"And Sarah's lifetime was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years" (Genesis 23:1). Rashi offers his famous comment: at one hundred she was like twenty (free from sin), and at twenty she was as beautiful as when she was seven. Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk asks a question most readers skip: why does beauty at age seven matter?
He identifies two levels of righteous living encoded in Rashi's explanation. The first level: avoiding sin. "At one hundred, she was like twenty"—she never violated a positive or negative commandment. This is the baseline of holiness, the commitment to keep God's law.
The second level is subtler and more demanding: sanctifying permitted things. A person eats, drinks, wears beautiful clothes—all perfectly allowed. But do they do so with sacred intent? When you dress well, are you adorning the Image of the King? When you eat, are you fueling your service to God? Sarah achieved this. "At twenty, she was like seven"—just as a child who plays with adornments has no vanity, no desire for expensive jewelry, no craving for status, Sarah's every act of self-care was directed toward heaven.
The reward for this orientation is contentment. A person whose intentions are directed to heaven feels satisfied with whatever they have. Their life is truly theirs. But a person whose intentions are self-serving never has enough. Nothing satisfies. Their life, Rebbe Elimelech says bluntly, "is not really life."
He adds a second reading connecting Sarah to the Talmud's teaching (Menachot 43b) about one hundred daily blessings. "Do not read mah (what) but me'ah (one hundred)"—when a person reaches true humility, seeing themselves as mah (nothing), they can sanctify all one hundred blessings, corresponding to the one hundred sockets of the Temple itself.