The story is told of an Orthodox Jew who went on a business trip and was at the airport for his flight home. As we he went through security, he experiened everyone’s nightmare – after he took off his shoes and his belt and went through the metal detector, his shoes were gone. He looked everywhere, the security personnel looked everywhere, but the shoes were nowhere to be found. There was nothing he could do – he needed to rush to the gate for his flight.
He walked barefoot to the gate, and he saw that the passengers would have to walk outside on the tarmac to get onto the plane – and it was raining.
A fellow passenger, a woman, saw his predicament and offered to help. She said she had a pair of slippers with her that she’d be happy to lend him. The woman pulled them out of her bag – and the man saw a pair of bright pink, fluffy slippers. He had no choice, so he put them on, and wore them onto the plane.
Needless to say, he felt very self-conscious, walking around in these bright, feminine slippers…
As he was sitting on the plane, he overheard two passengers talking.
“Look at this guy, his shoes were lost, so he needs to wear women’s slippers!”
The man said to himself, “As I thought, everyone’s looking at me and laughing at me.”
But then he heard the other passenger say, “I’m amazed. The whole time, he was perfectly calm. He didn’t angry, he didn’t get upset, he didn’t lose his cool. It’s amazing.”
The man was afraid he was being humiliated – but in truth, he was creating a beautiful kiddush Hashem.
Parashat Hayeh-Sarah begins by telling us that Sarah lived for 127 years, concluding, שני חיי שרה – “these were the years of Sarah’s life.” Rashi explains that this seemingly unnecessary phrase was added to teach us that כולן שוין לטובה – “they were all equally good.” All of Sarah’s days were “equally good.”
Sarah actually went through some very difficult hardships over the course of her life. She moved many times. For decades, she could not conceive. She was twice abducted by a foreign ruler (Pharaoh, Avimelech). Yet, all her days were “equally good.”
The name שרה means “authority” or “royalty.” Each day of her life, she lived with a sense of pride and dignity. She saw herself as regal, as being the matriarch of Hashem’s special nation. And in this sense, הכל שוין לטובה – all her days were equally good. Because throughout her life, she lived with this feeling of self-worth and pride. Nothing that happened could upset her, because each day, she felt proud about who she was.
We all need to live each with this feeling, a feeling of pride over being who we are. And when we live this way, it won’t bother us if we find ourselves “wearing pink slippers,” doing things differently, not fitting in, not doing what everybody else does.
Many people in our community live with an enormous amount of pressure. They look around and see what everybody else does, and they feel pressured to do the same. They look at what schools people enroll their children in, the affairs they host, the vacations they take, the cars they drive, the houses they buy and build – and they feel they need to do all that. They’re afraid of walking around in “pink slippers,” of doing things differently. Like that passenger, they feel self-conscious, worried that everyone is looking at them and talking about how they’re strange.
We can avoid all this if we follow the example of Sarah Imenu, and live with a sense of personal pride in who we are. Each and every Jew is precious. Being a member of our community should never be our only identity. Every person is unique and special. It’s ok if we wear “pink slippers.” We don’t have to worry about what other people are thinking or saying about us.
If we live with this mindset, then truly, כולן שוין לטובה – we will feel happy and content each day of our lives.