November 17, 2025|כ"ו חשון ה' אלפים תשפ"ו Chayei Sarah 5786 - All Our Days By Rabbi Beni Krohn

As the Torah prepares to tell us the story of how Avraham will command his servant, Eliezer, to find a wife for Yitzchak, it introduces it with the following phrase:

וְאַבְרָהָם זָקֵן בָּא בַּיָּמִים וַיְקֹוָק בֵּרַךְ אֶת אַבְרָהָם בַּכֹּל: (פרק כד פסוק א)

Let's try to translate this phrase: Avraham was old, and he had come into his days? And Hashem had blessed Avraham with everything.

And we actually find this phrase earlier as well, in Parshas Vayeira. Right after they are told they are going to have a child, the Torah tells us:

וְאַבְרָהָם וְשָׂרָה זְקֵנִים בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים חָדַל לִהְיוֹת לְשָׂרָה אֹרַח כַּנָּשִׁים: (פרק יח פסוק יא)

They were old, coming into their days. And Sarah was no longer physically capable of having children.

And the question, of course, is that this phrase seems redundant. If you want to tell me they are old, just say "זְקֵנִים"! Why the additional "בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים"?

And to further the point, this phrase, בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים is only used with regard to four individuals in Tanach: Avraham, Sarah, Yehoshua, and David HaMelech. So clearly there is something unusually special about this language.

The Zohar offers an answer, writing that this phrase "בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים" is more than simply a reflection of age, but rather it reflected how they had made use of their time on this Earth. Avraham and Sarah made the most of their days, living them to their fullest. And so, as they became older, they literally brought their days with them because they had so much to be proud of how they had used them. To be even more literal, it could mean that they were literally בָּא, they entered or immersed themselves בַּיָּמִים, in each and every day.

And this is similar to the language Rashi uses when describing Sarah at the beginning of the parsha. We often talk about the unique way Sarah's age is described in the very first pasuk:

וַיִּהְיוּ חַיֵּי שָׂרָה מֵאָה שָׁנָה וְעֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה וְשֶׁבַע שָׁנִים שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי שָׂרָה: (פרק כג פסוק א)

The days of Sarah were 100 years, and 20 years, and 7 years. These were the years of Sarah's life.

And Rashi there points out that the reason the Torah repeats itself to tell me that there were the years of Sarah's life, "שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי שָׂרָה" after it literally just told me that is to emphasize:

כֻּלָּן שָׁווֹת לְטוֹבָה:

That they were all equally good.

But there is a glaring problem with this approach. We know that Avraham and Sarah did not spend their entire lives in the service of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, making all the right choices. They spent many years of their lives steeped in Avoda Zara.

The Rambam in the very beginning of Hilchos Avoda Zara describes Avraham's journey from the son of Terach, a merchant who sold Avoda Zara, as he slowly found his way towards Hashem. There are many different opinions put forward by Chazal as to what age he was when he found Hashem: 3, 40, 48, but regardless it is clear that Avraham and Sarah didn't use every day fulfilling Hashem's command. So what do we do with all of these descriptions?

I want to share with you an amazingly beautiful insight of the Lubavitcher Rebbe from the sefer Likutei Sichos, which is a transcription of a sicha the Rebbe gave on Parshas Vayeira in 1987.

The Rebbe begins to answer our questions by introducing a halachic problem: We know that every Jewish child becomes responsible for keeping Torah & Mitzvos at the age of 12 for a young woman and 13 for a young man. However, if they spent their entire childhood not keeping any mitzvos and were then expected to simply turn it on at their Bar/Bat Mitzvah that would be very difficult. Imagine a child who spent his entire childhood watching TV on Shabbos, eating lunch at McDonalds is now all of a sudden expected to cease all of those activities? It would be incredibly difficult.

And so, Chazal enacted the Mitzvah of Chinuch, the mitzvah to teach a child below the age of Bar/Bat Mitzvah to begin keeping mitzvos, so that the transition would be much easier. However, asked the Rebbe, the fact that Chazal had institute this halacha means that midoraysa, according to Torah Law, there is no requirement of Chinuch! How could that be?

But the Rebbe offers an even deeper answer: The Torah is teaching us something much more profound, and that is that practice, trial and error are integral components of the mitzvah itself!

When a child turns 12 or 13, yes the Torah obligates this child to do their utmost to keep all of Torah and Mitzvos. But that doesn't mean that the child is expected to now keep every mitzvah perfectly! Rather, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is obligating this child to begin the process of mitzvah observance, even as He knows all-too-well that this is a process that takes time and will likely take quite a while for them to become proficient.

Think about the experience of a young man or woman who drafts to become a soldier in the IDF. The first day he arrives at his base he isn't sent on a mission. Rather, he spends six months in basic training. He needs to learn how to use his weapon properly, to get his body into shape, and to learn the proper methods of combat.

Do these months of training count as part of their army service? Of course it does! The army knows it will take time for this young soldier to slowly mature and become more proficient in every area of being a soldier, yet the entire time he is there is considered part of his service.

So, too, when it comes to a young man or woman who becomes a Bar/Bat Mitzvah. That moment doesn't arrive with an expectation of perfection. It arrives with an expectation that the child will now be ready to get to work on slowly becoming the best oved and ovedes Hashem they can become.

Yes, Chazal did institute a mitzvah of chinuch to make sure parents and placing their children the optimal position to take on that job, but what the Torah is teaching us by not making Chinuch a mitzvah midoraysa, is that part of the job of being an oveid Hashem is to know that our role in getting better at it each day isn't a dereliction of our service, it is what that service time is for!

Don't get me wrong, we need to be careful with this approach as well. Teshuva is a complicated, difficult process, and there is certainly an important space for regret. We don't just say, "no worries. It's part of my journey!" The point is that we also shouldn't get so swallowed up in the shame and regret of our mistakes that we are unable to access them as a motivator for our growth.

And with this, we can answer our original question: How can the Torah tell us that Avraham and Sarah were בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים, that they maximized every day, or that all of Sarah's years were good, when we know that they spent many years as Ovdei Avoda Zara?

Avraham & Sarah were born into a world of Avoda Zara, and slowly but surely they found their way to a life infused with the Kedusha of connection to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. But that change didn't happen in a moment. It took years of discovery and slow change.

And lest a person think that the time in their life before they finally found Hakadosh Baruch Hu were all a waste, the Torah tells us that they were "בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים" that each and every day of Avraham & Sarah's life carried value. Not because they were perfect and never made mistakes. Not because every choice they made was just the right one, but rather, as Rabbi YY Jacobson once wrote: "The road to perfection must lead through imperfection. The road to truth runs through error. The road to awareness travels through failure."

What made Avraham & Sarah so special was not that they never made mistakes or always got it right. What made them special was that they never allowed their mistakes to hold them back from giving it another shot.

There is an unusual minhag on Friday night, when the whole shul turns around at the end of "Lecha Dodi" to face the back of the shul.

There are many explanations for this minhag, but I saw quoted in the name of Rav Tzadok HaKohein of Lublin that the reason we turn around and face behind us as we begin Shabbos is for the same reason we have discussed until now.

Hopefully, at some point we are lucky enough to discover the "Shabbos" of our lives. We discover our relationship with Hashem, with Judaism, but for many of us we feel that discovery is held back by our past. We want to forget about our past experiences; we are ashamed by them; we feel contaminated by them. And that past doesn't have to be so distant either. It can be that even as we feel a moment of Shabbos we are pained by other choices about which we aren't always proud.

So, Chazal tell us, no. As we sing Lecha Dodi and prepare to welcome Hashem into our lives, we are told to turn around, not to detach ourselves from our past, but to welcome it in and take it along with us on our journey. Because it is our past that paves the way for our future.

Yes, Avraham & Sarah were בָּאִים בַּיָּמִים, they made the most of their days: Their successes and their failures. May we all find the courage to embrace all our days as well, recognizing they are all part of our journey to a greater version of ourselves.