Chayei Sarah Excerpts

חיי שרה

Shabbat Shalom

...The lives of Sarah...No, she wasn't a cat. It wasn't a nine lives kind of thing. It was her lifetime.

Do you live?

I mean live with Torah. Not sky diving, Bernie. If living was sky diving, with your back, you wouldn't be living now...

(25:1) 'And he continues...' Avraham continues after his wife's death and takes a wife, whose name is Keturah.

He loved Sarah, or so I think. But he continued to live. He didn't just give up and say, 'That's it. I am not going to put up a memorial plaque. I am not going to pay my dues. I am not going to show to my grandchild's baseball game.'

Keturah was the new wife. Commentaries teach that was Haggar. A woman he already had a child with. Now, we all know that Mr. Kumnai has 4 wives. He moved to America in his later years. The question is which wife is the one you call your wife.

And we all ask how the concubine system works...He loves them all Bernie. Like myself, he has the ability to love everybody. The question is, should a rabbi have to be stuck with one congregation? When that congregation goes bad, like nobody layns the Torah right and they don't run a charity drive, is there another congregation to spend the night with?...There is no food drive bin in the back of the shul. There were some good nonperishables in there...

You can only die if you live.

(25:7-8) Avraham dies a 'good old age.' He was 175. Mrs. Veinberg, 102. She didn't even have time to live a full life. We mourn her early passing, in the young 100s...

(25:9) Yitzchak and Yishamael buried their father at Ma'arat HaMachpeilah.

Rashi says that this shows that Yishmael repented, as he deferred to his younger brother to go first. You show up to your dad's funeral. You don't fight about who is carrying the right or left side of the pole. You give in at that point. You act like Yishmael....If more of this congregation would act like Yishmael...Other children didn't seem to be there.

Avraham sends off the children of the concubines. Maybe that is why they weren't at the funeral. You want people at your funeral, you don't treat them like Mrs. Vienberg. Let's start there. You don't throw your children out of the house. You can say, they were 35 and it was time to get a job. But to tell them to leave the trophy shelf and pictures they drew in kindergaten??? 

You want people around, you don't send them off. You don't call it a Shabbat luncheon, if there is no bread...A lunch is a sandwich Bernie.

(25:9) H' blesses Yitzchak after Avraham's death

This congregation learns to bless after death from here. 'Only blessings' to the mourners is the new policy we've come up with. We had to learn that from here, as there was way too many curses going on at the Vienberg Shiva House.

We should all merit to live long lives, with children that are around, and many wives.