Soccer Dad

A reflection of sarah?

I found this statement interesting.

Levi Montalcini, who also serves as a senator for life in Italy, celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, and she spoke at a ceremony held in her honor by the European Brain Research Institute.

She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.

"At 100, I have a mind that is superior -- thanks to experience -- than when I was 20," she told the party, complete with a large cake for her.

100? 20? Obviously not many people can make that comparison. Still it recalls the famous Rashi about the matriarch, Sarah.

Rashi comments, based on the Midrash, that when Sarah was 100, she was like a 20-year-old regarding sin. Until the age of 20 one is not held responsible for one's actions -- i.e. sinless -- and Sarah was clean of all sin at 100 years of age. When she was 20, the Midrash continues, she was like a 7-year-old regarding beauty. Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch explains that a 7-year-old is beautiful -- perhaps not in a sexual or sensual sense -- but beautiful as only an innocent child can be beautiful. So Sarah was sinless and beautiful all her life (one of the three most beautiful women of the Tanach.)

Despite the discrimination she suffered, Dr. Levi Montalcini, still managed to earn a Nobel Prize - at nearly 80! Truly a remarkable woman.