Most everyone knows the oft-worn quote of Shakespeare's Hamlet "To be", but how many actually knows how it continues? Listen to the most important words of this soliloquy:

�To die; to sleep;

To sleep - perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub:

For in the sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause - there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life....
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action........"

The Midrash responds to the opening lines of our parshah Chaye Soroh by telling us a story: Rabbi Akiva was sitting and expounding to his yeshiva audience and realised that many had fallen asleep. He wanted to awake them, and so he called out the question: How was it that Esther reigned over 127 kingdoms? And he responded that she was a descendent of Sarah who lived for 127 years.

Many have been perplexed as to how this, of all alarms then possibly around, would have been the most effective to awaken the sleeping crowd. After all, Esther was descended from many other people as well, and more to the point, what is the connection between the 127 kingdoms and Sarah's 127 years?

The Chidushei HaRim has a most beautiful answer to our curiosity. What was at stake here was the fact that Rabbi Akiva wanted to arouse them by addressing the subject of wasting time. If the 127 kingdoms are connected to the 127 years of Sarah's life, then if you look at your life as a kingdom, your day as a town, every hour of your life as a city, and every minute of your life as a village, then we will hopefully get the message that if we really wish to build up ourselves and our knowledge into a village/city/town - filled acropolis, then we really don't have a moment to waste. The time you put into building your kingdom will determine and reflect the size and end-result.

And this, states the Maggid of Mezeritch, is the real meaning of "Lo Omus Ki Ech-yeh"...Let me not die (not because I am alive...but rather) while I live...allow me to fill up my life with ongoing deeds of learning and mitzvot, and not allow the compounded desire for lethargy and inaction get the better of me, as if I was dead.

In fact, commenting on how long Sarah lived and why her age of 127 years is split into hundreds, tens and then singular units, the Kli Yakar notices that the units of hundreds and tens are in the singular "shanah", but that of the singular unit, the 7 years, is in the plural. Why should this be so ? And his response is that for many, the last years of a person's life can be the most productive. Realising that the best years have passed away and been involved in many actions that may have sidetracked one from doing all that he could to have improved his spirituality and learning, the realisation of death around the corner, as it were, knocks one back to reality, and therefore one can more easily direct one's efforts into what really matters in one's life. And these efforts represent the most relevant of one's life....thus the plural use. And so Sarah's 120 years were overshadowed by the last 7.

We haven't moved too far into the new Jewish year whereby if we have already been sidetracked, to re-align ourselves and remember that the greatest challenge we face in our lives are not the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but how they seemingly overwhelm us and detract from what is our main purpose and serves us best of all: the need to change, improve, reach greater heights, always raising our expectations and never lowering them, and meeting those goals....so that the currents of life do not "turn awry...and lose the name of action."

Shabbat Shalom.