In the suffocating darkness of Hamas tunnels beneath Gaza, surrounded by unimaginable suffering, Hersh Goldberg-Polin became an unlikely beacon of hope. On October 7th, 2023, Hersh was thrown into a truck and taken to Gaza after his arm was severed by a grenade. 52 days later, he was briefly reunited with fellow hostage Or Levy.
For two and a half days, they were together. And during that time, Hersh kept repeating a mantra—words that would save Or Levy’s life. “It was a slight mis-translation of Viktor Frankl and Nietzsche,” Goldberg-Polin’s father Jon explained. “‘If you have the why, you’ll find the how.'” Or Levy told Hersh’s parents that his two-year-old son became his why. He had to get home for his son.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks applied Nietzsche’s original teaching, “He who has a why in life can bear almost any how,” to the Torah Portion of Chayei Sarah (Genesis 23:1–25:18).
The very name of the Torah portion seems to embody a paradox. It is called Chayei Sarah—”The Life of Sarah”—yet it opens with her death and closes with Abraham’s passing. Why call a portion about death “life”? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offered a profound insight: death, and how we face it, often becomes the truest commentary on life and how we lived it.
The portion opens with words that puzzle the reader:
Rashi, the great medieval commentator, notes the apparent redundancy—”Sarah’s lifetime… the span of Sarah’s life”—and explains that all her years were equally good.
Equally good? Rabbi Sacks asks the obvious question: How could anyone claim Sarah’s years were all equally good? Twice she was taken into royal harems, forced to pretend she was Abraham’s sister rather than his wife. She endured decades of infertility despite God’s promise of children. She experienced the anguish of giving her handmaid to her husband out of desperation. Her life was marked by uncertainty, unmet hopes, and constant upheaval.
The same paradox surrounds Abraham. The Torah tells us:
Yet when Sarah died, Abraham didn’t own a single plot of land to bury her. He had to negotiate—even plead—with the Hittites, admitting, “I am a stranger and temporary resident among you.” God had promised him the land seven times, yet he possessed none of it. How could Scripture say he was blessed “with everything”?
And when Abraham dies, the text describes his death with striking serenity:
Contented? He’d been promised he would become a great nation, father many nations, and inherit the land. None of these promises was fulfilled in his lifetime. So how was he contented?
Rabbi Sacks points to the answer: Abraham and Sarah possessed something more powerful than fulfilled promises or material blessings. They had a why. Their entire lives were a response to a Divine call that told them to leave everything familiar, journey to an unknown land, live as strangers, and establish a way of life that would become a blessing to all humanity. This sense of mission, of purpose, of being part of something infinitely larger than themselves—this was their why.
“He who has a why in life can bear almost any how.” This is what allowed Sarah’s years to be “equally good” even amid hardship. It’s what allowed Abraham to be blessed “with everything” even when he owned nothing. It’s what allowed him to die “contented,” even with promises unfulfilled. Their serenity in death reflected their tranquility in life—not because life was easy, but because it was meaningful.
The biblical text rarely reveals the inner emotions of its characters. We don’t know what Abraham felt walking toward Mount Moriah with Isaac. We don’t know Sarah’s thoughts as she entered Pharaoh’s harem. Which makes these explicit statements about Abraham’s blessing and satisfaction—and Rashi’s claim about Sarah’s equally good years—all the more significant.
Rabbi Sacks illustrated this ancient wisdom with a modern example: Edith Eger, whose book The Choice became a bestseller after she published it at the age of ninety. Eger survived Auschwitz and the Death March, enduring unspeakable horrors, including the death of her parents. On the way to Auschwitz, her mother told 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 became Eger’s survival mechanism. She later became a psychotherapist and taught a crucial distinction: victimization (what happens to you) versus victimhood (how you respond to what happens to you). “No one can make you a victim but you,” she wrote. “We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization.”
In an interview, Eger said something that echoes Sarah and Abraham: “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.”
This is the legacy of Chayei Sarah. What made Sarah’s and Abraham’s lives worth living—what allowed them to die in peace despite unfulfilled promises and constant struggle—came from within, not from without. Their faith gave them a sense of purpose, mission, and of being summoned to something greater. They started something that would outlive them, bringing something new into the world through how they lived.
This ancient wisdom was passed from Nietzsche to Viktor Frankl, who survived the concentration camps and devoted his life to teaching others about finding meaning in suffering. And through them, this same wisdom found its way into the tunnels beneath Gaza, carried in the voice of a young man with one arm who refused to let darkness extinguish his light.
Hersh understood what his captors could never take from him. Like Sarah and Abraham before him, like Viktor Frankl and Edith Eger, he discovered that the meaning we carry within us can illuminate even the darkest places. When Or Levy felt himself slipping into despair, ready to give up, Hersh reminded him: You have a why. You have your son. You can find the how.
Or Levy made it home to his little boy. The mantra that saved him came from a young man who would not live to see his own freedom, but who understood that survival itself was not the ultimate goal—living with purpose was.
The portion is called Chayei Sarah—”The Life of Sarah”—not “The Death of Sarah,” because it teaches us that a life lived with purpose transcends death. Sarah and Abraham’s serenity at the end of their lives stands as eternal testimony to how they lived: with faith that gave them a why powerful enough to bear any how.
