Chayei Sarah 5784 ~ November 10, 2023

As our Torah reading opens for this Shabbat, we are informed that Sarah has died.  We are informed that she lived for one hundred and twenty and seven years. Rashi comments that while Sarah lived, her beauty remained intact whether she was seven, twenty, or one hundred and twenty-seven years of age. In some ways Rashi was commenting on how impressive it was that despite all that she experienced in life, Sarah always took care of her appearance as well as maintained a lifestyle that kept her healthy.  Halavi, (wouldn’t it be wonderful) that as we grow older, we can do the same.

Rashi goes on to inform us that the way in which the years of her life are recorded, with an “and” in between, when normally would not have an “and” suggests that at age seven and twenty, she was not only in the beginning of her prime and experiences of life, but she was considered blameless.

As we think of the many young victims and young hostages of this horrific terrorist action by Hamas, one has to make that same inference regarding each one of those individuals - each one who has a name, and each one who still had much to do in life.  As my colleague Rabbi Daniel Gordis has said, each one of the victims, each one of the wounded and each one of the hostages is a person. Each one has a name. And each one deserves a moment to be reflected upon.

One such victim was Rose Ida Lublin. My colleague Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb, who served as a rabbi of a Masorti Congregation in Israel for so many years shared the following with me:

“Not many Jews knew of Rose Ida Lubin (20) before Monday, when she was murdered by a terrorist near Herod’s Gate in Jerusalem.  Rose made aliya two years ago, after high school, from Dunwoody, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, and enlisted as a lone soldier in the Border Police through the Garin Zabar program. Her base in Israel was Kibbutz Saad, in the western Negev, not far from Gaza.

“Word went around that there was concern that not many would attend the funeral – Rose was a lone soldier without family here.  So I went. As did others who had never heard of Rose, thousands of others.  The military cemetery at Har Herzl was literally flooded – rivers of people coming from all directions to the area where Rose was to be buried.  They did not stop streaming in even a half hour after the time announced for the funeral.

I’m a kohen, so I stopped at an elevated spot 100 yards away from where the mass of people gathered.  I could barely hear the voices when the ceremony began.  I did hear when thousands responded to Kaddish, and my heart could clearly feel the bechi  [tears] of all those present.

The Mishna in Brachot (7:3) explains how the reference to God in the zimun  [a quorum] for birchat hamazon  [the Grace after Meals] gets “upgraded” as the number in attendance grows, even if it goes from 9999 to 10,000.  At Rose’s funeral today, every person there was that ten-thousandth, the one who enhanced the sanctification of the memory of Rose Ida Lubin. יהי זכרה ברוך [May her memory be a blessing].”

In our Torah reading for this Shabbat, we read that upon learning of Sarah’s death, that Abraham proceeded to lament her death and to speak of her good deeds. The Hebrew word for cry is  לב^כתה, “leevkota.” You may notice that one letter in the Torah is raised, as though it was added in later by a scribe. The letter “ ^כ” numerological value is that of twenty,  the same age of Rose. 

As an additional thought,  if one were to remove the scribal addition of the letter כ״”, the word might read le-veeta, meaning “to her daughter.”  While Rose’s family weren’t able to be a part of the funeral, either in person, or as a family in Georgia on Zoom (as their rabbi in Georgia has shared), seeing the numbers of people who attended her funeral inspires us with the realization of how each individual chose on their own to make Rose’s name stand out to them -- that even in death she became more than just a soldier, but one of their daughters. As a chayelet bodeda, a soldier who made aliyah to Israel without immediate family, it is so heartwarming to feel the place of those in Israel, including many of my colleagues who have shared walking and being amazed by all those whose souls were inspired by a simple call out that she was one of Israel’s lone soldiers, to be there as her mishpacha, her family.

As our Torah reading states, we all sense that loss, we all - similar to Abraham - have come לב^כתה, “leevkota,” to cry for Rose.  Zichrona livracha, may her memory be a blessing.

Shabbat Shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Rabbi K