At the end of this week’s parshah, we are told of the shidduch between Avraham Avinu and Sara Imeinu. The pesukim refer to Sara as “Yiscah” and only in Rashi’s commentary do we learn that Yiscah is another name for Sara.
Rashi provides two explanations for Sara’s other name. One is that ruach hakodesh rested (sachah) upon her; the other is that due to her beauty, people would gaze (sochin) at her.
Why did Rashi, usually so sparing with words, find it necessary to provide two explanations for Sara’s alternate name — would not one explanation suffice?
The Kishutei Kallah answers that the two explanations are interlinked. Sara was the younger daughter of Haran; Milka was the older sister. Terach, Haran’s brother, had two sons — Avraham and Nachor. Sara might have assumed, as did Leah Imeinu years later, that the older sister, Milka, would marry the older brother, Avraham, leaving her with Nachor, and that she needed to daven and cry to Hashem to be saved from such a fate. However, since she had ruach hakodesh, she knew that she was destined to marry Avraham and hence did not need to cry and lose her beauty, as Leah did.
Both Leah Imeinu and her daughter Dinah are portrayed as extremely reluctant to marry someone not of their caliber and this is not seen as a problem — quite the opposite. We learn from this that it is normal and in fact praiseworthy to want to marry someone with yiras Shamayim, and it’s also reasonable to conclude that if someone does marry a spouse who is lacking in this area, it’s normal and understandable to be bothered by it, and at the very least to daven that the person improves.
There are those who claim that caring about others should be confined to their gashmiyus, as their ruchniyus is their own business. This does not seem to be the Torah way. Of course, rebuking another person has to be done correctly; otherwise, it can be not only wrong but counterproductive. However, caring about any Jew’s spiritual state, especially that of one’s spouse, is the way things should be.
