Better Than An Alarm Clock[1]
Soro’s lifetime was a hundred years, twenty years, and seven years.[2]
Facing down students who were dozing off, R. Akiva chose this pasuk to energize them. “What did Esther see that she would rule over 127 provinces? Soro lived a hundred years, twenty years, and seven years; it is fitting that her descendant, Esther, should rule over a hundred, and twenty, and seven provinces.”[3]
It is difficult to understand how this woke them up. And what connection was there between Esther and Soro, more than with millions of other descendants?
The Torah commands a Jewish king regarding the Sefer Torah he must write, “It shall be with him, and he shall read from it all the days of his life, so that he will learn to fear Hashem.”[4] Does halacha demand of the king that he take time out each day to read from his Torah scroll? Rather, the Torah instructs him to fill the totality of each day – every second of it – with single-minded devotion to Torah.
This is in keeping with Chazal’s reading of, “’It was evening, and it was morning, one day.’ Evening – this is Esav. Morning – the dawn of Yaakov, as is written[5] ‘It will be one day; it will be known as Hashem’s day, neither day nor night, but it will happen towards evening that there will be light.’”[6] By this Chazal mean that the “day” of Esav is all darkness and night, void of G-d’s presence. Yaakov’s night, however, is really brightness and light. There is no differentiation in Yaakov’s life between periods of intense awareness of Hashem, and times when he turns to other activities. All of his time, all of his efforts, seamlessly coordinate to be a day of Hashem. There is no separation between day and night.
Esther understood this, and saw it in Soro’s life. How else could it be that there was equivalence between the different epochs of her life – that there was commonality between the 100 and the 20 and the seven? Only if she devoted herself in all phases of her life with a unity of purpose in all her activities, whether holy or mundane. She took it as a model for her own life. (Thus, Chazal talk about what Esther “saw,” i.e what she realized and internalized, rather that what merit she possessed.)
R. Akiva chastised his audience. “Soro and Esther brought all their personal needs into a full service of Hashem. The hours they devoted to sleeping at night were really full of the light of day. You, however, choose to sleep even at the time you should be listening to divrei Torah!”
We might add a second approach. Chazal, cited by Rashi, declare that Soro’s years showed constancy and uniformity. At twenty, she maintained the innocence of a seven-year-old. At one hundred, she was as sin-free as she was in her late teens. We can ask how she accomplished this.
Rashi[7] gives us a clue. The gemara explains the difference between the two laudatory adjectives the Torah uses to describe Noach – righteous and perfect.[8] The former, says the gemara, refers to Noach’s actions; the latter, his character. We might have supposed that Noach’s excelling in every one of his character traits was one of the reasons that Hashem spared him from the mabul. Rashi apparently thinks otherwise. He explains “perfect” to mean “humble and of a shafal (i.e. unassuming, unpretentious) spirit.”
Why those characteristics in particular? Because “Hashem recognizes all the days of the temimim.”[9] The days of a person’s life, however, do not show constancy! One cannot compare a person’s youth with his more subdued, contemplative, wiser elder years. (Even during those years, people often do foolish things – which are called by Chazal maasei naarus/the acts of youth!) So why does Hashem regard all the days of the temimim? It is through their humility and unpretentious spirit. Those mean that the person has stripped himself of things that don’t belong – the less than noble parts of ourselves that we add on to the pristine being we can be. Hashem recognizes that pristine person, and ignores the occasional blips that show up on his spiritual radar. By disregarding the anomalies, He sees the person as constant and unchanging through all the days of his life.
Soro was like that. Esther channeled her.
Most people do not have the luxury of resting in the middle of a job. Rest becomes an option only after essential work is completed. R. Akiva chastised the students. “Soro showed constancy and uniformity throughout her life. To her, the work was never done, not even in her old age. You are just beginning your lives. How can you possibly interrupt it with an mid-morning nap?”
- Adapted from Be’er Moshe, by the Ozharover Rebbe zt”l ↑
- Bereishis 23:1 ↑
- Bereishis Rabbah 58: ↑
- Devarim 17:19 ↑
- Zechariah 14:7 ↑
- Bereishis Rabbah 2: ↑
- Avodah Zarah 6a ↑
- Bereishis 6:9 ↑
- Tehillim 37:18 ↑