Rosh HaShanah - Thurs Oct 3 (Tishrei 1)
Once upon a time, there was a blended family. Like most blended families, it was a complicated one. The age range between the two half-brothers made for tough rivalries, the husband’s first and second partners didn’t get along, and the mother of the younger son was jealous of the older. Eventually, the situation became untenable. The mother of the older son, and that son, were sent away with barely enough to survive. The mother of the younger son relaxed into a simpler life with herself, her husband, and her long-wished for heir.
One family became two. With the exception of burying their father together, the two sons never saw one another again. Instead, they started their own nations, which over the millennia have ranged from being relative allies to abject enemies. Sometimes it’s difficult even to remember that these two peoples started out as children of the same father.
As will come as no surprise, I’m talking about the first Jewish family, and the ancestors of the first Muslim family. It may seem impossible to imagine a different path for Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael, and Sarah and Isaac, than the one detailed in today’s Torah reading. But I want to take some time to look more closely at their dynamics and think together about how these ancient characters could have acted differently, and how we can rise to the challenge of complexity in our own context.
Let’s remind ourselves of the basics: Abraham and Sarah could not have children. Sarah suggested that Abraham have a child with her servant, Hagar, and thus Ishmael was born. When Ishmael was around 13, God promised Sarah would have her own son, and, despite Sarah’s disbelieving laughter, Isaac arrived a year later. When Isaac was weaned, Sarah saw Ishmael doing something that upset her— you may remember a detailed discussion of this last year— and decided that there was only one way forward. So in Genesis 21:10-13 “She said to Avraham: Drive out this maidservant and her son, for the son of this maidservant shall not share-inheritance with my son, with Yitzhak! The matter was exceedingly bad in Avraham’s eyes because of his son. But God said to Avraham: Do not let it be bad in your eyes concerning the lad and your maidservant; in all that Sara says to you, hearken to her voice, for it is through Yitzhak that seed will be called by your [name]. But also the son of the maidservant—a nation will I make of him, for he is your seed.”
We know Abraham is distressed, but we learn nothing of any actual conversation he may have had with his loved ones about it. The commentators read between the lines, trying, as usual, to spare Abraham from any uncouth behavior like casting out an innocent child. According to Shemot Rabbah, an early midrash, “[Ishmael] set out on a path of depravity. [Abraham] then hated him and expelled him from his home emptyhanded.” God is also described by commentators, including Sforno and Ha’emek Hadavar among others, as seeking to distinguish Isaac from Ishmael by casting Isaac as Abraham’s son through which the covenant would be secured, and Ishmael only as his seed— still important, but not a true heir.
Of course, Torah itself gets into none of these details, rather moving at once from Sarah’s request, Abraham’s concern and God’s reassurance to the dissolution of the family. In Genesis 21:14-16: “Avraham started-early in the morning, he took some bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar—placing them upon her shoulder— together with the child and sent her away. She went off and roamed in the wilderness of Be’er-Sheva. The water in the skin came to an end, so she threw the child under one of the bushes, and went and sat by herself, at a distance, as far away as a bowshot, for she said [to herself]: Let me not see the child die! So she sat at a distance, and lifted up her voice and wept.”
In this moment, ayehem? Where are they? Where are each of these family members, physically and emotionally?
Sarah is home in a place of ruthlessness, fixated on the protection of her son and his future. The lives of others, even those she’s played a massive role in shaping, are of no concern.
Hagar is dying of thirst in a place of hopelessness, so overwhelmed that all she can do is withdraw and await the worst. She can’t see the well that holds the key to survival.
Isaac and Ishmael are where their parents have put them: Ishmael in the wilderness, Isaac in the relative luxury of his father’s tent— not yet knowing the horror that awaits him on the mountain.
God is in a place of distance, moving pieces into place for the future without paying particular attention to the short term devastation affecting Hagar and Ishmael.
And Abraham? Abraham is in a place of withdrawal from accountability— of listening to Sarah, to God, to everyone but himself. He is no longer the man who went back and forth with God arguing for the sake of a handful of righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah. He has instead become the man who will give up one son to the desert, and will in time be willing to sacrifice the other.
As you hear this story this year, Ayeka? Where are you? Whose heartspace do you most easily inhabit? Are you feeling Sarah’s ruthless resolve, willing to sacrifice innocents to protect those closest to you? Are you feeling Hagar’s hopelessness, turning away from the suffering because you fear that there is nothing to be done even for those you love most? Are you feeling Isaac and Ishmael’s disempowerment and perhaps naivete? Are you feeling God’s detachment, intentional or otherwise? Are you feeling Abraham’s desire to tuck your agency away and heed any voice but your own?
Or are you somewhere else entirely, unable to connect? Is there a part of you that’s wondering what you’re even doing here in the first place, whether sitting in this sanctuary or in front of your screen, chanting words and listening to stories that come from ancient times? Where are you as we enter this new year? And how can you bring yourself more fully into this community?
One of my teachers, Rabbi Sharon Brous, recently published a book that some of you read through the West End Synagogue book club: The Amen Effect. It’s a reflection on what she’s learned about the power, and necessity, of community. She urges us to “err on the side of presence” — to show up in the lives of those we care about, and those we don’t know personally who are part of our communities. This means showing up for celebrations and for consolation. It means going to shiva even when you didn’t know the deceased and aren’t close to the mourner. It means coming to services even when you’re on the fence, because making a minyan matters. It means signing up to volunteer, even though it might be awkward initially to collaborate with people you don’t know well.
Of course, showing up isn’t easy when you don’t feel fully connected to those you’re showing up for. Rabbi Brous writes about the challenges of divides between people today, saying: “Once two people no longer inhabit overlapping universe… it’s not hard to imagine devaluing their humanity altogether.” Sadly, this is something we see frequently in everything from who gets adequate news coverage to whose stories are algorithmically centered on Facebook and Instagram to who gets offers of help and who gets passed by on the streets of our city.
Rabbi Brous continues, “How did we get here? Two countervailing forces have driven this crisis: social alienation— the disintegration of collective bonds, leading to the fragmentations of our society— and tribalization— harsh lines of social division that carve up the population into exclusive, homogenous, often oppositional groups. These forces are not unique to our time, but both are exacerbated by digital technology and social media. These tools of connection have, paradoxically, led to what Sherry Turkle terms an erosion of empathy, dragging dangerous, malignant forces from the margins to the mainstream. The convergence of these trends is leading us right to the edge of the abyss.”
Sarah is at the edge of the abyss when she begs Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. Her jealousy — what Dr. Brene Brown defines as an emotion that “typically involves three people and occurs when one fears losing something to another person,” has effected a complete erosion of empathy, such that the woman and child Sarah once saw as her family’s future have become its greatest threat. Circumstances have changed, Sarah is afraid, and the only way forward she sees is one of separation.
Her instinct is one our people knows well, and for good reason. But, sometimes, separating ourselves from those who are different serves to limit both our present and future. How many lives have been lost, and are being lost now, due in part to the separation of Isaac and Ishmael and the formation of two distinct peoples that followed? In a less deadly and dramatic manner, how might the divides within our own congregation be replicating those within this ancient family?
There are people here whose primary community, or a primary community, is West End Synagogue. You have been showing up for this congregation for years, decades. You’ve raised your children here, or helped your friends raise theirs, and buried your parents surrounded by WES members. You’ve run committees, served on the board and donated to the Kol Nidre appeal above and beyond your dues. You’ve helped us thrive.
But now, maybe you’re seeing people who don’t fit your idea of what a Jew is, or what a Reconstructionist is. You’re having to learn new vocabulary, recalibrate your expectations, and maybe even feel temporarily a little less at ease in the community you love because people quite different from you are finding home at WES too, and that is shifting the community itself. Of course it’s always this way— we are an evolving religious civilization, after all— but at times it feels harder to be the one having to adjust to change than the one whose presence brings the change. Perhaps you’re feeling more alone, and less connected, because the dynamic of our community is changing.
Like Sarah, like Hagar, like Abraham, and in some ways like God, you have choices. Like Sarah, you can try to avoid or eliminate those who complicate your existence, or you can lean into the sacred challenge of preserving community across difference. Like Hagar, you can turn away from what you love because you fear losing it, or you can look for ways to adapt. Like Abraham, you can decide to pick old or new, or you can listen with an open heart to those who are having a difficult time and try to help them rediscover their sense of home. Like God, you can be callous or compassionate, distant or devoted.
The work of maintaining community is not easy, but if each of us takes One Small Step, we can strengthen the bonds that connect us and continue to engage Jewishly with joy and love. Over the summer, WES members received invitations to sign up to volunteer during these High Holy Days. Our “One Small Step” pilot program was an opportunity for community members to work together to make these sacred days the best that they can be. A dedicated Design Team— Al Slawsky, Dana Mindlin, David Prager, Dorothy Marette, Rose Davidson, and Susan Beckerman— worked with our administrator and with me to determine appropriate volunteer tasks, designate captains for each, and empower our congregation. About 40 of you signed up to do everything from pack machzorim to slice apples to usher to schlep the Torah scrolls from Amsterdam to Central Park West. Some of you are volunteering alongside friends, but others of you are working with people that outside of shul you would never have been likely to encounter. Your worlds are meeting and your boundaries softening, and through your work you are helping WES to be the very best that it can be.
Later this fall, every member of WES will be receiving an invitation to sign up for volunteer opportunities running the gamut from helping lead services to coordinating shiva leaders to taking photos for the website to organizing our library and the list will go on. 40 is a great number, but we have over 300 members, and we’ll want each of you to sign up to take One Small Step. It will help to strengthen our congregation. Just as importantly, it will help each of us to connect both with people whose lives and values we feel we understand and with those whose lives and values seem mysterious or even threatening to our own.
Because this is community. Each of us opting in, staying put, and engaging with love and with curiosity rather than pulling away into our respective silos or pushing those we see as a threat to our understanding of the status quo away.
What if, when Sarah approached Abraham and demanded Hagar and Ishmael’s banishment, Abraham had pushed back?
What if he had said to Sarah, “I know how afraid you are of what Ishmael’s presence could mean for Isaac, and I know you’re afraid of what Hagar’s continued presence in our lives could mean for you and me. But this is our family. Perhaps not the family we would have imagined, but our family. Yes, it is complicated. Yes, we don’t all get along perfectly. Yes, we are going to have to work hard to help these boys avoid unhealthy rivalries in the long-term, and to find a place of dignity for Hagar in our household. And yes, perhaps there will even come a time when Hagar and Ishmael will choose to leave and make their own way in the world, as our nephew Lot did many years ago. But let us not push them out. Let us leave that as their choice, and let us do our best to preserve the community that we have here.”
What if Sarah has listened? And what if they had remained a blended family? A blended family with all of the complex dynamics that would have ensued. What if, when asked Ayeka— where are you— each of our characters could have replied, “it’s complicated, but hineni— I’m here.”
What if, this year, each of us could do the same?
May this be a year of renewed presence, commitment, communal care, and much-needed sweetness. Shana Tovah u’metukah.
