Sermons and Divrei Torah
Sarah and Hagar
by Miriam Wyman
(Dvar Torah - Rosh Hashanah 5765)
Sarah and Hagar
On Rosh Hashanah, we come to shul to reflect and remember, to think about all that we have done and consider whether we have done it wisely.
And we do that enveloped by the familiar – our liturgy, our music, our teachers, our Torah. There is something comforting and inspiring about this familiarity. We encounter our stories as if we are meeting old friends. Our stories are embedded in our consciousness, in our communities, and our culture as Jews.
We KNOW this story. Every year we hear about Avraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac, and, of course, about God and God's relationship with each of them.
Avraham had been in Egypt. He went into the Negev "with his wife and all that he possessed." We sympathize with Sarah who has been childless. We rejoice when Hagar gives birth to a son. We laugh with Sarah when she is told that she will conceive a son. We try to understand why Hagar and her son were sent into the wilderness. Prophecy, conversations with God and angels. We assume that the story is about rivalry between women focused on each of their sons, and that it is about Sarah wanting to ensure that Isaac is Avraham's rightful heir. We recognize destiny along with jealousy, competition and dissension.
And yet, there are puzzling things:
• What is a "shifhah"?
• Why does the Torah talk about "El", "Elohim," and YHVH? Isn't "Elohim" plural?
• How could Avraham bear to send his son – his firstborn son – into the desert?
• How could Avraham essentially sacrifice both of his sons?
• What WAS the relationship between Sarah and Hagar?
• What was going on around them at the time?
Part of familiarity is being able to look at the story again and again. This was my opportunity to take a new look at the text, with a particular interest in Sarah and Hagar, and to look at how others have seen it.
The traditional commentators have much to say. They help us understand the words, they explicate the activities and actions that the text describes, and they point out the nature of the relationships between each of the main characters and God. Essentially, they accept the story that we find so familiar - that Sarah became angry with Hagar, the two sons were bitter rivals and it was necessary for Hagar and Ishmael to be banished.
In my research, I thought it was important to also look at Islamic sources and Christian sources to see how those traditions talk about Sarah and Hagar, or Hajir, as she is called in Arabic.
There is no mention in the Quran of Sarah or Hajir, or of the Bible's elaborate story of the births of their sons. But there are many stories in Islamic lore about Hajir who is the wife of Ibrahim. And the story sounds quite familiar: Sarah presents Hajir to Ibrahim; Ismail is the son that results; Sarah becomes angry and banishes them. Ismail's age, when they are banished, varies from a nursing infant to a young man of 16. God asks Ibrahim to sacrifice his son, and Ibrahim is willing to do so. The son, however, is Ismail. There are stories that say Isaak and Ismail were conceived at the same time, and were born and raised together.
In the Islamic tradition, Hajir is not portrayed as lower in status than Sarah. She was not a slave of the older woman. She was an Egyptian Princess, and her son, Ismaïl is seen as the rightful inheritor of Ibrahim, as First Born and elder brother to Isaak, who is the ancestor of the Hebrew branch of the sons of Abraham.
Christian sources also recount the story much as we know it. Hagar is given to Abraham to provide him with an heir. She is banished before her child is born. In one legend, the goddess Astarte (or Asherah) appears and urges Hagar to return. She provides an ibex in the nearby undergrowth for Hagar to sacrifice to Lord El, who kept Sarah from punishing Hagar. Soon, Hagar bore Abraham a son, who was named Ishmael, and Sarah accepted him as her own. El promised Abraham that he would be the ancestor of many nations.
Lots of similarities, lots of differences, interesting twists and additions. And then I found more, in particular, the work of Savina Teubal, a biblical scholar who has written three fascinating books – Sarah the Priestess, Hagar the Egyptian, and Ancient Sisterhood: The Lost Traditions of Hagar and Sarah. She blends close analysis of Torah text with history, archeology, ancient art and ancient Near Eastern texts to explore this world and the role of women in it. And, she helped me understand that this story is, indeed, about inheritance, but perhaps not the inheritance we have assumed.
I have chosen to highlight only a few tidbits.
The world was changing. Our Torah emerged from a particular world – a world that was characterized by clashes of cultures and ideas, a world that was hardly monolithic, let alone monotheistic. Mesopotamia, Egypt and Canaan each had complex cultures, legal systems, religious traditions and economies. Real people lived, worked and moved between them.
There were many gods, collectively called Elohim. There was El, who lived with his wife, the goddess Asherah, alongside other Canaaanite and Semitic gods such as Baal, the god of thunder and rains, and Yaam, god of floods and destruction. (There are some strikingly familiar words here!) The god of Avraham was most probably El, thus we have Ishma'el, and El-roi (the name Hagar gives to God). And there were conflicts over which God was more powerful, El or YHVH.
Sarah was a priestess, part of a group of deeply spiritual women who often gathered at Mamre. She had clear social and economic rights as well as duties. This group did not bear children, but adopted women to bear children on their behalf, to be their heirs.
Sarah had property of her own – some of which came from the Egyptian king and some from Avimelech. According to legend, the Egyptian king, because of his deep love for her, wrote out a contract giving her silver and gold, male and female slaves, and the entire province of Goshen. He also offered her a "shifhah," a companion, and Sarah chose Hagar.
Hagar was not a slave or servant. She was said to be "of Pharoah's household," perhaps a daughter, wife or sister of the king, from a country where women then enjoyed "remarkable legal equality." And she became part of Sarah's "mishpachah," the Biblical family unit (or clan) which typically included a matriarch-priestess, her sh'fachot and their children, and the woman's husband. Sh'fachot were regarded as clan members, not slaves or concubines, because they bore children who essentially became the sons and daughters of the matriarchs and inherited their property. Hagar was equal to Sarah in status and stature.
Sarah and Hagar had a long relationship and a powerful bond. They had been together for more than 10 years when Ishmael was born (and we don't know how long they knew one another in Egypt). Their story is not about passive wives or concubines. It is about priestesses and visionaries who were able to rethink their approach to life.
And, as a result, they changed their world. Sarah has her own son, marking a radical shift away from the tradition of priestesses not bearing their own children. Hagar then recognizes that her son will not be Sarah's heir, and will inherit neither her material wealth nor her spiritual legacy.
Is it possible that Sarah and Hagar agreed that Hagar and Ishmael should leave this community and make their lives elsewhere? Could it be that Hagar actually prefers freedom for herself, her son and the future nation she is promised? It may be that this was a conscious, deliberate choice – made with strength, conviction and faith, and that Hagar chose bread and water rather than silver and gold, that is, she chose freedom over inheritance!
This is quite a story! All the main characters have a direct relationship with God.
Is it the same God? Does it matter? Each struggles to find a balance between their faith and their community, and between their past, their present and their future. What I find striking is that here, in this most traditional of texts, a text we have always read as the story of Avraham and his descendants, Avraham has the "bit part." It is the women whose stories really reflect the enormity of the changes taking place around them. It is the women who find ways to stay connected to their communities of origin, to bring their sons to adulthood, to find wives for them from among their people, and to, ultimately, be hugely honoured in their respective traditions.
These people are now far more real to me, not because I understand the words better, but because I understand the worlds better.
Shana Tova.
Sources:
Brow, Robert and Mollie. Adultery and marriage in Jewish and Arab patriarchy.
Daily Bible Study
Feldman, Louis H. "Rearrangement of Pentateuchal Material in Josephus' Antiquities, Books 1-4"
Fuchs, Esther. 2001. Ancient Sisterhood: The Lost Traditions of Hagar and Sarah. Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal.
God, the unauthorized biography. New Internationalist, August 2004, 26-27.
Goldstein, Rabbi Elyse (ed). 2004. The Women's Haftarah Commentary. Jewish Lights Publishing.
Goldstein, Rabbi Elyse. 1998. ReVisions. Key Porter Books.
New Internationalist, August, 2004. Theme: In the name of God.
Olson, Carl (ed). 1990. The Book of the Goddess Past and Present. Crossroad Publishing Company.
Peters, F.E. 1994. The Hajj. h
Queen of Heaven: The Life and Times of Mary Magdalene h
Salkin, Rabbi Jeffrey K. Parashat Va-Year, 30-35.
The African Contribution to the Monotheistic Religions. h contribution to the mono.htm.
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...
