In Judaism we revere the Cave of Machpelah – the place where so many patriarchs and matriarchs are buried. We consider it hallowed ground. In the text itself, the place is merely a cave in a field. What makes it special?

Perhaps the answer is that this is the place Sarah chose, the place where she died. And it is the place where Avraham honored her choice, and showed his respect for her by paying whatever it cost to honor her there, in the eyes of all around him.

In other words, Avraham made holy the place where he buried Sarah. And he did it by publicly honoring his wife, putting her first, at the center of his world.

This is, by way of contrast, precisely the opposite of the entire story of Sarah’s life. When the story starts, her husband took her along wherever he went; the text never says that “they” went – it speaks only of Avraham, while Sarah is not even mentioned, since she is assumed to be there. Sarah followed her husband, Avraham, almost all her life. Everywhere he went, she went, too, in such an automatic fashion that the text does not even have to include her name. (In contrast, Yaakov’s wives are often mentioned when the Torah says that he traveled.)

When visitors come, Avraham treats them with enormous dignity and respect, filling his language with kind words and supplications – but he runs into the tent and orders his wife to prepare food without a single extra “please” thrown in for good measure.

Sarah had suffered the indignity of another woman providing a son for her husband – and then, when she decided that the woman and the child had to go leave Sarah’s home, her husband had not respected her enough to accept her decision, but instead Avraham asked G-d for a second opinion.

She had been given up (perhaps even sold) to be a wife or concubine to other men on no less than two occasions!

The final event was the worst of all: her husband took their son to sacrifice him.

We don’t know what happens after that between them: the text says that Avraham returned with his young men (but not Isaac, the almost-sacrificed son) to Beersheva, but it does not mention his wife there. The next we hear of Sarah, she has passed away – but not in Beersheva. Instead, she was in an entirely different place, Hebron. And Avraham had to come to where she had died.

What happened between the offering of Isaac and Sarah’s death is not told to us by the text. There are numerous speculations in the midrash, but the text itself seems to suggest that Avraham went back to Beersheba, Isaac to Behar Leharoi, and Sarah is next seen in a third place, Hebron. In other words, the event of the binding of Isaac seems to have fractured the family. And in the split, Sarah does something she had never done before: she left Avraham’s side. The choice of place was hers. Is it the only time in their lives that she chose where it be? The text seems to say so. And her life ends, at a full 127 years, in the place where she goes – a place where her husband was not.

Then Avraham does something incredible. Unlike earlier episodes, he does not focus on his legacy or about children. Instead, he goes to where Sarah has died. Instead, he stops there, and instead of bringing her body back to Beersheva, he offers to buy land in Hebron. Indeed, the Torah tells of us the negotiation in great detail. I think the text may do this for a beautiful reason: it is telling us that Avraham expended every effort to honor his wife and her memory, to do it in public, in the eyes of the world.

In so doing, he was reversing a lifetime of having Sarah take second place – to a concubine and her son, to other powerful men, to guests, and even to their mutual son, Isaac. He puts her first. This was an act of deep consideration and love, one that echoed down through the ages, as the cave which was purchased in marital love is, for Jews, one of the holiest places in the world.

A single act, done absolutely right, can repair damage. An act of love creates holiness. The cave was nothing special, until Sarah chose Hebron and Avraham honored his wife by honoring her choice.

Another iWe and @susanquinn production.