Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur Sermons
Listen
by Carly Ziniuk
So, when Rabbi Goldstein called to ask me to do this, my five-year old Asher had just spilt milk all over the floor of the kitchen. As I was encouraging him to clean it up all by himself, Noam, my three-year old, was in the living room winding an entire spool of thread around the four legs of the coffee table. Dinner was burning on the stove. Rabbi Goldstein caught me at a weak moment I am not sure I really listened at all.
In fact, when you live with small children, the word listen, as in Listen to me, Asher, or Noam, listen, your brother is trying to tell you something, is the omnipresent verb. That and its cousin phrase, Use your words! In all honesty, I think I say listen, much more than I really do it. I sadly flashback to those tugging hands, Ima, listen to this! and me busily continuing at my task. But I still have those nine days until Yom Kippur, right? You now know more about me and my parenting challenges than you probably expected from a d'var Torah.
Both these challenges and the Torah portion we read on this start to the New Year find their troubles in the listening and in the not-listening. The prelude to the portion is God and Abram talking in Gen. 15:4-5, Fear not Abram Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your offspring be. For Abram, I am guessing when God talks, you listen. This is the promise made to Abram though, not originally to Sarai.
Next Sarai gives Abram her slave girl, Hagar, as a surrogate in Gen. 16:1-4, The Lord has kept me from bearing. Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a son through her. Then Va-yish-ma Abram l'kol Sarai. Depending on how you want to translate that Va-yish-ma, either Abram listened to Sarai's request or he heeded them. Then, the young and fertile maid conceives right away. When Abram listens to those words, what does Sarai really say? Does Abram heed to the Consort with my maid part when the part that Sarai really wants him to listen to is, The Lord has kept me from bearing, or more tellingly, Perhaps I shall have a son through her. But what kind of promise is Sarai implying when she offers her handmaid as a surrogate and speaks of this potential as her own?
Rambam warns about making vows which are beyond your ability to fulfill, without the practical steps and the realistic understanding of them, saying A good deed is only credited to the account of one who completes it. Sarai, who will become our first matriarch of such high esteem, seems to be so generous in her offer of Hagar. The rest of that seemingly good deed, though, needs to be more than just the offer. Sarai seems unwilling to live with the likely, real consequences. When Sarai and the pregnant Hagar and begin to challenge one another, Sarai again goes to talk to her husband, who says, Deal with her as you think right in Gen. 16:6.
You can imagine Sarai, filled with frustration and anger, both at Abram and at herself, feeling unheard. Frustrated, angry, supremely disappointed yes, but as I tell my three-year old, she still needed to use her words. Perhaps like my three-year old, Sarai doesn't quite have the right words, and a preoccupied Abram doesn't really listen. So instead, she just makes things worse, and takes it out on Hagar. The Torah in fact uses the same word here to describe the actions of the Egyptians on the Hebrew slaves. [ed: the text identifies Hagar as Egyptian, and redemption only begins when God listens and hears the Israelites groaning, 'vayishma elohim...' (Ex. 2:24)]
Hagar flees, hears the message of an angel, and names Abram's first child Ishmael, since God listened, in this case to Hagar's suffering. Hagar returns child in tow.
And this round of listening-not-listening is just the set-up. The Torah portion for today continues now with the new and improved Abraham and Sarah, post-covenant, and their own miracle child, golden boy Isaac. Sarah continues to struggle with the consequences of her not-so-generous offer of Hagar.
After Sarah sees Ishmael playing, some commentators say Ishmael was playing with Isaac while others say he was fighting with Isaac, she says to Abraham in Gen. 21:9-10, Cast out that slave woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac. Hearing this, Abraham struggles with abandoning his first child, and here is where it gets tricky.
Later in Gen. 21:12-13 God tells our new Abraham, Do not be distressed over the boy or your slave; whatever Sarah tells you, sh'ma b'kolah, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed.
So I wish it is was easy to translate that sh'ma b'kolah most of the translations use Whatever Sarah tells you, do as she says, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you, or some version of that. So the big moral difficulty comes when Sarah tells Abraham to send Hagar into the wilderness, and he does.
On this start to the New Year, we hear this story, and although it sets up Isaac as the next patriarch, it is hard to find much to be happy about here. What lesson could we take from this: send your problems away, deal with people harshly, worry about your own desires first? No good. It is completely wrong for my son Asher to smack his brother just for taking his train. As every parent in the room nods - what he needs to do is talk to him about it, come to some kind of agreement. And Noam needs to meet him half way, he needs to listen to what his brother is saying and engage in a conversation. It is also not enough to just leave, snatch the train back and run.
So let's go back to that sh'ma b'kolah another way to read that is Listen to her, hear her voice, so instead we can read the verse as:
God says, Do not be distressed over the boy or your slave; whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed.
Now I don't mean to say, that Abraham should have done the ancient Middle Eastern version, of There, there now, and placated Sarah, but thinking of God saying listen to her changes it, for me anyway. Sarah was wrong to ask and Abraham was wrong to do it. If however, God says Listen to her, then Abraham instead hears what Sarah is really saying, I am threatened, I am worried about my son, I am frustrated and this whole thing is so stressful! If only Abraham was able to really listen, and really talk, explain his own concerns, his own desires, his own worries, things might have gone differently. As I said, starting with that first hasty decision by Sarah, things just kept getting worse.
God promised that Ishmael will make a nation too. The tension between those two brothers, although never referred to directly, continues with those promised nations.Sometimes, I wonder if we just all need a lot more listening. All of us, far and near.
There is no question there will be differences of opinion. There will be hard times, frustrating times, and times when we feel threatened. Things we don't want to give up. Things we are sure are ours. There will always be two little boys fighting over the same train wait, someone promised me that too will pass. God willing!
There will always be a parent struggling to get dinner to the table just as the phone rings, stepping over a puddle of milk and untangling string, for just enough time to agree to do a dvar Torah. There's a lesson in here for the New Year, I know it. We just need to take a minute to listen.
Shana Tova.
