of 127.
This teaches us that we must always be
on guard, not only for the Satan in front of
us, but for the Satan behind us as well.