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It is a great privilege, not only to worship in this synagogue,
as my wife and I have done with pleasure before, and hope to do
occasionally, now that we are local residents, but also to occupy
the pulpit of a good friend, whom I have known since he was a
teenager, and for whom I have always felt a special affection. I
know there are a lot of people here who share that feeling with
me - he has that effect on. people! — and it intensifies our
sympathy for him and his family during their time of sorrow.
Death is a fact of life.
It in the hardest of all facts to
accept.
Hence the title, and the thesis, of Ernest Becker's
prize~winning book, The .Denial 01’ Death. But death is also a
cgndixign_of life, and more particularly of birth. A5 Viscount
Herbert Samuel wrote in his little book of common—sense
philosophy, Belief and Action, "If there is to be birth, there
must be death.
Unless there were departures, a time would
quickly come when there could be no arrivals" (p. 67).
And birth is the subject of our Torah portion, more
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particularly the birth of Isaac.
But Isaac is not Abraham's
first son. There is a half—brother called Ishmael who is already
about the age Jeffrey was when I first knew him. And it is the
relationship between the two of them that I would like to explore
with you a little this morning.
The story is a complicated one, and to understand it, we must
go back a few chapters.
It begins in chapter 15, when Abraham,
like a typical Jewish father, begins to worry whether he will
ever have a son and heir, and God promises him that he will
(15:2ff).
But for ten years the promise remains unfulfilled.
Then Abraham's wife Sarah proposes that her Egyptian slave—girl
Hagar should become his concubine (16:1ff).
The proposal may seem strange to us, but historically,
concubinage has been practised in many societies, and we know
that according to Hurrian law, which forms much of the background
of the Patriarchal stories, a barren wife was actually tiggd to
provide her husband with a concubine, and therefore Sarah merely
acted in accordance with well—established custom (E.A. Speiser,
Genesis, pp. 120i).
Her action nevertheless has unforeseen consequences.
For as
soon as she conceives, Hagar begins to feel superior to her
mistress, and to treat her with disrespect (16:4).
Sarah, in
return, is furious, and would like nothing better than to demote
Hagar to the rank of an ordinary slave and then sell her to some
passing caravan. But she knows that she is not allowed in law to
do that, and that Abraham would have disapproved.
So she does
what unscrupulous landlords do to sitting tenants: she makes life
so miserable for Hagar that she leaves of her own accord (16:6).
But God, as you would expect, does not take her side. On the
contrary, He has pity on Hagar, and sends an angel to comfort
her.
She will have a son, he tells her, and his name will be
fishmael, meaning that "God has heard" her affliction, and he
will become the ancestor of a great nation (16:7—11).
It is true that the angel goes on to say some uncomplimentary
things about the as yet unborn child: "He shall be a wild ass of
a man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against
him" (16:12).
But that is only an antidpation by the story—
teller of the fact that there will be trouble between the
descendants of Ishmael and Isaac respectively in time to come.
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It is also true that the angel tells Hagar to go back home and
put up with Sarah's ill—treatment. But that is only a literary
device necessitated by the fact that there were two different
traditions about Hagar's departure: the one I have Just recalled
to you, and the one we have read this morning. Hagar, that is,
bad to be brought back home in chapter 16 in order that she might
re—appear in Abraham's household in chapter 21.
What happens during the interval between the two accounts?
Well, Ishmael is duly born and named (16:15f).
But God informs
Abraham that he will have angjhgn son, this time by Sarah.
Abraham, being at this time nine‘nine years old, reacts to the
announcement with incredulous laughter, and prays that his
existing son, Ishmael, may prosper.
But God repeats the
improbable promise and, in allusion to Abraham's laughter, tells
him that the new baby is to be called Yitzchak, from the verb
At the same time God responds to Abraham's
tzachak, "to laugh".
plea for Ishmael: “Behold, I will bless him and make him fruitful
and multiply him exceedingly...But I will establish My covenant
with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next
year.
All that happens in chapter 17 (vv.15—21).
Then, in chapter
18. the divine promise concerning Isaac is repeated yet again, in
the well known story of the three angels who visit Abraham in his
tent.
This time Sarah overhears the announcement, and it is she
who finds it incredible, and laughs.
The story that concerns us is then interrupted by the account
of the destrution of Sodom and Gomorrah, and one or two other
episodes, and resumes only with the chapter we have read this
morning.
Isaac is duly born and circumcised, and the fear of
Sarah. aged ninety, that people will laugh at her when she claims
to be the mother provides yet another version of the pun about
the name Yitzchak.
Isaac is weaned, presumably at the age of two, and there is a
feast to celebrate the event, and then we catch our first glimpse
of the two boys, thirteen years apart in age, together. What are
they doing? Ishmael, the text says is laughing — metzachek, that
same verb yet again!
But an! is he laughing? In View of the
sequel, namely that the laughter arouses Sarah’s anger, some
translators assume that it is a axjmnuanuui laughter, and
therefore say "mocking" or “making sport“. But metzachek could
also mean "playing", and playing happily together is just what
the two boys were doing according to the most recent Bible
translations. just as one often sees black and white children
playing happily together because their minds have not yet been
poisoned by the prejudices of their parents.
Nevertheless Sarah is furious. Why? Because of her prejudice!
50 deep is her hatred that she cannot even bring herself to refer
to Hagar and Ishmael by name!
Instead, she says to Abraham:
"Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this
slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac“ (v. 10).
Once again, Abraham, though he gives in to Sarah, shows that
his instincts are decent and generous.
As the text says, "the
thing was grievous in Abraham’s sight on account of his son" (v.
Once again, too, God reassures him. Though Isaac will be
11).
Abraham’s heir, Ishmael will also become the progenitor of a
nation.
The next morning Abraham gets up early. provides mother
and son with food and drink, and sends them on their way.
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But soon they run out of water.
Then Hagar abandons Ishmael
under a bush; perhaps the editor has forgotten that he is by this
time a strapping lad of fifteen! Then somebody weeps. According
to the Hebrew text it is Hagar, but according to the ancient
Greek Version of the Bible it is Ishmael, which fits better
because the text goes on to say that "God heard the voice of the
lad” (v. 17), which once more explains the name Yisbmael and
shows God's compassion for him. His compassion extends to Hagar
as well, for we are next informed that God "opened her eyes, and
she saw a well of water" (v. 19).
And the story ends with yet
another assurance that Ishmael survived, married, and lived more
or less happily ever after.
So much for the story.
What can we learn from it? Well, I
suppose many things, but let me single out two.
First, who comes out well from it? Nobody, really. Certainly
not Sarah, consumed with jealousy and hatred, who doesn’t care
what happens to Hagar and Ishmael, and is quite prepared to let
them starve to death in the wilderness; and certainly not Hagar,
Sarah's mirror image, who gloats over her mistrees's barrenness,
and is prepared to abandon her own son to die of thirst. Ishmael
is perhaps all right, except for the prediction that he will be
at daggers drawn with everybody. With Isaac, since he is still a
And even Abraham, though well—
baby, it is too early to tell.
What emerges, therefore, is a true
intentioned, is weak.
picture! That is what human beings are like! We are none of us
We all have our faults.
Therefore we had
paragons of virtue.
better practise a little tolerance to one another.
That is one point. The other is that Ishmael and Isaac are not
just two individuals. Already in the biblical narrative they are
identified as the progenitors of two nations.
They personify
Arabs and Jews, and therefore make us think of all the mutual
mistrust and worse which have marred their relationship from time
to time throughout the ages, and most violently in recent times.
That is not a prelude to yet another analysis of the present
situation. Just how much blame is to be attached to the one side
or the other over a particular incident, like the Temple Mount
massacre during Sukkot, is not what matters. Nor is the question
whether such incidents are fairly or unfairly reported in the
British press. These are relatively minor issues. What matters
is that Palestinians and Jews should recognise that, like their
putative progenitors, Ishmael and Isaac, they are brothers; that
they must learn to live together. or alongside each other, in
peace; and that, to that end, they must talk and listen to each
other.
Let me end with three quotations.
The first comes from a
letter in yesterday’s Jéwish Chronicle.
In the course of it the
author, Michael Lazarus, of the International Centre for Peace in
the Middle East, remarked: "Both sides have made mistakes (often
the same ones) and each has been deaf to the voice of the other.
The time has surely come for the listening to begin" (9. 25).
Secondly, I thought you might like to know that, immediately
after the Temple Mount incident, in my capacity as Chairman of
the Council of Reform and Liberal Rabbis, I sent a message to the
Rabbinic Human Rights Watch in Israel, which includes all of
Israel's Progressive rabbis and a number of its Conservative and
Orthodox rabbis, with a copy to the Israeli Ambassador, in which
"We call upon Palestinians and Jews alike to exercise
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restraint, and to make clear their desire for a settlement which
will seek to reconcile the conflicting but Just demands of Israel
for security and of the Palestinians for self—determination.
Above all, because it holds the reins of power, we call upon the
Government of Israel to re—activate the peace process: not
because of the Gulf Crisis, and not because of international
pressure, but because Judaism demands that the highest priority
be given at all times to the pursuit of peace and the avoidance
of the shedding of the blood of human beings, created in God's
image."
Finally, a poem by one of Israel's leading poets, Shalom Joseph
Shapira, who uses the pseudonym Shin Shalom, which appears in the
RSGB Hachzor for the High Holydays (p. 891):
Ishmael, my brother,
How long shall we fight each other?
My brother from times bygone,
My brother - Hagar’s son,
My brother, the wandering one.
One angel was sent to us both,
One angel watched over our growth —
There in the wilderness, death threatening through thirst,
I a sacrifice on the altar, Sarah’s first.
Ishmael, my brother, hear my plea:
It was the angel who tied thee to me...
Time is running out, put hatred to sleep.
Shoulder to shoulder, let's water our sheep.
tn
D. Rayner
Finchley Refbrm Synagogue
Shabba Va~yera
3rd Nbvember, 1990
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