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. 

