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| Milk urns used to bury documentation form the Warsaw Ghetto as part of the Ringelblum Archives |
Note: This article deals with an unusual and peripheral view that the biblical Sarah committed suicide after she heard that her son Isaac was bound on the altar. Suicide is a serious problem in many communities, and ours is no different. Reference to Sarah’s alleged suicide as a ‘virtue’ must be understood within the historical and literary context in which this idea was fermented, and not in any way as a religious sanction of such an act. I deal with it here knowing full well that ideas are dangerous, but equally aware that withholding them is more so.
Introduction
This article—based extensively on the research by Rabbi Professor Daniel Reiser—examines an unusual Chassidic interpretation of the biblical Sarah’s death as a suicide. This idea is to be found in the writings of the Piaseczno[1] Rebbe, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889-1943), produced while he was confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. According to Reiser (2021:7):
“Sarah died in order to demonstrate to God that her excessive suffering in the wake of Isaac’s near sacrifice was absolutely unbearable.”
In Shapira’s lived experience, he seemed to identify with Sarah, whom he interpreted as demonstrating that with the episode of the Akeidah—the sacrifice of Isaac—God had pushed humanity too far.
