NOVEMBER 9 • 2023 | 43
of the strong heart; even
more, I find a people.” So
despite his skepticism about
religion in general and the
Judeo-Christian heritage in
particular, he had a genuine
respect for Tanach.)
HAVING A WHY
Abraham and Sarah were
among the supreme examples
in all history of what it is to
have a Why in life. The entire
course of their lives came as
a response to a call, a Divine
voice, that told them to leave
their home and family, set out
for an unknown destination,
go to live in a land where
they would be strangers,
abandon every conventional
form of security, and have
the faith to believe that by
living by the standards of
righteousness and justice they
would be taking the first step
to establishing a nation, a
land, a faith and a way of life
that would be a blessing to all
humankind.
Biblical narrative is, as
Erich Auerbach said, “fraught
with background,” meaning
that much of the story is left
unstated. We have to guess at
it. That is why there is such
a thing as midrash, filling in
the narrative gaps. Nowhere
is this more pointed than in
the case of the emotions of
the key figures. We do not
know what Abraham or Isaac
felt as they walked toward
Mount Moriah. We do not
know what Sarah felt when
she entered the harems,
first of Pharaoh, then of
Avimelech of Gerar. With
some conspicuous exceptions,
we hardly know what any of
the Torah’s characters felt.
Which is why the two explicit
statements about Abraham
— that God blessed him with
everything, and that he ended
life old and satisfied — are
so important. And when
Rashi says that all of Sarah’s
years were equally good, he
is attributing to her what
the biblical text attributes to
Abraham, namely a serenity
in the face of death that came
from a profound tranquility
in the face of life. Abraham
knew that everything that
happened to him, even the
bad things, were part of the
journey on which God had
sent him and Sarah, and he
had the faith to walk through
the valley of the shadow
of death fearing no evil,
knowing that God was with
him. That is what Nietzsche
called “the strong heart.”
A STRONG HEART
In 2017, an unusual book
became an international
bestseller. One of the things
that made it unusual was that
its author was 90 years old
and this was her first book.
Another was that she was a
survivor both of Auschwitz
and of the Death March
toward the end of the war,
which in some respects was
even more brutal than the
camp itself.
The book was called The
Choice and its author was
Edith Eger. She, together
with her father, mother and
sister Magda, arrived at
Auschwitz in May 1944, one
of 12,000 Jews transported
from Kosice, Hungary. Her
parents were murdered on
that first day. A woman
pointed toward a smoking
chimney and told Edith that
she had better start talking
about her parents in the
past tense. With astonishing
courage and strength of will,
she and Magda survived
the camp and the March.
When American soldiers
eventually lifted her from a
heap of bodies in an Austrian
forest, she had typhoid fever,
pneumonia, pleurisy and a
broken back. After a year,
when her body had healed,
she married and became
a mother. Healing of the
mind took much longer,
and eventually became her
vocation in the United States,
where she went to live.
On their way to Auschwitz,
Edith’s mother said to her,
“We don’t know where we are
going, we don’t know what is
going to happen, but nobody
can take away from you what
you put in your own mind.”
That sentence became her
survival mechanism.
Initially, after the war,
to help support the family,
she worked in a factory,
but eventually she went to
university to study psychology
and became a psychotherapist.
She has used her own
experiences of survival to help
others survive life crises.
Early on in the book
she makes an immensely
important distinction
between victimization (what
happens to you)
and victimhood (how you
respond to what happens to
you). This is what she says
about the first: “We are all
likely to be victimized in some
way in the course of our lives.
At some point, we will suffer
some kind of affliction or
calamity or abuse, caused by
circumstances or people or
institutions over which we have
little or no control. This is life.
And this is victimization. It
comes from the outside.”
And this, about the second:
“In contrast, victimhood
comes from the inside. No
one can make you a victim
but you. We become victims
not because of what happens
to us but when we choose to
hold on to our victimization.
We develop a victim’s mind
— a way of thinking and
being that is rigid, blaming,
pessimistic, stuck in the past,
unforgiving, punitive, and
without healthy limits or
boundaries.”
In an interview on the
publication of the book, she
said, “I’ve learned not to look
for happiness because that is
external. You were born with
love and you were born with
joy. That’s inside. It’s always
there.”
We have learned this
extraordinary mindset from
Holocaust survivors like Edith
Eger and Viktor Frankl. But,
in truth, it was there from
the very beginning, from
Abraham and Sarah, who
survived whatever fate threw
at them, however much it
seemed to derail their mission,
and, despite everything, they
found serenity at the end of
their lives.
They knew that what
makes a life satisfying is
not external but internal, a
sense of purpose, mission,
being called, summoned, of
starting something that would
be continued by those who
came after them, of bringing
something new into the world
by the way they lived their
lives. What mattered was the
inside, not the outside; their
faith, not their often-troubled
circumstances.
I believe that faith helps us
to find the “Why” that allows
us to bear almost any “How.”
The serenity of Sarah’s and
Abraham’s death was eternal
testimony to how they lived.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-
2020) was a global religious leader,
philosopher, the author of more than
25 books and moral voice for our time.
His series of essays on the weekly
Torah portion, entitled “Covenant
& Conversation” will continue to be
shared and distributed around the
world.