Rosh Hashanah I, 5761

Delivered on September 30, 2000 / Tishri 1, 5761

by 

Dean Kertesz

The Holidays are the same each year.  But each year we are different.  Each year we experience the Holidays differently.  For me, each year, they become more difficult.  This idea of ruthless self-evaluation, of Cheshbon Nefesh, of making an account of my self and my behavior is hard.

We are products of our time.  We are rationalists.  We are skeptics.  We are cynics.  We are also, many of us, searching for spiritual meaning and connection.  But we are too worldly to be swept up in the religious experience of our grandparents. 

Yet we come.  Each year we return, seeking reconciliation: with God, with others and with ourselves.  Whether for the thirty days beginning with Ellul, or the three days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur or the 10 Yamim Noraim, we stop and take time to evaluate the year, who we are, how we have done and where we have fallen short.  Somewhere, very deep, this holiday resonates in our “innermost parts.”

I find it harder still to really believe in the idea of forgiveness.  I have personal behaviors that I don’t like.  I continually try to change them and I continually fail. I have had a strained relationship with my older sister for years.  I have held onto my grudges so long I don’t remember where and why they started.  I can’t seem to let go of the things about her that I don’t like or make a change.  If I am not capable of accepting her for who she is, how can I believe that God will accept me as I am?  If I can’t overcome my alienation from my sister and be reconciled to her, how can I overcome my alienation from God?

The story that we just read – the birth of Isaac and the banishment of Ishmael and Hagar – addresses this issue of reconciliation and acceptance in the face of great pain.

The story is fairly straightforward.  After years of frustration Abraham and Sarah have a son, Isaac.  He is weaned, and at the party celebrating this milestone Sarah sees Ishmael playing and tells Abraham to drive him and Hagar out of the camp, and Abraham does.  He sends Hagar and Ishmael to what appears to be certain death and they are saved through divine intervention.

It’s a hard story: a story of jealousy, of rivalry, of words unspoken, and of hatred, but that is just part of the story.  What we read is actually the middle section of a much larger story that begins in Bereshit 16:5 and ends at Bereshit 25:12.  And this larger story is one of abiding love and the hard work of reconciliation.

It begins in Bereshit 16:5, with Hagar pregnant with Abram’s child and Sarai, jealous.  Sarai says,

 ⁵”I myself put my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am lowered in her esteem.  The Lord decide between you and me!”  ⁶Abram said to Sarai, “Your maid is in your hands.  Deal with her as you think right.”  Then Sarai treated her harshly, and she ran away from her. 

⁷An angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the road to Shur, ⁸and said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”  And she said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.”

⁹And the angel of the Lord said to her, “Go back to your mistress, and submit to her harsh treatment.” 

And the angel promises Hagar that all will be well and that she will bear a son who will be the father of many.  Hagar agrees to return, “¹³And she called the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are El-roi,’ by which she meant, ‘Have I not gone on seeing after He saw me!’  ¹⁴Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi.”

Remember that name – Beer-lahai-roi – it is a very important place.

So Hagar returns to Abraham’s tent.  Ishmael is born and lives as Abram’s son and heir. Until, around 9 years later, in Bereshit 18, when three visitors come to Abraham’s camp and announce that Sarai will conceive.

Sure enough, in Bereshit 21:2, Isaac is born.  Two or three years later he is weaned – and at this wonderful moment, in verse 10, Sarah says to Abraham, “Drive out this slavegirl and her son, for the slavegirl’s son shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac.”

Which makes perfect sense when you think about.  Ishmael is, after all, Abraham’s first-born son.  It matters a great deal to Sarah who will inherit Abraham’s estate.  And as Jews it matters to us who will inherit Abraham’s covenant with God.  According to the story it also matters a great deal to God, which son will be the transmitter of Abraham’s covenant.  Later it will be extremely important to the Muslims, which son inherits the covenant.  But I am not sure it matters much to Abraham.  After all, this boy Ishmael is his first-born son.  He has loved him and raised him for 13 years.  Why would he love his new son Isaac more?  For Sarah, on the other hand, Isaac is all she has!

God’s persuades a reluctant Abraham to do as Sarah asks, with a promise that everything will be ok with Ishmael, “Let it not seem evil in your eyes on account of the lad and on account of your slavegirl.  Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice, for through Isaac shall your seed be acclaimed.  But the slavegirl’s son, too, I will make a nation, for he is your seed.”  So with that promise, Abraham drives Hagar and Ishmael out.

We know the rest of the story, or course… even though Abraham does not.  Hagar and Ishmael head out into the wilderness of Beer Sheba.  The food runs out and then the water.  At the moment of hopelessness and impending death, an angel calls out and says, ^21:17 “Fear not, for God has heard the lads voice where he is.” And God shows her a well and they are saved.

I have read this terrible story, so full of anger, jealousy, pain and loss, for so many years.  As a child it scared me.  The idea that a parent would willingly drive away his child filled me with dread.  As a parent I have hated it.  It is of course a perfect dress rehearsal for the Akedah… another one of my personal favorites.  But reading it this year I looked at the fuller story, since the story doesn’t begin or end here, and reading the entire story changed the meaning of the story.

Go forward now to chapter 25, verse 7 “ And these are the days of the years of the life of Abraham which he lived: a hundred and seventy-five years. ⁸And Abraham breathed his last, and died at a ripe old age, old and sated with years, and he was gathered to his kinfolk.  ⁹ And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the Machpelah cave, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite,”

Here Ishmael suddenly reappears in the story to bury his father with Isaac. Where did he come from?  Why does he reappear?  Hasn’t he been driven out of the camp, and out of the story?  How many years have passed? 

Isaac was two or three years old at his weaning party, according to the scholars, when Hagar and Ishmael are banished.    According to Nahum Sarna, Sarah was 90 years old when she gave birth to Isaac.  She was 127 when she died.   So at this point Isaac is 37.  Ishmael was 13 when Isaac is born so he is 50 when Sarah dies.  Abraham was ten years older then Sarah, so that makes him 137.  Abraham was 175 when he died, so he lived another 38 years after Sarah.  That means that Isaac is 75 and Ishmael is 87 at Abraham’s funeral and 74 years have passed since Ishmael was sent away.  Lets assume that the chronology is exaggerated – although I don’t think the rabbis would have agreed.  We can halve the ages of everyone and it still means 37 years have passed.  It’s been a long time.

After such a long absence Ishmael reappears, and in such a matter-of-fact manner.  One day he’s gone.  Thirty-seven years later he reappears at a big family event and its no big deal.  It doesn’t make sense.  Things don’t happen that way.  It didn’t make sense to our rabbis either, so they filled in this huge hole in the story with a beautiful Midrash.

Ishmael marries and has four children and he prospers and has flocks and herds and tents according to the merits of Abraham, his father.  And some time later –maybe three years – Abraham says to Sarah, “I will go see my son Ishmael; I yearn to see him for I have not seen him in a long time.”  And Sarah agrees, on one condition, that Abraham not dismount from his camel.  Abraham goes and he reaches the place where Ishmael lives.  He greets Ishmael’s wife and asks her, “Where is Ishmael?”

She answers, “Off, hunting game.”

Still mounted on the camel Abraham says, “My daughter, give me a little water, that I may drink, for I am weary from the journey and a little bread.”

Ishmael’s wife answers, “No water, no bread.”  The Midrash says that all this time, while she is talking with Abraham she also is beating her children in the tent, cursing them and cursing Ishmael.  So Abraham says, “When your husband returns tell him, ‘A very old man from the land of Canaan came here to seek you.  I did not ask him who he was, and seeing you were not here he spoke to me and said, ‘When Ishmael your husband returns tell him, put away this tent pin, which you have placed here and put another tent pin in its place.’  And Abraham returns home.

Ishmael comes home.  Hears this from his wife, knows it was his father and he divorces his wife and marries another.

Another three years pass and Abraham says, “I’ll go see Ishmael – my son – because I haven’t seen him for a long time.”  He makes the same agreement with Sarah and he goes off to visit again.

He meets the new wife, some her name was Fatima.   This one invites him in and offers him food and drink.  Of course he can’t dismount because he promised Sarah he wouldn’t.  So she brings him water and bread.  And Abraham tells her, “Tell your husband, ‘A very old man from the land of Canaan came here and asked for you and I brought him food and water, and he ate and drank and his heart was glad.’  And tell him, ‘Your tent-pin is very good.  Do not put it away from the tent.’”  And Abraham goes on his way and returns to Sarah. 

Ishmael returns again and Fatima repeats all this to him.  And here the Midrash says, “Ishmael realized that his father still loved him.”  Even though Ishmael had not seen Abraham, he knew his father was periodically checking in on him.  That he was concerned with his welfare.  That he had not forsaken him.  In The Legends of the Jews by Ginzburg the story goes on to say that Ishmael took his family and went to live with Abraham in Canaan and that they lived together many days.

In Haamek Davar they say, “Abraham regarded him (Ishmael) as a son in every sense of the word; it was only relative to Sarah and her son that Ishmael was considered the son of the maidservant.”

And they go on to say, “Although, Ishmael was the son of the maidservant, Abraham loved his as his firstborn; and God blessed him for Abraham’s sake.”

Neither the writers of the Bible nor the rabbis were able to let Abraham just drive Ishmael away.  Ishmael is put back in the story and the Rabbis had to explain his presence at his father’s funeral.  Some kind of reconciliation must have taken place.  Love had to be nurtured.  If it couldn’t be done within the limits of this harsh narrative, they would hang a story on the few clues they could find.

In Bereshit, 25:1 it says, “And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah.”  In Bereshit Rabbah, R. Judah says Keturah was Hagar.  So after Sarah dies, Abraham marries Hagar.   Where does that come from?   I think the rabbis are attempting to close the circle that was opened in chapter 16 and reunite the broken family.

How was this marriage arranged?  The first time Rivka sees Isaac – three years after Sarah’s death – he is coming from Beer-lahai-roi.  In Bereshit 24:62, “And Isaac had come from the approach to Beer-lahai-roi, as he was living in the Negeb region… ⁶⁴And Rebecca raised her eyes and saw Isaac.”  Why was Isaac coming from Beer-lahai-roi?  Again, in Bereshit Rabbah it says that Isaac took his father to Beer-lahai-roi, which was the dwelling place of Hagar, to reunite them, so that they could marry.

They marry and Abraham has six more sons with Keturah/Hagar.

Now Ishmael’s re-appearance in the story isn’t so strange, for the bonds that were shattered at Isaac’s weaning party so many years ago have been rewoven again, carefully, over many years, through the active agency of both Abraham and Isaac as well as the receptiveness of Ishmael and Hagar.

There is a coda to the story.  After the burial of Abraham we read, “¹¹And it happened after Abraham’s death that God blessed Isaac his son, and Isaac settled near Beer-lahai-roi.”

The story begins with Hagar running away to Beer-lahai-roi, when she is abused by Sarah and pregnant with Ishmael.  Isaac meets Rivka coming back from Beer-lahai-roi.  Where the rabbis say he took his father to marry Hagar/Ketura.  And Isaac settles there after his father’s death.  Why does he go there?  I’d like to think it is to live with his brother Ishmael and his family and with his stepmother Hagar.  And that in the end this family that was blasted apart so many years before – in anger and jealousy and fear – has found a way to reunite in love and acceptance.

Beer-lahai-roi means well of the living one (or living god) who sees me.  Roi is spelled with an aleph – resh, aleph, yud.  But if you change that aleph to an ayin, the meaning could be, the well were friends (or neighbors) dwell.  Which fits the spirit of the story as I read it now.  Beer-lahai-roi is an oasis in the desert where reconciliation can happen, where old hurts can be healed and where two estranged brothers find a way to live together in peace.

Read this way, the story is no longer a story of tragedy and pain and loss.  It is one of love and reconciliation, where what was broken is made whole again.  There is no perfection in this story, no saintly behavior.  It is just men and women, parents and children, struggling with the their basic natures; doing wrong and trying to do right. 

Forced by circumstances to take an action he doesn’t want to take, to break up his family, Abraham then chooses to try to make things right, to the best of his ability.  Perhaps this is all it means to live in a sacred manner: to choose to do the right thing after we know we have done something wrong.

Maybe this is also an insight into Tshuvah.  That we must to try to take what is broken, what we ourselves have broken – whether it is ourselves, or a relationship, or a society or a heart – and try to make it whole again. 

That is one of the possibilities of these Chaggim, to move from separation to reconciliation, from brokenness to wholeness. 

These ten days give us the opportunity to reflect on where we have been and where we want to go, as individuals and as a community.   One place to search is among the torn places in our lives that need mending.  We can choose to accept the parts of ourselves that we dislike, to reach out to family members and old friends from whom we are estranged.

This year I would love it if we began to work to reach across the growing divide that separates us, one denomination from another, one Jew from another.  We can choose to grow farther apart or we can choose to find a way to reweave those connections.  Let’s reach across the courtyard at the BRJCC and start with Ahavat Yisrael.  Lets find a way to celebrate Sukkoth or Simchat Torah together.  We have a choice before us and the time of decision is upon us.  Do we look for ways to build Jewish community together or do we do it separately?  How different are we really?  I don’t know if we can be more inclusive.  I doubt Abraham knew what the outcome would be when he sought out Ishmael.  He only knew he wanted Ishmael in his life, so he reached out.  What kind of Jewish community do we want and what are we willing to do to get it?

(The following paragraph was added on Rosh Hashanah, and not included in the original text of the drash.)  I have to depart from my prepared remarks for a moment and talk about something that is on my mind and on my heart today.  This morning I opened my newspaper – I suppose it is always a mistake to look at the newspaper on Shabbat or Chag – and the headline in the West County Times was “Blood in Jerusalem.”  You probably all know that Ariel Sharon visited the Har Ha Bayit, the Temple Mount, last Thursday.  Now there are five Palestinians dead, 30 Israeli Border Police wounded and two Israeli soldiers killed: one was shot near Qualkilia and the other was blown-up in Gaza.  I can’t be poetic here.  I only pray that this year both sides will choose the path of reconciliation over the path of violence, bloodshed and killing.  And that this year we will sign a peace treaty in Hebron, not on the White House lawn, but in Hebron – where Ishmael and Isaac came together to bury their father Abraham.  Then we can turn Hebron from a fortress of hate to an oasis of peace.

There is a moment in the story when everything is most hopeless for Ishmael and Hagar and Hagar weeps, waiting for Ishmael to die.  God hears Ishmael and a messenger calls out to Hagar, “Fear not, for God has heard the lad’s voice where he is.”

The Rabbis said that just before that moment there was an argument in heaven.  God wanted to save Ishmael and the angels said, “Master Of The Universe, will you make a well for one who will one day slay Your children with thirst?”  And God asked them, “What is he now?” And the angels answered, “He is righteous.”  And God said, “I judge each one only as they are in the moment.” 

God judges us where we are.  Not where we have been or where we will be, not by what we have done or what we will do, but in the present moment… where we are now.

Like the Midrash of Abraham visiting Ishmael when he is away, never seeing him, but visiting his camp and checking on his welfare, so God checks in on us, on our behavior, and on our lives… when are least aware.  But we sense God’s presence by the messages and the signs that are left behind.

And one of those messages is that God accepts us as we are in the moment when we turn to God, and God always takes us back.  Then we too can choose to find a way to reach out and try to make things whole and right again, with ourselves, our friends, our family, and our community; as a parent reaches out and kisses an errant child, that he loves.  As God kisses each one of us, forgives each one of us, welcomes each one of us home in the image or our best selves.

Copyright 2000 by Congregation Netivot Shalom