עברית
Faith
Is There a Source for Wishing Someone Up to 120 Years?
Question
What is the source for wishing someone up to 120 years, and no more? Aside from that, almost no one reaches that age, and even someone who is already 100 years old, it seems a bit awkward to wish him only another 20 years of life.
Thank you
Answer
Greetings,
Apparently there is no source for the idea that people can live only up to one hundred and twenty years.
Sources: For what is written in Bereishit 6:3, "And Hashem said: My spirit shall not contend forever with man, for he too is flesh; and his days shall be one hundred and twenty years," does not mean that from that time onward people would not live more than one hundred and twenty years, for we find that afterward people did live beyond that age (for example: our father Abraham died at the age of 175, our father Isaac died at the age of 180, and our father Jacob died at the age of 147). Rather, the meaning is as Rashi explained there, that Hashem said regarding the people of the generation of the Flood: I will grant them a reprieve of up to one hundred and twenty years, and if they do not return, I will bring the Flood upon them.
And so the gaon Rabbi Y. Zilberstein shlita, in the book Aleinu Leshabeiach, part 5 (page 332), cited the book Migd Givahot Olam (page 100), which wrote in the name of the late Maran Rabbi Chaim of Brisk ztl, that one should not say that a person will live until one hundred and twenty, because there is an issue of cursing, for he may live longer, and it turns out that one is cursing him by limiting his life to one hundred and twenty. He also cited that the gaon Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky ztl was likewise opposed to this expression of wishing a person to live only until one hundred and twenty. (However, see the book Toldot Anshei Shem, pages 64-65, and Igrot Moshe, Yoreh Deah, part 3, siman 145).
With blessings,
Hillel Meirs
