This week’s Torah commentary, written by Hebrew Seminary rabbinical student Dr. Cécile Bruriah Gonçalves, Hebrew Seminary Rabbinical Student, has been sponsored anonymously.
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וַיִּהְיוּ֙ חַיֵּ֣י שָׂרָ֔ה מֵאָ֥ה שָׁנָ֛ה וְעֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה וְשֶׁ֣בַע שָׁנִ֑ים
And the life of Sarah was one hundred years, twenty years, and seven years. (Genesis 23:1.)
Thus begins the Torah portion that bears the name of our first matriarch, פָּרָשַׁת חַיֵּי שָׂרָה (Chayyey Sarah, “The Lives of Sarah’”), in the plural, yet opening paradoxically with her death. This paradox invites a deep reading: perhaps Sarah lived multiple lives, or perhaps she experienced multiple deaths.
Rabbinic tradition establishes a troubling link between the end of Parashat Vayyera—which recounts the עֲקֵידָה (Akedah, the “binding” of Isaac upon the altar in Genesis 22)—and the beginning of Chayyey Sarah. Rashi (c. 1028–1105), citing Pirkey Rabbi Eli’ezer 32 (composed only a few centuries earlier in the Land of Israel), notes that Isaac’s near-sacrifice and Sarah’s death are juxtaposed in the text to suggest a causal relationship: Sarah is said to have died upon learning the news that her husband attempted to sacrifice their son. This traditional reading deserves to be explored through a feminist hermeneutic that centers Sarah’s experience.
The Silent Cry and the Voice of the Midrash
The biblical text practices narrative violence against Sarah: she completely disappears from the narrative of the Akedah. In Genesis 22:2, Abraham receives the divine command “קַח־נָ֠א אֶת־בִּנְךָ֨” (kach na et binkha, “take now your son”). Accordingly, Abraham takes Isaac (Genesis 22:3), and Abraham raises the knife (Genesis 22:10). Sarah is neither consulted, nor informed, nor even mentioned. This textual silence is a form of erasure that reflects the invisibilization of women in narratives produced by patriarchal societies.
The ancient rabbinic collection Bereshit Rabbah 58:5 heartbreakingly fills this void. A midrash (מִדְרָשׁ, rabbinic ‘interpretation’) recounts that Satan tells Sarah that Abraham is in the process of sacrificing their only son. Before she expires, the midrashic text describes Sarah as letting out three cries—תְּקִיעָה, שְׁבָרִים, תְּרוּעָה (teki’ah, shevarim, teru’ah; ‘a continuous sound,’ ‘broken sounds,’ and ‘sobbing’)—corresponding to the three blasts of the shofar. Her נְשָׁמָה (neshamah, “soul”) leaves her body in a final cry of maternal distress. Bereshit Rabbah 60:3, however, offers a competing image as Sarah herself sets out in search of Abraham and Isaac, traversing the path to Mount Moriah. This image of Sarah wandering, looking for her son, is poignant; she reclaims her agency even in death.
An Existential Betrayal
A feminist reading allows us to name what the ancient text only hints at: Sarah does not simply die out of fear for her son; she dies from the fundamental betrayal perpetrated by Abraham. This betrayal operates on several levels.
Firstly, parental betrayal: Abraham made the unilateral decision to end the life of their miraculous child, born of the divine promise after decades of waiting. Isaac is their son, the fruit of a divine covenant that explicitly included Sarah. Contemporary feminist exegesis observes that the biblical text initially establishes Abraham and Sarah as co-partners in the covenant. They jointly receive the promise of Isaac (Genesis 18), and God even explicitly commands Abraham in Genesis 21:12, “כֹּל֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר תֹּאמַ֥ר אֵלֶ֛יךָ שָׂרָ֖ה שְׁמַ֣ע בְּקֹלָ֑הּ” (“Whatever Sarah tells you, heed her voice”). But at the crucial moment of the Akedah, this parity brutally collapses.
Secondly, theological betrayal: The Akedah calls the entire structure of the covenant into question. If God can command the destruction of the promised heir, what is the promise worth? Just as וַתִּצְחַק שָׂרָה בְּקִרְבָּהּ (vattitzchak sarah bekirbah, “Sarah laughed to herself”) in Genesis 18:12, when three angels announced her improbable pregnancy—Sarah finds herself facing an incomprehensible God and a husband who all-too-often uncritically obeys Him.
Thirdly, betrayal of intimate trust: For years, Sarah and Abraham navigated exile and danger together. Sarah was put at risk twice to protect Abraham. The Akedah reveals that this partnership was illusory. As Judith Plaskow writes in Standing Again at Sinai (1990), biblical narratives reveal how women are considered partners only within the limits defined by patriarchal structures.
Feminist Perspectives: Obedience Versus Dialogue
Rachel Adler, in Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (1998), proposes a radical re-evaluation of the Akedah. She suggests that the story should be read not as an exemplary test of faith, but as a theological critique of fanaticism and unthinking submission. The fact that Sarah dies from this ordeal should alert us to the inherent violence in this form of religious obedience.
Sarah represents an alternative form of relationship with the divine, based on dialogue, questioning, and laughter rather than silent obedience. When Sarah laughs upon hearing she will have a child, she actively engages the divine promise. Her death becomes a tragic commentary on what is lost when the Abrahamic model of absolute obedience supplants the Sarah-esque model of critical engagement.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, in The Beginning of Desire, offers a fascinating psychoanalytic reading. She suggests that Sarah—who conceived miraculously, who saw the impossible realized—carries an intimate knowledge of Isaac’s vulnerability. For Sarah, Isaac embodies the fragility of the divine promise. Abraham’s readiness to destroy this fragility represents an ontological rupture with the Sarah-esque understanding of the covenant.
The Female Body and Sacrifice
A feminist reading cannot ignore the bodily dimension of this story. Sarah carried Isaac in her aged body, gave birth miraculously, and nursed against all biological probability. Genesis 21:7 emphasizes this dimension: הֵינִ֥יקָה בָנִ֖ים שָׂרָ֑ה (heynikah vanim sarah, “Sarah nursed children”). Her body became the site of the divine miracle.
When Abraham raises the knife against Isaac, it is Sarah’s body he symbolically threatens. It is her physical labor of gestation that he is ready to annul. Contemporary Jewish feminist traditions, notably those developed by Marcia Falk and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, call for a theology that honors women’s bodily work as spiritually significant. Sarah’s death becomes a testimony against a theology that sacrifices the corporeal on the altar of spiritual abstraction.
Sarah’s three cries have been linked to the three sounds of the shofar: teki’ah, ‘the continuous sound;’ shevarim, ‘the broken sounds;’ and teru’ah, ‘the sobbing.’ We can reinterpret these cries not only as expressions of pain but as acts of theological protest. Sarah cries out against injustice, against the lack of consultation, against a religious system that values masculine obedience to the point of destroying family bonds.
Honoring the Lives of Sarah
Chayyey Sarah asks us to contemplate Sarah’s multiple lives: Sarah, the laugher; Sarah, the partner in covenant; Sarah, the mother who conceived miraculously; Sarah, the betrayed wife; Sarah, the prophetic voice of refusal. By centering Sarah in our reading of the Akedah, we recognize that the story of Isaac’s sacrifice is the story of a family broken by an obedience that failed to make room for dialogue. When Abraham returns from Mount Moriah and discovers Sarah dead, Genesis 23:2 says, “וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ” (“Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her”). But what kind of mourning is this? Is it the mourning of his tacit complicity in her death? Is it the mourning of a broken partnership?
We contemporary readers are called to do our own mourning: the mourning of erased female voices, the mourning of alternative perspectives crushed by the weight of patriarchal tradition. But we are also called to resurrect those voices. Each time we read Chayyey Sarah, we can choose to center Sarah, to listen to her silent cry across the centuries, to recognize in her pained death a warning against the dangers of unquestioned obedience and the exclusion of female voices.
The lives of Sarah—in the plural—remind us that there are always multiple ways to live, to believe, to be in relation with the divine. May we honor her memory by creating spaces where all voices are heard, where no sacrifice is demanded without dialogue, where cries of protest are welcomed as prophetic speech.
יְהִי זִכְרָהּ בָּרוּך (yehi zikhrah barukh, “may her memory be a blessing”). May her cry continue to resonate in our hearts until we build a more just and more egalitarian Judaism.