03 Nov PARSHAT CHAYEI SARAH: ARE YOU AFRAID TO LIVE? THE COURAGE TO TOUCH THE PULSE OF LIFE

Two Ways to Live
Attack life, it’s
going to kill you
anyway.—Steven
Coallier
There are only two
ways to live your
life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a
miracle.—Albert Einstein
An Enigmatic Verse
A moving verse in this week’s parsha,
Chayei Sarah, reads: “Avraham was old, he
came in days, and G-d had blessed Avraham
with everything.”
What is the meaning of this expression that
Avraham “came in days?” Most biblical
commentators explain it simply that
Avraham had advanced in years; that he had
grown much older.
Yet, if this is accurate, the verse is redundant.
Once the Torah stated “Avraham was old,”
there is no need to say that he was advanced
in years. This would be inconsistent with the
meticulousness of every verse, word, and
even letter of the Torah.
How Many Times Do You Get Old?
Another difficulty arises when carefully
studying Bereishit. Several chapters earlier,
the Torah states that “Avraham and Sarah
were old, they came in days; the manner of
women had ceased to be with Sarah.”
This verse describes Avraham and Sarah at
the ages of 99 and 89, respectively, one year
before their son Yitzchak was born. Their
description as two elderly people seems fair.
Our verse however—“Avraham was old, he
came in days”—describes Avraham living
41 years later, after the death of his wife
Sarah at the age of 127 and right before the
marriage of his son Yitzchak, who married
at the age of 40. Why would the Torah
suddenly now state that “Avraham was old”
again, 41 years later?
If you write about an 80-year-old man that
“he is old,” would you write again 40 years
later, “he is an old man?” Isn’t it quite
obvious that he is still an old man? Would
anyone think that he has become younger
over these forty years?
And in the earlier verse as well, the Torah
uses this redundant expression: “Avraham
and Sarah were old, they came in days.”
Once you have stated that Avraham and
Sarah were old, you have already stated that
they had advanced in their years?
Allowing Life to Touch You

The Hebrew expression used for “they came
in days” is “baeim bayamim.” A literal
translation would read, “They came into the
days.”
Perhaps, then, we ought to interpret the
words “they came into the days” in the
simplest way possible: that Avraham and
Sarah entered inside their days, allowing the
days and its experiences to encompass them
completely and touch the texture of their
very being.
Avraham and Sarah lived an immersive life;
they were fully immersed in each and every
day.
Many of us are frightened to enter into our
lives and live it fully, with the complete
presence of mind, heart, and body, with
unbridled passion and zest. We do not trust
life enough to let it possess us. Perhaps part
of our limbic brain is frozen and we cannot
fully show up to life, it is too scary. Life
holds too much pain, too many
disappointments, so much shame, anger, and
guilt; we would rather let our days pass by
us from a distance so that we remain safe.
We observe our days moving along, but we
remain emotionally distant; are too timid to
become one with them, to be fully
engulfed by them.
Yet, Avraham and Sarah, the Torah says,
personified a different model: “They came
into the days;” they fully entered into their
days. They allowed themselves to be
wrapped by life. All their days were
explored, actualized, and lived to the fullest.
They valued, celebrated, and maximized
every day.
Avraham and Sarah had been through quite
a life together! They enjoyed tremendous
blessings and victories, as well as profound
pain and disappointment. Sarah and
Avraham waited for most of their life for a
child; Sarah was abducted twice by powerful
monarchs; Avraham and Sarah journeyed
alone on a journey that required them to
stand up to a Pagan world. Yet throughout
all of it — the positive as well as the
challenging, the joyous as well as the painful
— they allowed themselves to experience the
pulse of life in its totality. They were present
throughout and did not retreat into the
cocoon of safe detachment. They “entered”
inside each day and stared at its existence
with an unwavering gaze and mighty
courage.
Sure, it is safer to enter into your life
halfway, to create a border between yourself
and your experiences. No sorrow, no pain,
no tears. But that may come at the cost of
LIVING, and deprives you of a life filled

with exuberance, laughter, passion, and
wholesomeness. Avraham and Sarah, in a
sense, retained the innocence of children.
Did you ever observe children? They dislike
fragmentation. They enter into something
completely — with their entire sense of
curiosity, trust, presence of mind, and
emotional vulnerability.
It has been said that there are three types of
people: Those who make things happen;
those who watch things happen, and those
whom you have to tell that something
happened…
People who live an immersive life never
experience two similar days. Every day
brings up a new awareness, a new challenge,
a new opportunity, a new task, a new layer
of reality. When I show up fully to live,
every day is a new journey, a calling to take
on the unique mission of this day, which
may be very different than my task yesterday.
When Life Became Rough
Now we will understand why the Torah
finds it necessary to repeat the exact same
description about the first Jew: “Avraham
was old, he came into the days.”
No doubt during this period of time,
Avraham experienced the most profound
and most turbulent moments of his entire
life. After waiting for decades, he was
finally blessed with a child, Yitzchak, who
would carry on the monotheistic revolution
he had begun.
And during this period, Avraham watched
himself about to slaughter his son. It was
only at the last moment that G-d told him to
take his hands off the lad and let him live.
What does such an event do to a father?
Finally, during these years, the person who
was there with him through thick and thin,
his life’s partner, passed away. Sarah has

walked along with Avraham for close to a
century, their lives merged into perfect
oneness. Her death must have been an
unimaginable loss to Avraham. One would
think that at this point Avraham would have
developed some detachment skills to protect
himself against any further pain and anguish.
We often observe how after years of
experiencing life with all its pressures and
struggles, people develop a certain
indifference and apathy. They have simply
been through too much to subject themselves
to the vulnerable vicissitudes of life. They
detach.
So the Torah informs us that Avraham’s
courage lasted him till the very end.
“Avraham was old, he came into the days.”
Even as a widower, Avraham did not detach
from life. He breathed it in, with all of its
majesty, drama, joy, and pain. On the lines
of his face and the streaks of his soul, he
carried a reminder of every encounter, every
relationship, and every experience. That is
what we call truly living: acquiring the
courage to become one with life, to feel it,
love it, and possess it.
Avraham believed that cynicism and
detachment are the easy retreats of a small
mind. Till his last breath, the founder of the
Jewish faith awoke each morning and said,
“I will live my life today to the fullest; my
heart and soul will immerse themselves
fully in the journey of life today and I will
maximize the unique mission give to me for
this day.”
When you live in such a fashion, as the
verse, continues, you are blessed. As
Abraham Lincoln put it: “In the end, it’s not
the years in your life that count. It’s the life
in your years.” Or as Grace Hansen said:
“Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid
that it will never begin.”