Parshat Chayei Sara – Shabbat Mevorchim
This Shabbat, Parshat Chayei Sara, we bentch Rosh Chodesh Kislev, which will be next Friday, November 21. Shabbat Mevorchim happens 11 or 12 times a year. Nothing out of the ordinary. But Rosh Chodesh Kislev is something else.
It is the most interesting Rosh Chodesh of the calendar. Bear with me to understand why.
This year, Rosh Chodesh is one day. This is so because Marcheshvan has 29 days. Marcheshvan is one of the two variable months in the calendar. In our fixed calendar, months are assigned either 29 days or 30 days – except for Marcheshvan and Kislev. Marcheshvan regularly has 29 days, but in a shaleim year, it has 30 days. Kislev regularly has 30 days, but in a chaseir year, it has only 29 days. This year, 5786, is a k’seder year – Marcheshvan has 29 days and Kislev has 30.
To review: The secular calendar – January through December – comes in two lengths: 365 days for a regular year and 366 days in a leap year. Further, the year can begin on any of the seven days of the week, so there are 14 different possible calendars. A regular year beginning on Sunday, a leap year beginning on Sunday… and so on.
Our Jewish calendar also has 14 different year-types, but they are a little more complicated. There are three factors for each year-type.
The first is whether it is a shana peshuta or shana m’uberet. A shana peshuta (plain year) has 12 months, while a shana m’uberet (leap year) has 13 months – i.e., two Adars.
The second is what day of the week Rosh Hashanah begins – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Shabbat. This reflects the rule for Rosh Hashanah: Lo ADU Rosh, meaning that Rosh Hashanah cannot start on a Sunday (Alef), Wednesday (Dalet), or Friday (Vav).
And the third is the length of Marcheshvan and Kislev. In our fixed calendar, months alternate between 30 days and 29 days, as follows: Tishrei 30; Marcheshvan 29 (but 30 in a shaleim year); Kislev 30 (but 29 in a chaseir year); Tevet 29; Shevat 30; Adar 29 (when there are two Adars, the first one has 30 days); Nissan 30; Iyar 29; Sivan 30; Tammuz 29; Av 30; Elul 29.
The result is three possible calendar configurations:
1) K’seder (or k’sidran) years, with Marcheshvan having its usual 29 days and Kislev its usual 30 days. K’seder years have 354 or 384 days.
2) Shaleim years, which have an extra day – the 30th of Marcheshvan. Shaleim years have 355 or 385 days.
3) Chaseir years, which are missing a day – 30 Kislev drops out. Chaseir years have 353 or 383 days.
Mathematically, with either peshuta or m’uberet, four different possible starting days, and three lengths of years, there should be 24 year-type combinations in total (2 x 4 x 3 = 24). But in practice, there are only 14 actual year-types. This is because only 14 make it possible to exactly fill the space between one Rosh Hashanah and the next, which – in the absence of a sitting Sanhedrin – are the points from which our current calendar is determined.
Back to Rosh Chodesh Kislev.
Due to the variability in Marcheshvan’s number of days, Rosh Chodesh Kislev can fall on many possible days of the week. It can be Sunday (which happens in 21.92% of years); Tuesday (10.23%); Thursday (11.51%); or Friday (11.51%). One-day Rosh Chodesh Kislev happens 55.17% of the time.
Alternatively, it can be Sunday-Monday (9.97%); Tuesday-Wednesday (18.44%); or Thursday-Friday (16.52%). Two-day Rosh Chodesh Kislev happens 44.93% of the time.
Notice that Rosh Chodesh Kislev can be on any day of the week – except for Shabbat.
We bentch Rosh Chodesh Kislev on Shabbat Parshat Chayei Sara in 68.11% of years. It occurs on Shabbat Parshat Toldot 31.89% of the time – when Rosh Chodesh is Sunday or Sunday-Monday and Toldot–Mevorchim is Machar Chodesh.
No other month has such a varied Rosh Chodesh. That’s Kislev for you – but as you see, its variability is due to the sometimes yes, sometimes no, 30th of Marcheshvan.
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Parshat Chayei Sara
There are 5,846 pesukim in the Torah, and 54 sedras. The average number of pesukim per sedra is 108. Chayei Sara’s 105 pesukim puts it slightly below average, ranked at 32.
But Chayei Sara’s pesukim are shorter than average, and the sedra’s rank drops to 37 for words and 36 for letters. It also ranks 37 for lines in a Sefer Torah.
All in all, Chayei Sara is a smallish sedra.
The first numbers we encounter in this week’s sedra are in the first pasuk: “And the life of Sara was 100 years and 20 years and 7 years; [these were] the years of the life of Sara” (B’reishit 23:1).
Rashi on the pasuk says: The reason the word “shana” is written after every term is to tell you that each term must be explained by itself as a complete number: At the age of 100, she was as a woman of 20 in terms of sin – for just as at the age of 20, one may regard her as having never sinned, since she had not then reached the age when she was subject to punishment, so, too, when she was 100 years old, she was sinless – and when she was 20, she was as beautiful as when she was seven (Bereishit Rabba 58:1).
The total of 127 echoes in Megillat Esther and is the number of provinces in Achashveirosh’s kingdom. There doesn’t seem to be a connection, but there are midrashic sources that comment on the number and its messages.
When you see or hear the name of this column – Torah by the Numbers – what comes to mind? I bet some of you would say gematria. I agree. And I don’t do enough of them, but I have a nice one for Chayei Sara.
For many years, I have been searching on and off for what I call Gematria Matches. These are two (or more) pesukim, or near partial pesukim, or even words, that have the same numeric value and that – combined – say something meaningful or interesting. My searches are assisted by TES’s Bible Gematria program. Here’s one of my favorite GMs (Gematria Matches).
As we saw above, the opening pasuk of Chayei Sara (Bereishit 23:1) is: “And the life of Sara was 100 years and 20 years and 7 years; [these were] the years of the life of Sara.” As an important background, let’s look at how Rashi, on a later pasuk (at the end of perek 24, when Yitzchak brings Rivka into his mother’s tent), describes Sara Imeinu’s special life. Quoting the Midrash Bereishit Rabba that when Sara died, the specialness of her tent disappeared, but when Rivka came into the family, it returned, Rashi writes: “For while Sara was living, a light had been burning in the tent from one Shabbat eve to the next, there was always a blessing in the dough (a miraculous increase), and a cloud was always hanging over the tent (as a Divine protection)…” That’s a pretty nice summary of Sara’s life – an association with both Shabbat and the Beit HaMikdash, with a Shabbat atmosphere, tent, cloud, light (Menorah and Shabbat candles), special bread (Lechem HaPanim and regular HaMotzi).
Now, here are both Vayikra 19:30 and Vayikra 26:2 – two identical pesukim, each having a gematria of 3,623, the same as Chayei Sara’s opener:
“Keep My Sabbaths and revere My Sanctuary; I am G-d.”
Sara’s life was a prototype of the Shabbat and Mikdash, making her truly Sara Imeinu. Gematria Matches do not prove anything, but they sometimes make a beautiful point. This one certainly does.
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Avraham paid 400 silver shekels to Efron for the Machpeila Cave and Field back in 2085 to Creation (1676 BCE). To try to get an idea of how much that would be today, I put ChatGPT to the task. It spent a lot of time on this (relative to its usual speed at answering my questions), and I had to decide what method of comparison it should use. Finally, with several warnings about the impossibility of getting an accurate figure, it came up with Avraham’s 400 silver shekels having the buying power, as of today, of half a million dollars. Was that a lot for Efron to take, especially when he had originally offered to give Avraham the land? Sounds like an exorbitant amount (which is what Rashi seems to indicate).
By the way, if we just calculate the value of 400 silver shekels at today’s price of silver, we get a much smaller amount. The Torah tells us that the Biblical silver shekel weighed 20 grains of silver. Thus, 400 shekels would be 8,000 grains of silver. According to Google, that is 16 and 2/3 Troy ounces of silver. That would cost $809 today.
Why didn’t Avraham accept the gift of burial land from the people of Cheit, who made him that offer, recognizing that Avraham was N’si Elokim, a prince of G-d in their midst? And why didn’t he accept the land as a gift from Efron, who also made that generous offer?
The short answer is that even though Avraham was promised by G-d that he would receive all of Canaan, he had to purchase at least part of the land so that he would have an undisputable title to it.
This hasn’t stopped the Muslim Arab world from denying our claim to Chevron.
The specific amount is significant: 400 is the numeric value of the letter tav (tuf, as many of us incorrectly pronounced it in our childhood). It therefore represents a full, complete number. This number has previously occurred in the Covenant Between the Parts (Brit Bein HaBetarim), when G-d told Avraham that his descendants would be strangers in a strange land and oppressed there for 400 years – a full measure of time. (Reminder that the actual time in Egypt was 210 years; the 400 is counted from the birth of Yitzchak).
And the number appears later in the Chumash when Yaakov is told that Eisav is approaching with 400 men – constituting a full (fighting) force.
The number also shows up a couple of times later in Tanach.
The number of times certain names occur in the sedra is interesting. “Avraham” occurs 37 times – by far the most often. “Sara” occurs 9 times. “Yitzchak” and “Rivka” each occur 13 times. Interesting.
Most interesting, in my view, is the name Eliezer. He is a major character in the sedra. But his name never appears. His name is not important – his description is.
He is called “Eved Avraham” three times. He is called “Ha-eved,” the servant, 9 times. And he is referred to as “Ha-ish,” the man, also 9 times. Specifically, in relation to Avraham, he is “Ha-eved.” But when dealing with Betu’el and Lavan and Rivka, he is called “Ha-ish.”
But watch this: B’reishit 24:61 reads, “And Rivka and her maidens arose and rode on the camels, and they followed the man; and the servant took Rebecca and left.” In the same pasuk, Eliezer is called ha-ish and ha-eved. At the beginning of the pasuk, Rivka consents to go with Eliezer, “the man.” Once she actually goes, she becomes part of Avraham’s family and Eliezer becomes “the servant.”
The very next use of the term ha-ish is in verse 65: “And she said to the servant, ‘Who is that man walking in the field towards us?’ The servant answered her, ‘That is Yitzchak.’”
As long as I’m signing off with Shabbat Shalom, and since we have shared a GM (Gematria Match), let me share another for the word Shalom. Its gematria is 300 + 30 + 6 + 40 = 376. There is only one whole pasuk in Tanach with a gematria of 376. It is Sh’mot 15:18, found in Parshat Beshalach, in Shirat HaYam: “HaShem yimloch l’olam va’ed” – G-d shall reign for ever and ever. That is true, of course, all the time. But the whole world will finally recognize it when there is complete shalom in the world.