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Dear Yeshiva Family,
This week's parsha opens with the passing of Sarah Imeinu. The Torah tells us that her life lasted "one hundred years, and twenty years, and seven years." Rashi notes the seemingly redundant phrasing — the Torah could have simply said "127 years" — and explains that the repetition teaches us something deeper about her character.
"When she was one hundred, she was like twenty with regard to sin," writes Rashi, "and when she was twenty, she was like seven with regard to beauty." In other words, just as one who is twenty is not yet liable for punishment from Heaven, Sarah at one hundred was still pure of sin. And just as a child of seven possesses a certain innocent beauty, so too Sarah retained that same purity of beauty even at twenty .
What exactly does Rashi mean when he says, that one who is under twenty is not liable for punishment from Heaven?
The Acharonim discuss this extensively. Many explain that Rashi's statement should not be taken literally. The Chasam Sofer (Yoreh Deah 154), the Noda BiYehudah (Yoreh Deah, Tinyana 164), and the Chacham Tzvi (Teshuvah 49) all question this idea: surely a person under twenty can be held accountable for their actions! How could the Torah exempt such a person entirely from Heavenly judgment?
Nevertheless, there are some Acharonim who take Rashi's words at face value. The Chida (Pesach Einyaim Chagigah 15a) clearly questions these Gedolim and proves from multiple sources that this is indeed a literal Gemara. The Maharalbach as a child in Portugal was forcibly converted to Christianity. He later returned to the Jewish people but remained deeply pained over his early years. He writes that he had been under twenty at the time and therefore would not be punished from Heaven for his actions — though, in his humility, he nevertheless did much teshuvah for it.
From this, we see that there were indeed great Acharonim who understood that one under twenty is not subject to Heavenly judgment .
To explain this, I would like to ask yet another question: Chazal tell us that when a person is born, the yetzer hara (evil inclination) immediately enters him — but the yetzer tov (Good inclination) doesn't arrive until the age of twelve or thirteen. At first glance, that seems difficult to understand. If anything, it feels the opposite!
Most people will tell you that little children are delightful — full of sweetness, innocence, and generosity. And yet, the Gemara insists that at that stage, they only possess a yetzer hara! Meanwhile, when the yetzer tov supposedly arrives — around bar or bas mitzvah — do we see the average thirteen-year-old suddenly transformed into an angel of kindness, serenity, and maturity? Hardly!
If anything, the teenage years are when moodiness, self-focus, and emotional turbulence begin to take hold. So what could Chazal mean? How could it be that the yetzer tov only enters at thirteen, when that is so often the stage of life where idealism seems to disappear, not arrive?
So, to understand this, we first have to look at how a person is created and how he grows. When a baby is born, he begins as a literal extension of his mother — physically connected, dependent, and sustained by her. Then, little by little, he grows. His body expands, his senses awaken, and he begins to experience the world beyond himself.
In those early months and years, his entire existence is physical and instinctive. He eats, he sleeps, he cries, he learns how to move — all of it completely self-focused. Not because he's selfish, but because that's the only world he knows. He's simply a growing being, centered around his own needs.
Then, slowly, another stage begins. The child starts doing. He learns to imitate — to copy his parents, to echo their words, to mimic their gestures. But even this imitation isn't yet moral awareness; it's still the product of instinct, curiosity, and the desire for approval. He learns to say "thank you," not because he understands gratitude, but because that's what he's been taught to say.
All of this is still growth in the physical and emotional sense — growing up, but not yet growing inward.
At this stage a child is known as taf, from the root tafel, meaning secondary. They are not really independent creatures at all.
At this early stage, a child knows almost nothing of the world. Whatever he hears in the home becomes absolute truth to him. Whatever he observes, he repeats. This is the stage when we, as parents, lay the foundation — the bedrock — of what will become his sense of "normal." Here, we instill the basics of what is acceptable, proper, and good. At this age, a child doesn't yet think independently or weigh right and wrong. He simply mirrors what he sees. He follows your lead instinctively, and this is precisely when you can shape him most deeply. Of course, this influence can't be sustained through control alone. It must be channeled through warmth, understanding, and by working with his natural temperament — so that when control inevitably fades, the influence remains.
This period of early childhood gradually transitions into the stage of na'arus — adolescence. The Torah describes in next weeks parshah, Vayigdilu ha-ne'arim — "The boys grew up." From the word na'ar, meaning to awaken or to stir, we learn that growth itself is a process of awakening. Each time a person enters a new developmental stage, he awakens to new feelings, new desires, new understandings. Until the age of thirteen, Yaakov and Esav looked identical — indistinguishable in behavior or appearance. But when they reached the stage of na'arus, they began to go their separate ways. For the first time, their inner differences emerged.
Hashem created the world this way by design. He did not want human beings to be mere carbon copies of their parents. He wanted each person to emerge as an individual — unique in spirit and purpose. So, He gave the adolescent years their special character: overflowing with passion, creativity, and excitement, but without yet the full measure of wisdom and foresight. The halacha even recognizes this — a person under twenty cannot sell property, because he cannot yet fully appreciate the long-term consequences of his decisions.
Hashem, in His wisdom, built this delicate stage precisely so that young people would have the drive to build their own lives, but still remain close enough to their parents and mentors to be guided. They are, in essence, creatures of passion and excitement, bursting with potential — but still in need of direction.
But this is exactly the point. Chazal describe the na'ar stage as a period marked by brilliance without direction. Rashi in Miketz writes that a na'ar is a shoteh — not in the literal sense, but meaning he lacks full understanding. The Seforno explains similarly that a na'ar cannot see beyond what is immediately in front of him. He simply does not yet possess a long-term vision. He cannot naturally trace actions to their consequences. That skill — the ability to see "around the bend" — is something that must be taught, guided, and slowly developed.
A teenager may be intelligent, insightful, even creatively brilliant — but the architecture of long-term judgment is still under construction. He sees things in extremes, in black-and-white. One minute he appears mature and thoughtful, the next minute impulsive and reactive. There is inconsistency because his da'as is not yet fully settled. The Sfas Emes on Yosef adds the difference between a zaken and a na'ar is not just years, but stability. A na'ar needs constant reminders and guidance to return to maturity; he cannot maintain it on his own.
This is the way humanity will get individuals. Hashem wants every child to emerge with his or her own voice, mission, personality, and spiritual path. And so, Hashem created a stage where a child must break away just enough to form identity — a stage filled with power, passion, creativity, and yearning, but not yet with the steering wheel of fully-formed judgment.
We actually see this in this week's parsha. When the Torah introduces us to Yitzchak, we meet a personality entirely different from Avraham. Avraham is expansive, charismatic, outward-facing, influencing thousands. Yitzchak, by contrast, is inward, disciplined, rooted — building depth rather than outward impact. Two completely different souls, two completely different missions — both equally willed by Hashem. That difference begins already in adolescence: Hashem wants our children to become themselves, not merely extensions of us.
This is the koach of na'arus. It is an engine of breathtaking potential — passion without polish, energy without full direction. It's like having a powerful engine before the steering wheel is fully attached. The da'as is still forming, the maturity still inconsistent, and yet the raw force of becoming — of developing individuality — is at its strongest.
So now we can return to our question: What does it actually mean that the yetzer hara enters a person at birth while the yetzer tov waits until age 12 or 13?
The deeper understanding is that the term yetzer hara refers to two realities. There is the classic "malach" of temptation — the spiritual force that tries to trip us up. But there is also the natural yetzer hara: our physicality itself. A baby is born with appetite, desire, hunger, anger, jealousy, competitiveness. These traits are not evil — they are simply the raw human nature Hashem created us with. But they are the "yetzer hara" in the sense that they pull us instinctively, powerfully, without thought or judgment.
And the same is true on the side of good. The yetzer tov is not just an angel who whispers encouragement. It is also our da'as — the growing, maturing cognitive ability to evaluate, to understand consequences, to put long-term values ahead of short-term impulses. The yetzer tov is the human mind — the part of us that can say no, choose wisely, think clearly, and act with integrity.
This is the meaning of "the yetzer hara comes at birth, but the yetzer tov only comes at bar/bas mitzvah." A child is born with powerful passions — physicality, desire, energy, emotion — but the capacity for judgment, restraint, moral reflection, and real decision-making does not awaken until adolescence. And even then, it is only beginning. Just as the body grows slowly and steadily, the mind grows slowly and steadily. It does not become truly mature — truly able to see consequences and weigh actions — until around twenty years old. That is why the halacha states that a person under twenty cannot sell real property: not because he is foolish, but because his brain's ability to understand long-term impact is still developing.
This is also why, even in secular society, we place age limits on activities that require mature judgment — driving, voting, certain financial decisions, and more. A teenager may feel completely certain he is making good decisions, but his certainty often comes from passion rather than perspective. He feels deeply, but he does not yet fully see. His engine is strong; his steering wheel isn't fully connected.
This is also one reason we guide our children to delay entering long-term relationships until their late teens or early twenties. Relationships require self-knowledge, maturity, and the ability to understand complex consequences — all of which develop only gradually. And now we can return to the question of heavenly punishment before the age of twenty. Many Acharonim — the Chasam Sofer, the Noda b'Yehuda, the Chacham Tzvi — argue that Rashi cannot be literal, and that a person under twenty must bear some level of accountability. Others, like the Chida, take Rashi more at face value. Perhaps we can explain that before the full development of da'as, Hashem does not judge a person the same way. A helpful way to understand this is to distinguish between human judgment and Divine judgment.
A beis din in this world must apply the law uniformly. It cannot know exactly how mature a person is, how fully his da'as has developed, or where his internal struggles truly lie. Since no human court can evaluate the inner workings of a mind or the precise stage of its growth, it must judge according to fixed halachic categories — bar mitzvah is bar mitzvah, adulthood is adulthood, and the law applies equally.
But Hashem's judgment works differently. Only Hashem can see the exact level of cognitive, emotional, and spiritual development within each individual. Only He knows how much true yetzer tov — mature, regulated responsibility — a person has at any given age. Thus, while a teenager may not be entirely exempt, the full force of heavenly judgment cannot apply to someone whose mind is still forming. Hashem judges each neshamah with perfect precision, adjusting accountability to the inner reality that only He can perceive.
The message about Sarah Imeinu is now clear. At one hundred years old — after decades of responsibility, challenge, and the full force of mature intellect — she remained as pure as she had been at twenty, the moment her mind first reached full formation. Her inner world was never sullied, never compromised, never darkened by the weight of life's struggles. And even more remarkably, the countless victories she won over her yetzer hara did not leave upon her the usual toll that such battles take. She retained the innocent, effortless radiance of a seven-year-old — not because she never fought, but because she fought so completely and so cleanly that her beauty, inside and out, remained untouched .
May we all be zocheh to live with such clarity, to strive with such sincerity, and to use our yetzer tov to shape lives of purity, strength, and genuine inner beauty.
Have an amazing Shabbos!
Rabbi Moshe Revah Rosh HaYeshiva Mrevah2@touro.edu
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[1] At first I wrote this as part of the article, but it was too long, so I placed this part in a footnote. This Rashi raises several questions. First, why does the Torah specifically compare her beauty at twenty to that of a seven-year-old? One would think that, to the average observer, a woman is more beautiful at twenty than at seven! Second, what is the deeper significance of the age seven — why not five, or ten, or another number altogether?
The Oznayim LaTorah, Rav Zalman Sorotzkin, explains that the number seven is not random. Seven, says Rav Sorotzkin, marks the age when chinuch — formal education and moral training — begins. Until the age of seven, a child lives in a state of pure innocence. There are no inner battles yet between right and wrong, no spiritual struggles that leave their mark upon the soul. It is a beauty of menuchah, of untouched simplicity. The Gemara in Shabbos 86a alludes that spiritual striving and moral conflict affect the very body of a person. The toil of avodas Hashem, the struggle to overcome the yetzer hara, leaves its imprint. So long as a person lives without those struggles, the physical self retains a kind of natural, effortless beauty — a beauty untested, but unspoiled. That, says the Oznayim LaTorah, is why the Torah compares Sarah's beauty at twenty to her beauty at seven. At twenty, she had long entered the arena of bechirah, of moral struggle. She had faced the yetzer hara, and yet she emerged unmarked — her spiritual clarity and innocence perfectly preserved.
This age represents the beginning of a new stage of growth — a time when a person starts to become mildly more responsible, an age of coming into oneself. It is the stage when we begin the training for adulthood. From this point on, a child becomes responsible on a rabbinic level, or at the very least, the parents become responsible to ensure that their child performs mitzvos. And with that, the battle begins — the lifelong struggle between inclination and conscience, between instinct and purpose.
[2] Regarding if one should do teshuva for sins performed before his Bar or Bas Mitzvah, there is a discussion amongst the Achronim as well, See the Reshash in Sanhedrin 55b who maintains that one must do teshuva, whereas the Chazon Ish, quoted by R' Chaim Kanievski in Siach Hasadeh in Sanhedrin there disagrees. See also the Rema in O.C. 343:1 with the Magen Avraham there.
[3] One can still wonder: if Rashi is emphasizing Sarah's extraordinary beauty, why doesn't the pasuk simply say that at one hundred she was as beautiful as at seven? And if the focus is on her innocence, why not say at one hundred and twenty-seven she was like at twenty?
The answer seems to be that each number highlights something different. The age of twenty represents the apex of mature, physical beauty. What the Torah is telling us is that even at twenty — the age when a person's beauty is most fully expressed — Sarah still carried the unspoiled innocence of a seven-year-old, untouched by the usual marks of inner struggle. And at one hundred — symbolizing the fullness and grandeur of age — she remained as spiritually pristine as she had been at twenty, at the very moment her intellect first reached its peak. In other words, at the height of her maturity, she retained the purity of her beginnings; and at the height of her beauty, she remained free of the scars that internal battles often leave behind. | 
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