(to download a print-friendly PDF version of this dvar Torah, which was adapted from a shiur by Dr. Tova Sacher, click here ) There’s a very well-known midrash that in his old age, Avraham requested… well… to age. It seems like an odd request. He lived not long after the generation of people like Methuselah, who lived 969 years. Certainly, people aged before Avraham. Or… did they? In fact, this midrash suggests, lots of people before Avraham were old – sometimes, very old – but nobody actually got old at all. This whole midrash arises due to a problem with the passuk: וְאַבְרָהָם זָקֵן בָּא בַּיָּמִים And Abraham was old, advanced in days. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said Hashem never makes the same day twice. “Every day is an entirely new creation.” Even if you wake up and today seems exactly the same as yesterday – it’s not. So, too, whenever there’s a redundancy in the Torah, it should catch our eye. Because there are no redundancies in the Torah. If something looks