Chasidut para sa Genesis 23:1

And Sarah’s lifetime etc (Genesis 23:1) - And the explanation of Rashi "at the age of one hundred she was as a woman of twenty etc beautiful as when she was seven". And for start, what difference does it make that she was as beautiful as she when was seven? And it appears that Rashi z"l intended that his words would hint to two levels that a person should behave all days of their life. The first is that one should be careful and guard oneself against any type of sin and transgression, one should not transgress any positive or negative commandment. And the second level is that even in permitted things, such as eating and drinking, one interjects all of it in holiness, intending them for heaven: that is, when a person dresses in nice clothes, and wears beautiful adornments, one should intend to be adorning the Image of the King, as explained in the Gemara [source not found], and so in every thing one's intention should be to heaven. And when one behaves in such a way, then anything one has, be it money, clothing, they will feel satisfied with what they have, and will be glad because of that, and their life will be theirs. But if one's intent is not for heaven in any of that, then they will always feel lack, and nothing will ever be enough for them, and they will find that their life is not really life, and is not theirs at all.

‎Genesis 23,1. “The years of Sarah’s life were one hundred years, ‎etc.;” I believe, G’d willing, that I have understood the reason ‎why Sarah is the only woman in the Bible of whose age at the ‎time of her death we have been told. The Talmud Nedarim ‎‎64, in referring to Rachel’s outburst (Genesis 30,1) that unless her ‎husband Yaakov would give her children she considered herself as ‎‎“dead,” is quoted by Rashi on that verse saying that seeing ‎that a woman’s primary task in life is to mother children, any ‎woman who has not given birth to a live child is considered as ‎dead. We also know from Shabbat 156, that when G’d took ‎Avraham outside (Genesis 15,5) that He showed him that ‎according to the constellation of the stars, Sarai was not slated to ‎give birth to children. This ‎מזל‎, astrological prognosis of her life, ‎could be changed only due to merits she would acquire during the ‎years to come. She did indeed acquire such merits, as our sages ‎conclude from a comment they made in Shir Hashirim ‎Rabbah, 2,32 where the phenomenon of all the matriarchs ‎originally being barren is discussed. Among a variety of answers ‎offered there, one is that G’d was desirous of listening to their ‎praying to Him to be granted children, just as He is desirous of ‎listening to the prayers of the righteous, generally. In other ‎words, Sarah, (after a name change) both due to her merits and ‎her supplications, was “lifted” out of the limitations predicted for ‎her by a zodiac sign she had been born under, so that she could ‎conceive. When the Torah refers to her “life” as being 127 years ‎long, this means nothing less than that she had spent all these ‎years accumulating merits for the good deeds she performed. ‎Expressed somewhat differently, the Torah states that it was ‎Sarah, who with her good deeds gave “life” to her years.‎

Or we can say - "the years of the life of Sarah etc" (Genesis 23:1) through what we read in the Gemara, "a person is obligated to bless one hundred blessings every day, what is the source? 'What, Israel, does Ad-nai your God ask of you?' (Deut. 10:12) etc do not read mah (what) but me'ah (100)."(Menachot 43b:15). And one needs to say that the explanation is that the essence of the root of a person is to be in a great surrender, and humble in one's own eyes, and think of oneself as "mah", and then one can act on one's deeds as if the Mikdash was still around, and this is the hint of the 100 blessings, as they correspond to the 100 sockets that were in the Mikdash. And this is the explanation of the Gemara "do not read mah , but me'ah", meaning, when you reach the level of mah, in surrender, you will be able to fix also 100 sockets, meaning, that you will be able to act in your deeds as in the time of the Mikdash.