Chayei Sara – “If Only…”

It’s human nature, when faced with something tragic, or even just disturbing, to say to oneself, “If only…”  

“If only I had done this… or we had done that… or not done this… or not done that, we could have avoided this outcome.”

But human nature can be misleading. A thought I once heard repeated by Rav Chaim Yehudah Polak, who couldn’t remember its source suggests that the repetition of the phrase, “the years of Sarah’s life,” in the first pasuk of the parsha, even though the pasuk opened with “And the lifetime of Sarah was 127 years,” teaches us to resist our proclivity to imagine that things could have been different had we only acted differently. The years of Sarah’s life were… the years of Sarah’s life – the years allotted her.

To be sure, there are rightful regrets that we may have. Someone grown obese and unhealthy after overeating junk food for years has good reason to say, “if only.”

But more often than not, post-facto calculi are wrongheaded.  We might think that had Sarah not been told (as per a famous Midrash) about her son having been bound on an altar, she wouldn’t have died at the moment she did, having been spared the shock.

But Sarah’s death was divinely ordained for that moment. “The years of Sarah’s life” were the years granted her. The proximate cause of her death wasn’t its ultimate cause. Its ultimate cause was Hashem’s will.

Someone who comes down with a contagious virus might kick himself for having worn only a simple mask, not an expensive, surgical-quality one.  Or for having spaced himself only 6 feet from others, instead of 10.  But we are required to do what is normative practice to prevent sickness – and only that.  And if one had done that and still became sick, he is wrong to agonize over not having done more. He needs to recognize Hashem’s will and now do what is normative practice to, with Hashem’s help, recover.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Vayeira – When Innocence Really Isn’t

Remarkably, in response to Avimelech the king of Gerar’s protest over being punished for taking Sarah, Hashem confirms the king’s insistence that he had acted innocently, believing that Avraham and Sarah, as they had claimed, were brother and sister.

“I, too, knew,” Hashem tells Avimelech in a dream, “that it was in the innocence of your heart that you did this” (Beraishis, 20:6).

Which raises the question of why the king and his entourage were punished. The postscript to the narrative states that “For Hashem had shut every womb of Abimelech’s household, because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.”

Hashem prevented Avimelech from touching Sarah. So what grounds were there for punishment?

The answer may lie in what Avraham told Avimelech in explanation for having misled him: “Because I said ‘There is no fear of G-d in this place’ ” (ibid, 11).

Avraham had sensed a spirit of licentiousness in Gerar. And a leader of a country has the ability, and responsibility, to influence the mores of his society.

If the society evidences lack of “fear of G-d,” its leadership is implicated.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Lech Lecha — No, Thank You

When, as they approach Egypt, Avram asks Sarai to pretend she is his sister, he explains “so that it will be good for me and I will remain alive because of you.” (Beraishis, 12:13)

Rashi’s comment on the words “it will be good for me” – “so that they [the Egyptians] will give me gifts” – puzzled me, as they surely have many, for years. Avram, who later in the parshah (14:23) spurned even a shoelace from the king of Sdom, is concerned with gifts?

An intriguing understanding of Rashi’s words may be suggested based on what Shlomo HaMelech, in Mishlei (15:27), teaches us: “He who who hates gifts will live.”

It may be that the greatest expression of that attitude isn’t only “in theory,” in hating the idea of gifts, but in actual practice – namely, in one’s attitude toward an actual proffered gift that helps ensure life. 

And so, perhaps Avram wanted gifts to be offered to him, so that he could “hate” the fact that he was offered them… with the result being that, as he in fact continues, “I will remain alive…” – echoing Shlomo HaMelech’s words.

Interestingly, the concept of shunning gifts as bolstering life is reflected in a snippet from a 1960s folk song:

“Some people never get, some never give;

Some people never die and some never live.”

There is, Chazal teach us, “chachmah bagoyim,” wisdom among the nations.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Noach – Our (Temporarily) Un-Whole World

The word “toldos” introducing the “account” of Noach is spelled in a subtly different way than its first appearance in parshas Beraishis, where “eleh toldos hashamayim vi’ha’aretz” (Beraishis 2:4) concludes the account of the creation of the world. There, in its first usage, it is written malei, “full,” with two vavs, one after the tav and one after the daled.

Gershon Zev (William) Braude was a respected Jewish studies scholar and Reform rabbi  who befriended me, a much younger man, when my family and I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, from, roughly, the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s.

He once asserted that there are 13 places in Tanach where the word toldos is used. In only two of those places, he pointed out, is the word written malei: The first one is in parshas Beraishis, and the second, at the very end of sefer Rus (4:18), where the genealogy leading to the birth of Dovid, the progenitor of mashiach, is recounted.

Thus, Gershon Zev suggested, “wholeness,” or perfection of human history, existed at the creation of the world and will emerge again with the arrival of mashiach.

In the interim, though, as we all vividly sense, the world remains unfulfilled, imperfect, unarguably un-whole.

© 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Provocation, Politics and Prudence

Two questions:

1) Which contemporary public provocateur poses the greatest threat to Israel?

2) Has Mike Huckabee, who has called attacks on Arabs in Yehudah and Shomron “Jewish terrorism,” thrown Israel under the bus?

The answer to the first question, I believe, isn’t Tucker Carlson or even Hasan Piker. It’s Itamar Ben-Gvir.

No, I don’t think Mr. Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, is the monster many media have made him out to be. Yes, he has strong views about Arabs he sees as posing dangers to Jews. And such Arabs, and the dangers they represent, certainly exist.

But he is a politician, too, who, to impress a particular constituency, has done things like boasted of reducing food rations for Palestinian prisoners (and Israel’s high court ruled in 2025 that the prison service under Ben-Gvir deprived Palestinians of a minimum subsistence diet). And posted (though later removed) a video of corpulent, smiling Arab prisoners entering prison and then exiting as gaunt, drained creatures.

And he has also made statements calibrated, like the video, to inflame. In a more recent one, responding to Israel’s drawdown of military strikes in Gaza,  he opined that “targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night.” He added: “Not just those who pose an immediate threat – there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”

Now, arguably, he meant the 30 to 40 deaths to be of Hamas terrorists. And few of us would be disappointed if the earth were no longer cursed with the presence of such murderous people.

But it was entirely predictable that media and nations (not just Arab ones but western ones as well) would understand his wished-for victims to include random Arab residents of Gaza. And, equally predictable, that those media and nations, along with countless pundits, would seize upon the “not even people” phrase as mirroring things like the Nazis’ portrayal of Jews.

Such incendiary statements provide potent ammunition to anti-Israel provocateurs like Carlson and Piker, who then gleefully feed them into their “genocide” generator. And from there, the libels spread into other parts of the populace.

As to question #2, Mr. Huckabee has been the friendliest and most empathetic US ambassador to Israel that she has ever known. And his condemnation of acts of violence by nationalist hotheads against innocent Arabs is not only justified, but also in Israel’s best interest.

He made clear that roughly half a million Israelis live in Yehudah and Shomon, and that the men responsible for “settler violence” represent “a very tiny minority” of that population, at most, “a few hundred men.”

He added that that is “a few hundred too many,” but he clearly rejects the myth that, as BDS supporter Mairav Zonszein put it a recent New York Times guest column, violence against Arab residents “is a feature, not a bug, of Israeli policy… [which includes] the emboldening of settler militias,” and that the “systematic destruction of Palestinian life” is the government’s goal.

Israeli Jews in outposts in Yehudah and Shomron point out that there have been many more instances of attacks on them by local Arabs than there has been violence against Arabs. And that there have been times when what seemed to be anti-Arab violence turned out to be nothing of the sort (in some cases, even fabrications). All true.

But, in the end, those cases do not justify “retaliations” against random Arab families and fields that have unarguably taken place.

Back in May, when an “activist” flotilla was intercepted by the Israeli navy, Mr. Ben-Gvir posted a video mocking captured flotilliacs bound and forced to kneel on the ground. The posting sparked (as its poster intended) outrage from abroad and even from Prime Minister Netanyahu, who call his minister’s actions “despicable.”

Mr. Huckabee’s reaction at the time was that the “Flotilla was [a] stupid stunt, but Ben Gvir betrayed dignity of his nation.”

That latter phrase said much. And still does, today.

At a time when Israel is ridiculously but widely vilified as racist and genocidal, preserving the dignity of the nation is more important than ever. And provocative anti-Arab rhetoric, not to mention violence perpetrated against Arab civilians, promote anything but dignity.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine