One of the unfortunate consequences of our obsession with youth is that we tend to consign growth, learning and challenge to the earliest phases of the human life cycle. In our flawed understanding, childhood and youth are the only appropriate times for exploring either world or self, for asking searching questions, for rebelling and for establishing identity.
The assumption that growth is only appropriate or common during youth is the equivalent to consigning most people to an early death, shelving them long before their time.
Today's Torah portion, therefore, must come as a surprise to many contemporaries. In the fullness of his old age, long after his childhood and "formative period," after a happy and fruitful marriage to Sarah, following a career that has made his name into a household word, Abraham decides to take a second wife after the death of his first. The Torah relates that "Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah."
Remarkably, according to the Midrash, he has more children with Keturah than he did with either Sarah or Hagar.
What could have possessed our venerable patriarch? After a full life, shouldn't he have acted his age - supporting his sons and their children - dissipating his leisure time in harmless hobbies, accepting irrelevance as befits his age?
The sages of Midrash Bereshit Rabbah lived in a time when advanced age was considered a mark of wisdom and experience essential for leadership and insight. Rabbi Eliezer compared Abraham's remarriage to the actions of a farmer: "If you have sown in the early season, sow in the late season, for you do not know which will be successful, the early sowing or the late."
Life is uncertain. We never know which of our actions will have long-term significance, which of our mistakes can be repaired. It's never too late, says Rabbi Eliezer, to mend a broken friendship, to restore trust, to reassert love.
Rabbi Joshua adds a different twist to the same insight: "If a pauper comes to you in the morning, provide relief; if in the evening, give aid again. You don't know when the help is more needed."
Rabbi Joshua reminds us that human need is a full-time responsibility. Whether we gave in the past - to the poor, to the building fund, to charitable causes - doesn't remove our responsibility to translate our caring into action.
Finally, Rabbi Ishmael asserts that this advice applies to Torah study as well. Whether old or young, scholarly or unlearned, Torah study - the regular encounter with Jewish voices and God's wisdom throughout the ages - should accompany each Jew at every stage of life. Our minds don't age, and our souls don't wither, unless we allow them to.
To be alive means to be involved - in relationships, in society, in compassionate living, and in religious growth. Just like plants, human beings either grow constantly or cease to thrive.
Abraham's example fits us all: tzaddik ka-tamar yifrach, the righteous shall flourish like the cedars of Lebanon. Stretching, thriving, branching into a full and noble maturity, we too can touch the sun. We too can brush the sky with our constant growth, regardless of our age.
Shabbat Shalom.