My grandfather Rabbi J. J. Hecht, of blessed memory, once related how he received a phone call one morning from one of his congregants. Weeping intensely, she said that a relative had died, and this relative had no rabbi, and “would Rabbi Hecht consider speaking at the funeral, which was scheduled to begin in one hour?” Without hesitation, my grandfather agreed, canceled all his meetings, and jumped into his car. As he drove, he began to compose to himself an eloquent and uplifting eulogy connecting it to the Torah portion of the week. But after a little while, he fell silent: he hadn’t learned whether the deceased was a man or a woman! Searching his memory for any traces of information, he accelerated through the streets. Still stymied, he pulled up in front of the funeral chapel. An usher quickly escorted him inside, where many people were waiting, and gestured for him to stand at the pulpit and to begin his speech. As he ascended the stairs, he noticed a couple of mourners appearing to be from the family of the deceased. In his warm and professional manner, he leaned over the railing, indicated the coffin with his hand, and asked, “Sister…? Or brother?” The mourners, wiping tears from their reddened eyes, responded in unison: “Cousin.”

  * * *

Chayei Sarah: Why did Avraham cry?

TO CRY
After the passing of his wife Sarah at the ripe old age of 127, Avraham Avinu desired to give her a regal eulogy and burial, so he bought the cave of Machpelah in Hevron to honor her body with a sacred, private space. As the Torah describes it, “Avraham came to eulogize his wife Sarah and to cry over her.”[1]

“And to cry,” v’livkosah, is written with an unusually small letter Kaf. Why?

The Baal HaTurim explains:[2] the small Kaf symbolizes a diminishment of Avraham’s crying. Why did Avraham cry only a little? The Baal HaTurim answers: Because Sarah was already quite old.

SARAH’S BEAUTY
The Baal HaTurim’s conclusion brings up some questions.

1.) Why in particular is the Kaf small? Perhaps it should have been the Beis, which is the first letter of the word bacha, ‘to cry’.

2.) Who says a husband cries less when his wife dies an old woman?

3.) Could the Baal HaTurim be implying that Avraham was not as attracted to Sarah as he was when she was younger?

On the contrary, we know that Sarah was extremely youthful in appearance and spirit. Rashi says at age twenty, she was beautiful like a seven-year-old girl. We can interpret this to mean that she aged only seven years every twenty years of her life. When Sarah and Avraham went down to Egypt, she was already sixty-five, and she was so youthful and attractive that as soon as Pharaoh saw her, he desired to take her as a wife. When they went down to Philistia (Gaza), Sarah was eighty-nine, yet as soon as Avimelech saw her, he also wanted to make her his wife.

By the age of 127 years, she still had all the attributes of a beautiful forty-four year old woman. In any case, how could anyone suggest that Avraham, the Master of Lovingkindness, would have diminished his crying merely because of his wife’s appearance?

4.) Elsewhere, the Torah is even more explicit about the supernatural paradoxes of Sarah’s age. When she was eighty-nine years old, the angels had blessed her with a child. The Torah tells us that she reverted to how she was when she was young, and that her skin became soft like a little girl’s. Avraham lived in total harmony with every word of the Torah–if the Torah described her as younger than her age, Avraham experienced her as younger than her age. It is simply not possible that Sarah was ‘already quite old’ in his eyes.

5.) Finally, when a couple is married for a long time, they usually become more and more attached. When one of them dies, the loss often causes the other to die soon after. Avraham and Sarah were married for over 100 years. One would therefore think that Avraham would cry more, not less.

KAF–MORE CLOSELY
Let us begin by examining the letter ‘Kaf’. According to Kabbalah, the graphic design, the gematria (numerical value), and the meaning of the letter Kaf all indicate the sephirah (attribute of consciousness) called Keter, Crown.[3]

• Graphic Design: The letter Kaf looks like a hand surrounding the object it is holding, or a tiara surrounding the outside of the head. Keter is by definition the all-encompassing energy.

• Gematria: Kaf = 20. ‘Two tens’ appear in a certain verse of the Torah:[4] Asara asara ha kaf–”Ten, ten (shekels‘ weight) is the Kaf.” The double ‘ten’ can also suggest 10 x10. The number 100 alludes to Keter. Chassidus explains that single digit numbers (1-9) represent the emotional faculties of a person, and double digit numbers (10-99) represent intellectual faculties. Triple digit numbers, such as 100, represent Keter, the suprarational or all-encompassing energy.

Another approach through gematria is to spell out the Hebrew word for twenty, esrim. The sum of the letters of of esrim is 620, which is equivalent to the word Keter.[5]

• Meaning: The Alter Rebbe says that the first letter of a word is the essence and source of the word. Kaf is the first letter in the word Keter, therefore there is a correspondence between Kaf and Keter. For our purposes, ‘Kaf’ means Keter.

APPROPRIATE TEARS
To build on the analysis above, the Be’er Mayim Chayim [6] says that the Kaf, which is the concept of Keter, represents one’s wife. As King Solomon writes, “The woman of valor is the crown of her husband.” With the passing of Sarah, Avraham’s crown (the Kaf) had been diminished. Sarah was everything to him—a perpetually youthful and attractive consort, the mother of his beloved child Yitzchak, a committed spiritual friend, a superior partner in their shared prophetic mission, and a vivid embodiment of the Divine Presence. Therefore, contrary to the Baal HaTurim’s conclusion, Avraham cried very much.

THE GREATEST CROWN
Just as we would grieve if, G-d forbid, our crown were diminished, G-d Himself grieves, as it were, when His crown is diminished. What is G-d’s crown? Keter = 620; the 613 mitzvos plus the seven Noachide Laws. To perform a mitzvah is to do G-d’s will. According to Kabbalah, “G-d’s will” corresponds to the sefirah of Keter. If we violate or neglect a mitzvah, G-d’s crown is diminished.

We must strive to perform the 613 mitzvos ourselves, as well as influence the rest of the world to embrace the seven Noachide Laws. When we do this, we–G-d’s bride–actually become G-d’s crown. Then, as the prophet Isaiah says, “G-d will vanish death from among all mankind, and wipe away the tears from every cheek.”[7]

STORY
The Taz (Rabbi David HaLevi, 1586-1667) was a Torah genius who married the daughter of another sage, the Bach (Rabbi Yoel Sirkis, 1561-1640). When the Taz’s wife died, he eulogized her with a masterful speech traversing through many insights into the Talmud, halachah, and homiletics. His brilliance awed the assembly. A few weeks later, the Taz asked the Bach for permission to marry another one of his daughters. The Bach declined: “You gave a beautiful presentation at the funeral. But you forgot an essential part to a proper eulogy, as the verse states, ‘Avraham came to eulogize his wife Sarah and to cry over her.’ If you were truly crying you’d never have been able to give such an intricate and eloquent speech.”

ACTION: Memorialize your beloved departed with a mitzvah, for example give charity, verbally dedicating it to them in this way: “I hereby do this mitzvahin remembrance of the soul of (Hebrew name), son/daughter of (father’s Hebrew name)”.

FOOTNOTES
[1] Genesis, 23:2
[2] Commenting on the verse above
[3] Sefer HaErchim Chabad, “Osios Kaf”. See also Letters of Light, Letter Kaf.
[4] Numbers, 7:86
[5] = 70, = 300, = 200, = 10, = 40, totally 620 = Keter
[6] The Be’er Mayim Chayim, Rabbi Chaim of Chernovitz (1760-1816), was an early trail-blazer of Chassidus, spreading its teachings in Romania. He dedicated himself to lovingly bringing alienated Jews back to G-d and Torah. Later in life he moved to Tzfas, Israel, the city of kabbalists. His book, Be’er Mayim Chayim, is one of the paramount works on Chassidic thought.
[7] Isaiah, 25:8