Was Sarah truly barren? Genesis tells us plainly that she "had no children" (Gen. 16:1). But what if I told you that she gave birth in a way that defied conventional understanding? It’s a question that rabbis and mystics have wrestled with for centuries.
The verse in Genesis 12:5, describing Abraham and Sarah in Haran, states that they acquired "the souls that they had made." This is where things get interesting. What does it mean to make a soul? The most common interpretation, one we find echoed by Rashi, is that Abraham and Sarah were actively converting people, bringing them "under the wings of the Shekhinah" – the divine presence. Abraham converted the men, Sarah the women. Makes sense, right?
But the Zohar, that foundational text of Jewish mysticism, isn't satisfied with the simple explanation. Why, it asks, does the Torah repeat itself by stating both that Sarah was barren AND that she had no children? The Zohar offers a radical alternative: Sarah did give birth... to souls, not children (Zohar 1:79a). Think about that for a moment. Sarah, not as just a woman, but as a kind of divine figure, birthing souls into the world!
According to Rabbi Nassan Nata Shapira in Megaleh Amukot, these weren’t just any souls. They were the souls of future converts! He wasn't alone in this idea. According to Rabbi Shapira, Isaac and Rachel also begat souls of future converts. For all the years Rachel was childless, she gave birth to souls in heaven.
Now, some interpretations get even wilder. Rabbi Tzadok ha-Kohen of Lublin, in his Sihot Shedim, offers a truly unconventional idea. He suggests that these souls are created from seed ejaculated during intercourse that did not result in conception. These, he says, are the souls of converts, just like the souls Abraham and Sarah created. It's a complex and somewhat startling image, especially when contrasted with his assertion that seed "wasted through masturbation" gives birth to evil spirits and female demons (liliyot) of the night.
Then there’s Rabbi Shlomo Rabinowitz of Radomsk, who proposes a different origin story altogether. He links the souls of converts back to Adam’s sin. When Adam sinned, he says, many precious souls were captured by the Sitra Ahra – the "other side," the realm of darkness. These captured souls, according to this view, are the souls of converts, returning to their true destiny through conversion. (Tiferet Shlomo on Genesis, 12:5).
But how did Abraham and Sarah give birth to these souls, regardless of their origin? Rabbi Rabinowitz quotes Rabbi Menahem Recanati, who suggests that when tzaddikim – righteous individuals – discover new meanings in the Torah, they literally create souls in the higher world.
So, what do we make of all this? Is Sarah a barren woman or a divine mother of souls? Are converts reclaiming lost sparks or being birthed through spiritual insight? Maybe the answer lies not in choosing one interpretation over another, but in recognizing the profound mystery at the heart of conversion itself. It's a process of becoming, of being reborn, of finding one's place within the tapestry of the Jewish people. And perhaps, just perhaps, it involves a little bit of that soul-birthing magic that Sarah embodied.