Shabbat Va-Yera

Written by Rabbi Professor Marc Saperstein Friday, 10 November 2006

The import of this passage is unmistakable. Our tradition demands compassion for the outcasts, for the needy, even if they are not of our own people and faith, simply because they are human beings. Perhaps the greatest insight of the Hebrew Scripture is the commandment of empathy: “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The alien who dwells among you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God” (Lev. 19:33).

Va-Yera

Everyone is familiar with the twenty-second chapter of Genesis, describing the binding of Isaac. Yet in some ways, the chapter that precedes it, also in this week’s parashah, is just as poignant and disturbing. Following the birth of Isaac, it tells of a painful rupture in Abraham’s family. Sarah, jealous of Abraham’s first-born son Ishmael, demands that Ishmael and his mother Hagar be banished from the household–a demand that, we are told, was endorsed by God. Abraham sends his servant woman together with his thirteen-year-old son whom she had borne into the wilderness on foot, carrying a flask of water and a loaf of bread. When the water is used up, Hagar despairs, leaving her son to do, collapsing in despair.

We can explain the background of the passage: that it reflects a society in which a servant woman who was her master’s concubine expected few rights for herself or her children; that it represents the Biblical view of the providential destiny planned by God for Isaac and his descendants.

Yet the human pathos of the story–the frailty of Sarah threatened by the younger concubine and her maturing son, the dilemma of Abraham, torn between conflicting loyalties and loves, reluctantly acceding to the wishes of his wife, the plight of Hagar losing her way in the wilderness and unable to bear the sight of her son’s death by thirst–these elements cannot fail to touch the heart.

This poignance is heightened by the rabbinic interpretation of the passage as quoted in the commentary of Rashi. The Midrash (Gen. Rab. 53:14) addresses the verse, “God heard the voice of the boy where he is” (ba-asher hu sham, Gen. 21:17), saying: this shows that God responds to the prayer of the sick, the downtrodden, the outcast, before all other prayers.

According to the Rashi, the angels tried to convince God not to save the child, for they knew that his descendants, the Ishmaelites, later identified with the Arabs, would oppress the people of Israel; the angels therefore argued that it would be better to leave the boy to die. But God brushed aside these considerations. Right now there is a human being in need, right now there is someone worthy of help, so God would respond to his suffering and provide for him.

The Guardian this week (4 November) reported on French families who are secretly sheltering children “without papers”, who would be deported with their own families if discovered.* Those providing shelter have no special obligation toward the children; they know that they can be prosecuted if they are discovered. They are opening their homes and their hearts, despite the risk, because on some level they know that this is the right thing to do, they know that the cry of helpless human being in need is heard by God, and therefore deserves our attention and our response. Probably unaware, they are acting in the tradition of the courageous Huguenot community of Le Chambon sur Lignon during the Second World War, which–at considerably greater risk–sheltered and concealed hundreds of Jews fleeing the Nazis, and thereby saved many human lives.

“God heard the voice of the lad,” the voice of Ishmael the outcast crying for water in the wilderness. Let us not be deaf to the cries of the Ishmaels of our time: the aliens without proper papers in danger of deportation to hostile and dangerous environments abroad, the muted cries of the poor suffering from hunger and want in a land of plenty, the refugees in Darfur, the Palestinian civilians in Gaza suffering the consequences of internal and external battle fronts not of their own making. By opening our ears, our hearts, and our arms, we can share in God’s work, moving our world a bit closer to the time when Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael, will dwell together in unity and peace.

*I am grateful to Rabbi Margaret Jacobi for directing me to this article.

Rabbi Professor Marc Saperstein

November 2006