Anything Is Possible

In Parshat Vayeira, Avraham and Sara are informed of the improbable impending birth of their son, despite their advanced age. We learn that both of them, when they first learn of this prophecy – Avraham in last week’s parsha and Sara at the beginning of this week’s – respond with laughter. Whereupon Avraham is told, “Since it’s so funny, you should call the baby Yitzchak, meaning ‘he will laugh’ (or ‘It is so funny’).” Yet only Sara is confronted over the fact that she laughed, and only Avraham is told what the baby’s name will be (which is indeed the name he is given).

Many of the medieval commentators reflected upon the association of laughter with joy and the tension between the great joy of the occasion and the awe of standing in the presence of Hashem. It seems that Avraham never doubted the possibility of what was promised; it simply struck him as wondrous and incomprehensible. Sara, on the other hand, muses, “Now that I’ve withered, will I spring into youth again? And my husband is an old man.” (Bereishit 18:12). Ramban, for example, suggests that while Avraham was able to recognize that these “men” who delivered the messages were not as they seemed and were, in fact, Divine messengers, Sara lacked that insight.

The Ishbitzer Rebbe, in Mei HaShiloach on Vayeira, examines the spiritual significance of this laughter and what it means for Sara in particular. The witness to this miracle must not only contend with the aforementioned tension between joy and awe, but also embrace the paradox and, with it, the radical transformation of what they had previously believed to be the limits of possibility. For Sara, we see that this is much more challenging, but is also, perhaps accordingly, that much more rewarding.

The Ishbitzer cites the Gemara’s teaching that everything is subject to Divine preordination except for the acceptance of Divine authority itself. But, he explains, this principle is only in effect in the world of human experience, subject to our limitations as finite mortal beings. In higher realms of experience, outside of space and time, these limits no longer exist and everything is a direct expression of the Divine Will. When Sara is confronted with the sheer miraculousness of her impending pregnancy, her conception of space and time and the meaning of existence as a mortal being begins to break down. This is why she begins to laugh – it is a laughter of unbridled joy, but it also approaches a sort of madness or, more properly, the abandonment of reason.

The latter is also to be the primary attribute of Yitzchak himself, the great tzaddik who gives himself up for the Akeidah and who has no motivation other than pure surrender to the service of Hashem. The Ishbitzer concludes with the amazing assertion that Sara and Yitzchak’s willingness to surrender to the Divine earns for their offspring the right to attribute “blame” for their transgressions to the Divine Will, through which everything on earth occurs.

The Ben Ish Chai sees the experience of the reversal of Sara’s process of aging and its ramifications in a similar light. He comments in Ben Yehoyada on the discussion of this story in Bava Metzia (87a). Sara is incredulous that a very old and wizened woman such as she could return to a state of youthful beauty and vigor. Even this is not so hard to accept if one truly believes in the power of Hashem. It seemed a cruel twist, however, that Avraham was also not made to be young again, and maybe he would feel insecure or be afraid that Sara would come to hold herself superior to him. But the Ben Ish Chai explains that Hashem wanted Avraham and Sara to experience the birth of Yitzchak in exactly this way because it would serve as an inspiration to future generations of their descendants, particularly at the conclusion of our long exile.

There will come a time when Israel has suffered so long among the nations that she will have become old and withered in her own eyes, and she will question how she can ever be the object of desire of the Almighty and why he might be moved to redeem her. She will wonder how this can even be possible in the course of nature and history. We are given the example of Sara, our first Matriarch, who experienced with her own body the power of Hashem to bring about a joyous outcome that is beyond nature. This is what it means to be true descendants of Yitzchak: Someday we will understand how funny it all becomes when seen from a certain perspective – that of the truly righteous experiencing awareness of the miraculous outside of space and time.