Don’t hide Your face from me,
I’m asking for your help
I call to You — please hear my prayers,
O God If You would answer me as I have called to You
Please heal me now — Don’t hide Your face from me (Psalm 27:9, Debbie Friedman)
Yesterday I mentioned the memory of Saul Mariasis, my bimah partner and friend. Today’s teaching is in memory of Myra Becker, my partner and friend in the wider Elgin community.
We just read one of the most haunting and terrifying pieces of scripture ever. Abraham is asked by G-d to take his son, his only son, the one he loves, take Isaac up the mountain and offer his as a sacrifice. Abraham, who dares to argue with G-d just chapters ago, seems to not ask a question here. The rabbis are bothered by this and invent dialogue. We call that midrash. Take your son. But G-d, I have two sons. Your only son—they are each the only son of their mother. The one you love. But I love them both. Take Isaac.
So he does. He takes his son, his only son, the one he loves, Isaac. And no one stops him. Not his two servants. Not Isaac. Not Sarah.
He doesn’t seem to consult Sarah. Just takes Isaac. Because G-d told him too. Imagine you are Sarah waking up in the morning. Where’s your husband, Abraham? Where’s precious son, Isaac?!!!
In fact, in this story, we are missing Sarah’s voice.
She has one—she laughed when she was told she would have a child—she even questioned G-d asking how that was possible considering she was so old, and her husband also. Her prayer for a child was answered. The text tells us that G-d took note of Sarah. She was the one who told Abraham to take her handmaiden Hagar so that Abraham would have a child. She was the one who demanded later that Abraham sends Hagar out.
So where is her voice now?
Sometimes we need to find our voice as women. Yesterday, Risa read Hannah’s prayer as the haftarah. Hannah who desperately wanted a child, prayed for one. Hannah was doubted by Eli, the priest. He thought she was drunk, not praying. Nonetheless, G-d heard her voice and her prayer was answered. G-d took note of Hannah. She called that son Shmuel, for G-d heard.
Yesterday, we read the haunting story of Hagar and Ishmael who were thrown out of Abraham’s camp with just some water and bread. She puts the lad under a bush and calls out (the text doesn’t even use the term prayer—but that’s what it was) “Don’t let me look on while the child dies.”
No name. No hope. She is sure that he will die. Imagine the desperation. Imagine the panic. Imagine the fear. Then the angel of G-d says, “G-d has heard the voice of the lad.” Say what? No name again—this is Ishmael. Wasn’t it just Hagar who cried out…does G-d hear her voice? Does G-d answer her? The rabbis in the commentaries are not kind to her. They call her the other, a pun on Hagar, HaGer, the stranger and say that Abraham was right to listen to Sarah and throw her out. But was he? Yet she is the first one in the Bible to name G-d, calling G-d, El Roi, the G-d that sees.
Sometimes there isn’t a voice. Sometimes people just spring into action. We talked about how our actions matter. How there is a ripple effect. Think about Shifra and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, who saved the baby boys that Pharaoh had threatened to have killed. They risked their own lives to make sure that those baby boys would live. They said (in the midrash anyway), that the Hebrew women gave birth so quickly they didn’t have time to be called. One of those baby boys they rescued was Moses. Imagine the world without Moses. I talked about Shifrah and Puah’s courage when I met with some Guatemalan midwives as part of my American Jewish World Service’s fellowship. Those modern day midwives too risk their lives to help ensure the lives of the mothers and their children. I again talked about Shifrah and Puah when I helped coordinate Elgin Standing Together. It is important to know when to stand up and speak out. Our tradition demands no less. And our voices and actions will be heard.
This is a year where women’s voices have been heard. When we were gathered in this room last year the phrase #MeToo wasn’t a well known movement yet. I applaud the women who had the courage to stand up and speak out and share the very personal, challenging details of their lives. I pray that their words and their actions have made a real, lasting difference. I pray that my words and my actions continue to make a difference. As someone who has worked on the front lines with rape and domestic violence survivors, I am keenly aware that men have been victims too—and that men have also courageously spoken out. As recent news stories point out, those battles are not over yet, and our tradition demands that we continue to speak out so that our voices are heard. For every woman, every man, every child sitting in this room who wonders whether your voice will make a difference, whether the gain will outweigh the pain, whether you will be believed, know that I will listen. I will hear your voice.
And then there is Sarah. What a complicated life. She follows Abraham to the land that G-d will show them. She opens her tent on all four sides to greet any guest. She gives Abraham her handmaiden Hagar to ensure that he can be fruitful and multiply and so that G-d’s promise that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands of the sea. She laughs at the time to come, when she is promised a child. Like many infertile women today she would have done almost anything to be able to have a child.
When there is a famine in the land, she goes down to Egypt with her husband—and he tries to give her away—as his sister—to the King. Not once. But twice. Her own #MeToo moments.
She does eventually have that child—Isaac—meaning laughter. And then the unthinkable happens. Abraham hears a voice. And takes her son, her only son, without permission. She is separated from her beloved Isaac.
There is so much commentary on just this brief chapter. There is a great book, But where is the Lamb by James Goodman. Thank you to Chuck Zimmerman for first sharing it with me. A collection of all of the commentaries from time immemorial from three religious traditions and some secular ones as well. It is well worth the slow read. But it doesn’t provide much of an answer to the other question. Where was Sarah? She is only mentioned 100 times in the book.
Where was Sarah’s voice? The rabbis of the midrash don’t give her much.
Goodman in his book wonders, “I thought, that in the hours between God’s command and bedtime, or bedtime and morning, Sarah would have read God’s command on her husband’s face. No Abraham didn’t say anything to anyone, But he didn’t say a word. Not to God. Not to Sarah. Not to anyone. Instead, he rose up early the next morning, saddled his donkey, (page 4).
He left. Without telling Sarah goodbye. He took her son, her only son, the one she loved.
“Some imagined what Abraham might have said to Sarah to comfort her or calm her down. Some explained why Abraham hadn’t said anything to Sarah. What those who imagined him weeping as he took leave of Sarah thought of the stories in which he was giddy with excitement, eager to obey God’s command.” (page 63 and 83).
“Several centuries later, some turned their attention to Sarah. They didn’t have much to work with. G (as Goodman calls the narrator, or the editor, or G-d) had left her out of the story, and the earliest Jewish interpreters, from Jubilees to Josephus, had followed his lead. And by their lights who can blame them? The story wouldn’t have been much of a story if the sacrifice had been aborted in the first few lines. How do you say “Over my dead body” in classical biblical Hebrew?” (page 87) What would you have said?
But the rabbis had to explain this gap somehow. So “many rabbis turned, once again, to Satan, who, having failed to persuade either Abraham or Isaac that what they were doing was crazy, figured Sarah was his last hope. Some said he had approached her disguised as an old family friend and told her where her husband and son had gone. She cried out, the same cry that she imagined would soon come from her son— three short sobs (explaining one way of sounding the shofar, the three short blasts called shevarim). Her heart stopped on the spot, and her soul flew out of her. Others said Sarah had taken off after them, making it only as far as Hebron, where she learned that Isaac had been spared, and she died, on the spot, of joy. Others still said she had awaited their return at the door of her tent. But Isaac lagged well behind Abraham, and when Sarah saw Abraham approaching without him, she assumed her son was dead. She fainted, and never came to. In a fourth version, she lived long enough to hear Isaac tell the tale: “You mean if it were not for the angel you’d already be dead?” she asked. (p. 88).
So after Abraham and Isaac return, in the very next scene, Sarah dies. In Kiryat Arbah, now Hebron. Some 40 miles away. There is no explanation how there is this gap in the text. And Abraham comes to bury her. He buys a funeral cave—the choicest of them—from the residents. He insists on buying it because then he really owns it—that is one of the arguments for why we as Jews are entitled to the land of Israel—Abraham bought it. And he eulogizes her. Some say that eulogy was the Woman of Valor we see in proverbs. A woman of valor who can find…for her price is far above rubies. She looks well to the ways of her household and eats not the bread of idleness. She gives food to her household and a portion to her workers—Hagar perhaps? And she laughs at the time to come…
The parsha, portion is called Chaye Sarah. It begins this are the years of Sarah’s life. Sarah was one hundred and twenty and seven years. And Sarah died.
Sarah was our matriarch. The first matriarch. The mother of our people. She was a prophetess. A righteous woman. A woman of valor.
To this day, we use the names of the matriarchs to plead on our behalf. When we say a mishberach, the prayer for healing of mind, body or spirit, the matriarchs’ names are always included. Even in the ArtScroll Orthodox prayerbook.
News alert: Jewish women are obligated to pray. Sometimes that has been lost in modern translation particularly at places like the Western Wall. It has played out in the Israeli Supreme Court, at the Knesset, and in headlines the world over. As the Women of the Wall siddur prays:
“We pray that women’s voices will be heard at the Kotel and received with love. “And for our sisters, all the women and girls of your people Israel: let us merit to see their joy and hear their voices raised before You in song and praise.” https://www.womenofthewall.org.il/kol-isha/
Yet women have a responsibility to pray. They have always had an obligation to pray. It is mandated in the Talmud. The assumption is that G-d hears our voices too—That G-d needs our voices. Just like G-d heard Hagar’s and Hannah’s.
Shma Koleneinu. Chus V’rachum Aleinu. G-d, full of mercy and grace, Hear our voice.
Women in the Middle Ages through today actually wrote beautiful tkhines, pleading prayers often for womanly mitzvoth like lighting the Shabbat or Yom Tov candles or immersing in the mikveh. Without even knowing that tradition, my mother would actually give a Shabbat spiel after she lit the Shabbes candles, and we kids better pay attention.
Listen to the prayer of Sarah bat Tovim from the tkhine of the three gates from the mid 18th century as she prays using the “zecut imahot”, the merits of our mother Sarah:
And through the merit which I gain by preparing the wick for the sake of our mother sore, may hashem yisborekh – praised by He – remember us for the merit of her pain when her beloved son yitshok was led to the binding. May she defend us before God – praised be He – that we should not – khas vesholem – be left widows this year, and that our children should not – khas vesholem – be taken away from this world in our lifetime.
(Translation from The Merit of Our Mothers by Tracy Gurenklirs)
And this one from Seral bas Jacob a prayer for hearing the shofar from the late 18th century:
First we ask our mother Sarah to plead for us in the hour judgment that we may go out free from before this tribunal…Have mercy, our mother, on your children. And especially, pray for our little children that they may not be separated from us. For you know well that it is very bitter when a child is taken away from the mother as it happened to you. When your son Isaac was taken away from you, it caused you great anguish. And now you have the chance to plead for us. For he is now blowing the shofar, the horn of a ram, so that God will remember for us the merit of Isaac, who let himself be bound like a sheep on the altar [Gen.22]. Therefore, Satan will be confused, and cannot at this moment accuse us. So you have a chance to plead for us, that the attribute of mercy may awaken toward us.
(Translation from Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality)
And listen to these words from the book Outwitting History which the CKI Book Group just read.
“What went on during the [First World] War don’t ask. I was separated from my mother and my sisters, I lived with a neighbor, we didn’t have what to eat. (p. 112).
Or this one:
“A month later, at night, someone came for me. They were taking all the wives. My oldest son, three years old, and his brother, a year and a few months, were lying in their beds. I had to leave them where they were. They took me and I never saw them again.” And the children? “No one,” she says, “knew where the children were.” To this day she had not found them. (pp. 246-247).
These words are just as haunting today as when they happened to Sarah our matriarch or in the Middle Ages or in Germany or Russia.
Later this fall, CKI will host a play, Rosenstrasse, a play about women during World War II who spoke up. A play about non-Jewish wives of Jewish men who were arrested, separated from their families by the Nazis in Berlin and about to be deported to their certain deaths. These women speaking up enabled all 2100 men to be spared.
Here is my midrash about Sarah. Maybe this explains her silence and the gap between Beer Sheva and Kiryat Ata:
And they went down the mountain
together
Both Abraham and Isaac
And together they returned
To Beersheva.
How could she have stayed?
When she learned what Abraham had done,
When she learned how G-d had tested Abraham
how nearly she had lost her son, her only the son, the one she loved
How nearly she had lost Isaac,
The one that G-d had promised to her.
And when Sarah learned all this,
She ran away.
What G-d could, would demand this of her, of any mother?
In fact, never even asked her,
Just told Abraham to take their son
To a mountain G-d would show
Take him and offer him as a sacrifice
Like a ram.
She could imagine Isaac’s fear
When he saw the knife poised in Abraham’s hand
And he realized he was to be the ram.
And Abraham, her husband, he was no beter than G-d,
Maybe even worse.
He did it without questioning,
Without wondering why
Without asking G-d
Without consulting Sarah.
And so she fled.
She would go home
To where her family was
Where everything was familiar,
The land, the people, the gods
Not like this strange land that Abraham had brought her to,
Like like this strange G-d who demands everything,
Even her son.
And on her way Sarah died in Kiryat Arba,
Now Hebron,
Even though the text does not tell us why here
We can imagine Sarah’s suffering
At the disintegration of her family
And the years of Sarah’s life were
One hundred and twenty and seven
And Abraham and Isaac came to Hebron
To mourn her.
copyright 1987 Margaret Joy Frisch
Abraham was part of the covenant. God promised that he would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand in the sea. God promised that Abraham would inherit the land. God made the same promise Jacob and to us. It is part of our ongoing legacy. But it is the women—Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Shifra, Puah, Zipporah, Hannah, Ruth and others who through their actions and their voices kept the covenant alive.
We need to return Sarah’s voice to her and in so doing return our voice to us. G-d took note of Sarah. G-d remembered Sarah. We need to help her find her place in the covenant so that children are not separated from their parents.
Sh’ma Koleinu, Chus V’rachum aleinu—G-d, full of mercy and grace, hear our voice. All of our voices. Our men, our women, our little ones. All of us as we stand before You ready to enter into Your covenant.
Then it will be a sweet new year. L’shanah tovah.