Sermons and Divrei Torah
Insiders and Outsiders
by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
(Sermon - Yom Kippur 5761)
The story is told of a number of disciples of the Rabbi of Lvov
who met to discuss the corrupt ways of the new generation. There
were many, they noted, who were giving up the old customs, cutting
their beards and sidelocks, and backsliding spiritually. They
thought it imperative to do something, and so all the tzadikim
of Lvov met to confer and they resolved to set up stronger boundaries,
and to keep those backsliders away from the center of religious
life. They began by forbidding those they called “renegades” from
the privilege of using the Beit Din, or the court of arbitration.
But so they sought the consent of their Rebbe, Rabbi Wolf. Several
tzadikim reported to him with pride the results of their meeting,
and their decision to cast these “renegades” far outside the community.
His simple answer stunned them. “Do you think I love you more
than them?”
The farther away a Jew is, the more we are commanded to love him.
The farther away a Jew is, the more we are commanded to bring
her close.
“You know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in
the land of Egypt.” In a sense, the quintessential Jewish experience
is to feel the pain of the stranger; in reliving that pain year
after year at Passover; we experience liberation from existential
loneliness. We get to rehearse that liberation every year on Rosh
Hashana, when we hear the story of Hagar. We were strangers, so
that even though it is Sarah who is our matriarch, it is Hagar
who captures our heart.
In this morning’s Torah reading Sarah sees her son Isaac playing-mitzachek
in Hebrew- with Hagar's son Ishmael. The same Hagar is whom Sarah
had “given” to Abraham as a handmaid to produce offspring, so
that offspring-Ishmael- and Sarah’s offspring, Isaac- are actually
half brothers. Sarah is enraged by their play, for some reason
not clear in the text itself, and orders Abraham to cast both
Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert. “Cast out that slave woman
and her son” Sarah says. And then we expect the reason, “for he
is making fun of Isaac” or “for he is endangering Isaac” or even
“for I fear for Isaac’s moral and physical safety.” No, the text
is sharp and clear. “Cast out that slave woman and her son, for
the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with
my son Isaac.”
The Rabbis try and explain Sarah's rage. Mitzachek, they explain,
cannot mean simply playing as young boys often do, maybe even
a little roughhousing. It must mean something sinister, something
awful, for Sarah to have become so angry. Indeed, they link the
word mitzachek with sexual immortality- in this case incest- using
another text in Genesis with the word mitzachek, when Isaac and
Rebeccah are sexually flirting . Or they suggest that Ishmael
was trying to get Isaac to play with idols. Or even that Ishmael
was trying to murder Isaac. Mitzachek- to laugh, to play, the
very same Hebrew root of the word Yitzchak, or Isaac. Ishmael
was mitzachek with Yitzchak-perhaps, playing as his equal. Ishmael
was a threat because he enters into the closed circle of Abraham
and Sarah when he plays with Isaac. He is a threat because if
he gets close enough to that centre, he may get to share in the
inheritance. “Cast out that slave woman and her son” Sarah says,
“ for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance
with my son Isaac.” What an early lesson Sarah taught those kids.
My son won’t share the inheritance with that son of a slave. My
son is an insider. Your son is an outsider.
The traditional commentators condemn Sarah for her quick and decisive
action. Nachmanides, the sixteenth century medievalist, writes
in his commentary, “Our mother Sarah sinned in this oppression
and so did Abraham in allowing her to do this.” We may think that
Sarah is never punished for her cruelty to Hagar. Yet though in
Genesis 21:12 Abraham is commanded to listen to her voice in all
that she says, her sentencing of Hagar into the desert a second
time is, in fact, the last words Sarah ever speaks. She dies in
the next chapter, alone, in silence, as much an outsider as Hagar,
absent at her son Isaac’s binding on the mountain and dead by
the time Isaac weds Rebekkah. And Abraham? Did he ever get punished
for his acquiescence to Hagar's banishment? The Akedah, the near-sacrifice
of his beloved Isaac, follows on the heels of this portion. He
surely must have felt a small measure of Hagar’s anguish as he
heads out into the desert with his own son just a a few days later.
The God of justice makes Abraham experience the very anguish that
he had visited upon Hagar. And Isaac reconciles with that “son
of a slave” when together they bury their father Abraham. Could
it be just a coincidence that Isaac meets his intended bride in
Be’er Lahai Roi, the name of the very place where Ishmael was
saved by the angel? What was Isaac doing there? Going to help,
to bring water perhaps, to his half brother? Inviting him to the
wedding that even Sarah would not see? Maybe Isaac refuses to
let Ishmael be an outsider once his parents are gone. Maybe Isaac
goes to Be’er Lahai Roi after the death of Sarah to invite Ishmael
in. After all, he is family.
It is always amazing to me that the central text of the holiest
day in the Jewish year is about two women. This tradition of ours,
so male-centered, chooses these two women and their conflict as
the theme and focus of this first day. Who better than a woman
to tell the story of being an outsider? It is as if the Torah
senses that women are already outside the centre of the historical
Biblical scene, and so their conflict comes to symbolize the greater
conflict anyone feels when they are cast out from inside. The
woman as Jew. Isn’t it true that we Jews have experienced Hagar’s
estrangement time and time again as we are cast aside, denied,
passed over, moved out from the inside to the outside? Hagar,
that Egyptian slave, comes to symbolize our own deeply held feelings
as Jews of being powerless.
For being an outsider is being powerless. Sarah took Hagar, and
gave her to Abraham. The verbs indicate the power imbalance. And
being an insider is being powerful. Alice Walker writes, “Just
as we have had to struggle to rid ourselves of slavish behaviors,
we must as ruthlessly eradicate any desire to be mistress or master.”
After all, we are descendants not of Hagar, but of Sarah. We can
be as cruel as we can be kind.
Hagar’s experience in the desert is the personification of alienation.
What better day to talk about alienation then this day when we
hope to come back in, to come home, to gather the clan as it were?
When better to talk about outsiders and insiders than this day,
holiest day of the year, when the proverbial gates “open” and
we decide where we stand. From the very beginning of Jewish time,
there have been insiders and outsiders. This story asks us on
this day of the New Year: are you going in? Or are you staying
out?
And if we don’t talk about it during these holy days, the story
of Hagar will just be a peripheral tale about one of the Torah’s
non-Jewish characters, and we’ll smugly hear it and think it's
not about us.
But it is about us. It's about the lines drawn in the Jewish community.
It's about Jews alienated, pushed out, the Hagars among us: Jews
who are unemployed, or poor, who don’t live in the Bathurst corridor
with 2.2 kids and a dog. Jews without money, who don’t have mini-vans
or SUVs or work on Bay Street with nice houses in Thornhill; like
Hagar, cast into the desert with only bread and water. Jews who
are intermarried, afraid of rejection, used to rejection, expecting
rejection; like Hagar rejected by her own family; after all, Abraham
was her husband too. Jews who are gay, or lesbian or bisexual
or transgendered, Jews we can’t put a label on, who don’t fit
neatly into our heterosexual male-and-female-married-with-children-nice-Jewish
couple stereotype; like Ishmael, the sexually threatening “other.”
Jews who don’t fit into the denominational labels, I keep kosher
BUT I’m Reform, I believe in pluralism BUT I’m Orthodox, Jews
who can’t find community because they keep Shabbos seriously but
no one else in the liberal movements does; Jews who can’t belong
because they want tradition without sexism. Its about Jews who
feel unwelcome because they only come to synagogue “once a year”,
who feel marginalized and patronized because they aren’t married
or don’t have kids; it’s about Jews who didn’t grow up Jewish,
who became Jewishly active as adults or who became Jewish through
conversion and don’t have Jewish memories and Jewish bubbies and
zaydes or Jewish stories to tell, who don’t understand the Yiddish
phrase we casually toss out and then condescendingly ask if they
know what we are talking about. The Talmud, in Masechet Sukkah,
relates that there was a special court for those who were “tamey”-
those who were ritually unclean- to come and wave their lulav
and etrog on Sukkot. A special court so that those most likely
to be pushed aside in the time of great celebration would have
a chance, at the very least, to get back in.
Hagar’s story is about us. Remember the “in crowd” in school?
Some of us have kids who are not in it. They dress wrong or play
the wrong sports, or don’t play sports at all, or listen to the
wrong music, or any other of a million reasons. We make outsiders
as soon as we can, in grade one and two. Is your kid in the “in
crowd”? Is there a way you can help him or her widen their tent
flaps, or will we perpetuate the two-tier system forever? There’s
an “in crowd” at work too. And in our families. Which cousin is
the butt of jokes? Which in law do we nudge aside? Which co-worker
is the one we all talk about at lunch?
And Hagar wanders. Like all outsiders, she does not know how to
get in. She waits for the helping hand, the outstretched arm,
the phone call, the welcome letter, the visit. We Israelites,
once used to the warmth of the Middle Eastern sun, have a become
a cold people.
The story is about the lines we draw right here in Toronto. I
know. I moved to Toronto from another place, so I’m an outsider
too. I didn’t go to Harbord Collegiate, I didn’t grow up in the
“Manor”, I didn’t play hockey with you in high school, I don’t
remember the dances at the Y, I’m new in town, I’m new around
here, I’m new in this school, and I understand you can hardly
see the friends you've already got and suddenly I’m back again
with Hagar in the desert right here in Toronto.
The story is even about the lines we draw at this service. Maybe
you came last year, you know what to expect, you’re reading Torah,
you’re an usher, you look like you know what you are doing. We
are going to have to work together to widen the tent flaps this
holiday. Can those of you familiar with the prayer book lean over
to the person sitting there who can’t find the page? Can we introduce
ourselves? Let's do it right now! I’m giving you permission right
now to stop and turn to the people around you- not the comfortable
familiar faces you’ve come with- and introduce yourself. Tell
if this is your first service with Kolel, or maybe your first
service in a long time, or maybe your first service ever. Say
where you are from. Remember that person’s name and say Happy
New Year to them later when we share honey cake and juice...There,
we’ve blurred the lines just a little.
So I’m trying to widen the Toronto Jewish community’s tent flaps
just a little in the coming year. I can’t do it alone. Kolel can’t
do it alone. What will you do to help me? We’re looking for a
few good souls to volunteer. See Marcel Wieder after services
if you’d like to get involved with these services. See me if you’d
like to get involved with Kolel next year. Let
me know if you have a break fast next week or a Seder in the
spring or a Shabbos dinner you can invite some new folks to. Call
me if you are looking for a synagogue, and I'll tell you
what's around town. We love to stand on the sidelines and then
complain that no one reaches out to us. So I’m reaching out. Our
brochures are on the tables. The tent flaps
are open. Who’s going to reach out with me?
“You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the heart of
the stranger” the Torah teaches us over and over again. No one
who has been a stranger can ever forget that feeling.
Dr. Fred Craddock tells the story of a poor boy from Tennessee
who was the illegitimate son of a poor single woman. In those
days, single moms did not get alot of respect in small Southern
towns. The boy used to be called “bastard” by the other boys in
town, and would go to church on Sundays by himself, sitting alone
in the back, looking for a little solace. One Sunday after the
service the preacher noticed him and said, “Who are you? Whose
boy are you?” The boy trembled and tears began to well up in his
eyes. He looked down at the floor, and just then the preacher
smiled a big, broad smile and said, “Oh! Wait a minute! Now I
know who you are! I recognize you! I see the family resemblance
clearly now. You are a child of God. Boy, you’ve got a great inheritance.
Go and claim it.”
In the face of the outsider is the face of God. You might remember
that Abraham and Sarah both get a name change in the Torah; Abram
becomes Abraham and Sarai becomes Sarah. They both get the Hebrew
letter “hey” added to their names, as a sign of their eternal
covenant with God, for the Hebrew letter “hey” stands for Hashem:
G-d. But look carefully at Hagar's name. You can read it two different
ways just by playing with the Hebrew vowels . Read it “Hah-ger”
and it means “the stranger.” Read it “hey-gar” and it means “G-d
dwells within.” What a difference. Depending on how we read a
situation, we can find God in the face of the stranger.
Tradition teaches that the shofar is the horn of the ram that
saved Isaac’s neck. But there also a rabbinic tradition that the
shofar’s call symbolizes the cry of Hagar just as she is cast
out. One long “why?” And then: why, why, why do we turn our backs,
it asks us? And then it gasps and pleads: why, oh why why why
why why why why, do we not reach out to each other? Hagar’s shofar
is the cry of the kid not chosen for the team, the girl without
a date for the prom, the single person alone for the holiday meal,
the friend we don’t talk to anymore, the new co-worker we ignore,
the co-workers we’ve stepped on to get ahead ourselves. Its the
person we assume isn’t lonely, because we’ve never asked. It’s
the friend whose stress we can’t deal with because we’re too stressed;
the child we don’t have time for, sitting in front of another
TV cartoon, waiting, waiting. It’s the parent we’re still angry
at. It’s the exiled, the foreign, the Israeli we judge for leaving
Israel to live here, the new immigrant whose English is not so
good yet. its the lonely, the elderly, the disabled, the depressed,
the tired. It’s all those we’ve never forgiven. Since today is
Shabbat, it is the day Zalman Schachter-Shalomi calls the “silent
Shofar”. We do not blow the shofar today, but we can imagine the
kind of anguished cry that wells up in the throat and gets caught
in silent, heaving sobs with no sound. Sometimes our cries are
so deep, they cannot even make a sound, and no one hears them
except the one crying. Today’s silent Shofar is all the Hagars
we have left in the desert, and they are waiting for an invitation
from us to come back.
There is a Hasidic story of Rabbi Aaron of Karlin who came to
a small Jewish village one freezing winter night, asked for shelter,
was not recognized and was turned away.Finally, someone recognized
him as a great Rebbe, and he was admitted to their home, half-alive.
When later he recovered, he said this: It is plain to me why the
Talmud said there is more merit in being hospitable to human beings
than to God. For when the Divine Presence finds your door barred,
it simply returns to heaven. But if you don’t let people in, they
will perish. If we didn’t judge one another so harshly, our doors
would be much more open. As the Baal Shem Tov said, “You always
find excuses for your own misdeeds, so make excuses also for your
neighbor.”
We read this story of Sarah and Hagar as we begin the new year,
brimming with hope; we emerge painfully aware that we have cast
out others whom we did not know how to include, and those we cast
out do not forget. We will try to risk loving again those who
have wounded us, and we will hope against all odds that those
whose hearts we have broken will trust us again.
Sermons and Divrei Torah
Additional Resources
Elul: Period of Preparation
Yamim Noraim: Days of Awe
Rosh Hashanah: Introduction
Shofar Symbolism
The Custom of Tashlich
Yom Kippur: Introduction
G'mar Chatima Tova...
