What’s In Your Tent? - The Parshah On Fire - Chayei Sarah

[Music] when one thinks of saru one thinks of the ultimate sadas the ultra matriarch the loving wife of avam one of the greatest women in the history of our planet but what's peculiar is that when one looks at the tah itself it seems to give off a very different impression when one reads theim you would find nothing about any kiru conventions and seminars or khabs or Torah tours there's not a single mention of any overt act ofed she did any Community work she did in fact the tah seems to paint s completely differently the very first time the tah mentions s it calls her the name yisa which means to gaze Nashi explains that she was so attractive that people would stare at at her this is the very first thing that tyus says about s which is odd because when we think of we don't exactly think of this attractive woman who people can't stop staring at it strangely it strangely seems that her beauty was so much part of her identity that even her name yisa alluded to it how does that fit with our holy perception we have of her and the next time the T talks about her Sora gets kidnapped and almost violated by par and in order to save herself she lies and says that aam is her brother then the story goes on to say that she despised aam's concubine hugar and began to torture her to the point that hugar ran away into the desert to flee from the pain again not exactly what we would think sadus would do and next when she's told that she will finally have a child she laughs seemingly not having faith that she can bear children and when she asked whether or not she laughed she denies it it just seems strange to us again not exactly the way our moas betrayed Sarah when we were younger and then again she gets kidnapped due to her beauty and again she almost gets violated and then she sees her stepson yish being a naughty boy and she kicks him out into out of the household to live in the desert in which he and his mother Huger almost die for the second time and finally when she hears the news that her husband considered slaughtering her son y on the altar before she hears that her son wasn't ultimately slaughtered she dies out of shock and thus includes the life of Sarah it just seems strange where are the Pim talking about her tremendous sidus where are theim talking about her tremendous and where are theim talking about all her all the people she went out and was Marv all we see is a woman who is extremely attractive who sent her maid servant away twice who laughed at the thought that Hashem would give her a child and then denied having done so what is going on over here in truth we know of course that Sarah was the ultimate matriarch and her righteousness knew no bounds n shabal p tells us that she would go around with aam and diligently teach the ways of Hashem in Purity to all the women around her and she created a tremendous following which is alluded to in theim and we're told that the level of that she attained was even greater than aam's the power of her prayer pierced the heavens so you're going to ask okay great fine very nice that the MIM and the garas tell us that she was a tadas why doesn't the Torah explicitly tell us exactly what she did why doesn't the Torah tell us explicitly about her greatness about all the wonderful Deeds she did about how caring and loving she was why only allude to it the answer to this entire quand I believe lies in one in it's says when AB is recovering from his bris he's visited by Three Angels and he serves them a feast and the angels turn to AB and they ask him a question that they already know the answer to they ask him where is Sarah your wife now if they knew the answer to the question why were they asking so Rashi explains they were asking this question in order that Abraham should think that when he responds that she is Bo she is in the tent he should internalize wait a minute she's in the tent she's in the kitchen she is senua she is modest she is pure she doesn't look for fame and recognition she keeps the world running while remaining in her home taking care of her bik that's her praise that is her ultimate praiseworthy personality trait that's what the tyo wants to emphasize the Angels wanted to tell avam and subsequently all husbands as well as women for the rest of time that a woman is praised for her modesty above all else she does not choose the spotlight she does not use her profession as the makeup of her identity true she lives her life doing as much good as possible and she brings as much love into her home into the world around her as possible but the ultimate is her modesty the ultimate is her attachment to her husband and to her family she is confident that it's what on the inside of her that counts she knows there is a treasure chest of kadha that's stored inside of her and she will protect it at all costs the very name that toyra calls s is y not because she was so attracted that people couldn't stop looking at her which implies that she was out there immodestly attracting attention to her beauty no but rather says it means people couldn't stop talking about her beauty her beauty was world famous and yet she still stayed in her tent she still kept to herself she didn't go out there and get head turns so impressive was the fact that she stayed modest even though her beauty was world famous it was world reown that the Tyra calls her yisa the one people tried to look at the one who despite having worldclass Beauty felt comfortable staying home focusing on things that really matter so mysterious was her beauty that Kings the world over could not function until they saw it for themselves yet so important was it to her to maintain her Holiness and modesty that she was willing to lie to maintain it so important to her that she give over to the Next Generation the lessons she had to offer and the Holiness she built inside of her house that she was crushed when it seemed that avra might live the rest of his life with hugar a woman from Egypt not equipped with the same modesty and Purity as SAR Sora saw in hugar a threat of bequeathing medeor fer qualities of modesty and Holiness to the Next Generation and thus producing a world of spiritual mediocrity Sora felt forced to do something about it how could CLA look up to Huger as their matriarch and so she made the bitter decision to remove Huger from the house she was well aware that this wasn't merely a decision for her household but for households of Jewish families destined to come out of aam for Millennia how it pained s to think that Jewish families will look up to hugar as their Paradigm and years later when she saw that yo was acting in a way that contradicted her level of Holiness and Purity and modesty she felt the need to do was what was immensely difficult to remove the source of the bad influence that would potentially inject Venom into the holy y she was so painstakingly reason raising and then when she heard that her son gave up his life for the service of Hashem she was so overcome with emotion and pride that her soul literally floated out of her body and returned to heaven the Tyra doesn't openly rattle off s's character traits because by doing so it would be the very antithesis of her character she was modest she was Private she was the mother of a dynasty of women who would lead heroic lives without Fanfare or fame she was the mother of our mothers who relentlessly injected Holiness into our homes to the tsunami of impurity raging outside and so begins and it says that Sarah lived 127 years and points out that nowhere else in the entire tanak does it record the age of a woman this is the only time in the entire tanak where a woman's age is recorded and it record records the ages of men all the time never a woman woman SAR is the only exception and rers explains that the reason for this is because the purpose of a woman is not to be on display no a woman's life is private and saying a woman's age would be sort of a contradiction to this and yet sah was so modest and so respectful so precious and pure that even recording her age something that Tyra would never do isn't a breach in privacy that's the level she was on the Tyra tells us her age and famously splits it up to tell us that no matter what stage in her life she remained the same pure holy and modest SAR this is the lesson we learn from SAR IMU sah our mother sah who showed us what a mother is a beacon of Holiness sah who showed us that a mother must stand up for Purity Sarah who showed us that a mother must stand up for the sanctity of her children now more than ever do our children desperately need this now more than ever our children need their mothers to be like Sarah [Music]