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Open Tents and Strong Walls: Sara’s Legacy In Our Time


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“Even if there are innocent people in Gaza, they don’t deserve to live,” he said to me. “I never used to think this way. I believed we had partners for peace. But after October 7, after witnessing the barbarity and hearing the hostages’ testimonies about the cruelty of ordinary Gazans, I no longer believe we can take any chances. We need to wipe Gaza off the map.”This was a recent conversation with a secular Israeli friend. It wasn’t unusual. I’ve heard this shift in tone and conviction from many here in Israel. And it should make us stop and think — hard — about who we are, what we represent, and what the Jewish vision truly is.

Because ultimately, it comes back to one question: what defines the Jewish spirit? Are we the open tent policy of Avraham, welcoming all who pass by, or the fierce and hardened pragmatism of Sara, who sent Hagar and Yishmael away to protect the covenant’s future? Can our tent stay open—vulnerable yet enriched—or must we build walls to guard our essence against external threats? This question lies at the very heart of Jewish identity—whether in the Diaspora or in Israel—and it is as ancient as it is urgent. It haunted our ancestors long before the Enlightenment tempted Jacob’s tents with the siren call of modernity and assimilation, and long before the State of Israel stood, from 1948, as the only democracy in a hostile region, grappling with the dilemma of survival v engagement. The question may be modern in expression, but its source is biblical. For it was Avraham and Sarah who modelled for us how to live within this tension.

In the wake of October 7th, it is natural to feel anger, to yearn for revenge, to retreat inward and disavow the world’s hypocrisy. The vision of a Jewish destiny rooted in hope, moral leadership, and universal compassion can feel naïve—almost delusional. The impulse to close the tent and focus solely on survival is powerful and, in many ways, justified. Yet history reminds us that when fear drives us to see every stranger as an enemy, humanity itself begins to unravel. How, then, do we strike the right balance?

Our tradition offers two paradigms: Avraham and Sarah.

Avraham’s tent was open on all sides, symbolising boundless compassion and engagement with the world. He welcomed every wanderer, every stranger, seeing in them the tzelem Elokim, the divine image. His faith was relational and hopeful—a faith in humanity’s potential for good. Sarah, by contrast, understood that openness without discernment can destroy. She was the sentinel at the entrance, guarding the covenant. She discerned the moral corruption in Ishmael’s play with Yitzchak, the danger lurking beneath the surface. Her decisions were not easy, but they were necessary for survival.

Avraham can be seen as the paradigm of Jewish faith: he hears both the divine call to sacrifice and the angelic call to stop; he sees both the knife and the ram. He can hold paradox and live with complexity. But that ability depends on Sarah’s uncompromising clarity. Where he is compassionate, she is pragmatic; where he hesitates, she acts. His tent can be open because she ensures the covenant endures.

Rashi, citing the Midrash, teaches that Sarah dies upon hearing that Yitzchak was “almost sacrificed”—ve’kim’at shelo nishchat. She cannot live with the almost, with the ambiguity of life suspended between faith and fear. For Sarah, survival required certainty. Her life, as the Torah describes it—“one hundred years and twenty years and seven years”—was compartmentalised, each stage distinct, unblended. She lived with absolute conviction, clarity, and purpose.

When Sara dies, in this weeks Parsha, Avraham must learn to live in the grey. He must become both Avraham and Sarah—compassionate yet decisive, idealistic yet pragmatic. He mourns her, but he also fulfils her mission: he purchases land, secures continuity, has more children with kerura (some say Hagar) and sends them away with gift thus ensures the covenant’s endurance, but also its protection. The life of Sara may have come to end but her legacy continues through him.

Chayei Sarah teaches not just grief and legacy, but moral balance—the tension between compassion and protection, openness and boundary. Avraham walks this narrow tightrope. In danger, Sarah’s voice leads; in calm, Avraham’s. The covenant demands both.

And that is precisely where we stand today. October 7 shattered more than our security; it fractured our faith in human goodness and our dreams for peace. For many, it felt as if Avraham’s tent had been burned to the ground. The openness that once welcomed the stranger now feels untenable. The dream of integrating as equal members of society—of enlightened Europe and America—feels threatened. Perhaps, we think, Sarah was right all along.

Indeed, there are moments in history—this may be one—when survival demands Sarah’s voice. Shema bekolah, the Torah commands Avraham: “listen to her voice.” Sometimes the moral imperative is to act with ruthless clarity. To defend life, even at the cost of innocence. To close ranks, to hold the line. This is not cruelty; it is covenantal realism. Sarah’s legacy reminds us that, to survive as a people, we must sometimes temper our natural compassion and empathy in the service of life itself.

But that cannot be the end of the story. The danger of adopting Sarah’s model indefinitely is that it can calcify into fear and stunt moral and ethical growth and mission and we risk losing the essence of what makes us Avraham’s children: the courage to see the divine image even in the other, the hope that compassion can still transform the world.

The greatness of our covenant is not in choosing between Avraham and Sarah, but in knowing when to be each. Today, we must channel Sarah’s fierce protection—her moral clarity, her refusal to compromise with evil. But even as we do, we must guard a flicker of Avraham’s faith: that someday we will reopen the tent, rebuild trust, and re-engage with the world from a place of strength, not naivety.

We must grieve, bury our dead, and reclaim our land as Avraham did—not as victims seeking sympathy, but as a people who have earned their place through faith and sacrifice. Yet we must also remember that survival is not our destiny’s end point. It is the beginning.

Our task is to ensure that when the time comes—and it will—our tents can once again open on all sides, not in weakness, but in renewed moral confidence. That is the covenantal challenge of Chayei Sarah: to hold both truths, to live between open tents and strong walls, to build a future where faith and survival are no longer at war.

Shabbat Shalom

For those who want to explore this dilemma further, I invite you to listen to two episodes from my Books and Beyond: The Rabbi Sacks Podcast, where we wrestle with these very questions in the thought of Rabbi Sacks.

In these episodes, I sit down with Michal Cotler-Wunsch, Dara Horn, and Mijal Bitton to explore antisemitism in a post Oct 7th world.


In addition I invite you to read my latest article reflecting of Rabbi Sacks thought on his 5th Yahrzeit in partnership with 18Forty: https://18forty.org/articles/jonathan-sacks-five-years/

 
 
 

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