Last Shabbat we were in Cincinnati for our grandson’s Bar Mitzva.
Thank Gd when it rains it pours and we are grateful for the blessings.
At one point during the Shabbat I left the building and when I wanted to return I realized I was locked out.
I knocked on the door but no one was around on that level and the situation looked bleak.
Then I noticed a little piece of paper glued to the glass door.
In Hebrew it gave clues to the door code.
The first sentence said Gd is __
The second sentence said
There are ___patriarchs
The third sentence said
There are ____matriarchs
And the fourth sentence said
There are ____tablets that were given at Sinai.
If you know, you know!
Plug in the right numbers and voila you open the door!
Numbers are on my mind.
Today is Day 412 of this interminable war.
This past week the IDF reported that the 800th soldier had fallen.
800!
That’s a huge number.
So many bereft parents, children and family members.
When you hear a number it is hard to relate to the individuals who make up that number.
It is only through the personal stories that we get glimpses of that allow us to put a name to that number.
We never will allow our people to just become numbers.
That’s what the Nazis did to us.
So I read voraciously about each and every person.
The husband who sent a love note and flowers to his wife for Shabbat, only to have them arrive after his death.
Or the parents who extol the loving child who made it his priority to care for a developmentally delayed child in his community, sharing his precious free time generously.
Or our very own Dekel Swissa zl who was saving money to write a Torah scroll.
Stories of soldiers who are injured in battle and therefore exempt from service, who insist on returning to their comrades and to the battlefield as soon as they are cleared medically.

We see the bravery of the widows who encouraged their husbands to serve and must bear the burden of raising their families alone when their husbands fall in battle.
Yet they continue speak about duty and the privilege to serve and protect the country. Hadas Lewensturn shares her new found reality in such a ln honest way, combining humor and a peek into her life which inspires beyond words.
Who are these people?
This is a generation of lions and lionesses who have their priorities of duty and love for the Jewish People and the Land of Israel as their lodestone.
They carry the DNA of our matriarchs and patriarchs.
This week’s Torah portion is Chaye Sarah, the Life of Sarah and it too begins with numbers.
“And the life of Sarah was one hundred years, and twenty years and seven years, the years of Sarah’s life” Genesis 23:1
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments on the fact that this is the only time in the Torah the length of a woman’s life is recorded.
It is also recorded in such a strange way, it sounds like a math problem which we have to add up to reach the sum. It makes us aware there is something special about those years.
Rashi, the super commentary, explains the unusual manner of the counting reflects the fact that no matter where Sarah was in her life, 7, 20, or 100 all her days were equal in goodness.
This is a comment which requires further explanation.
If we do a short retrospective of Sarah’s life, there were many periods that were not good at all.
Sarah had to leave home and all that was familiar. She was captured by a king and almost violated, she was infertile and only had a baby after all hope seemed lost. She had to endure the presence of a second wife to her husband and the rebelliousness of her stepson, and then her only son was supposed to be sacrificed.
Yet we learn that Sarah saw all her years equal in goodness.
“So teach us to number our days” Psalms 90:12
King David teaches us to count our days. Not to know the number of the days, but to appreciate the value of every day well lived.
There is a parable about a person who visited a graveyard and was surprised to see that the headstones indicated that the one buried below live 10 years and 3 days and 50 minutes. All the headstones at such strange inscriptions and the time lived seemed very short. Upon inquiring he was told that these times indicated the time “actually” lived to the fullest.
Sarah recognized the impact of every day of her life. And that is what she counted.
She was an iconoclast herself. She was an equal to her husband in his world building efforts and even his superior in spirituality as attested to by Gd who told Abraham to listen to Sarah.
She knew she had a mission on this planet and even the tough days were a springboard for growth and accessing potential.
That is why we bless our daughters on Friday evenings to blessed like Sarah.
Because no life is without challenges, the question is where do we decide to go with it?
We see how the soldiers have truly inherited the DNA of their matriarch and they are using her qualities to open the doors to greatness.
May we merit their greatness.
Shabbat Shalom and so much love!