Isaac - and Ishmael
Parashat Chayei Sarah opens with the death of the matriarch Sarah. Many classical commentators connect her passing to the Akedah (the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac) from last week's Torah portion. In doing so, they make the claim that Sarah dies because she is either unwilling or unable to live in a world that is as dangerous, unreliable, capricious and cruel as the one she experiences around her.
In contrast to Sarah, the other characters in the story must live on. They (like we) must forge a path forward from a dark and hard place, in the midst of a grand narrative featuring dramatic family dysfunction. After all, Abraham has now nearly killed a son not once but twice: first Ishmael and then Isaac. Both Isaac and Ishmael, it seems, bear the scars of their past traumas. And, with the tension between their mothers having pitted them against each other literally since before they were born, it's hard to imagine that these half-siblings could possibly want much to do with each other again.
For all of these reasons, the conclusion of this week's Torah portion feels surprising. In a book-end to Sarah's death at the beginning, at the end of Parashat Chayei Sarah, Abraham dies at the ripe old age of 175. The text records: "vayikb'ru oto yitzchak v'yishmael banav," "and they buried him, Isaac and Ishmael his sons" (Gen 25:9). Imagine... that by the time Abraham dies, Ishmael and Isaac have somehow reconciled with one another, enough that they can take on a shared task of working side-by-side to dig their father's grave. (Noting that the text explicitly mentions that Abraham dies "contented," the Etz Hayim Chumash asks: "Can we see this as a model for family reconciliations?")
Not only do Ishmael and Isaac come together to bury their father, but a close reading of the text reveals that Isaac has arrived to his father's funeral from a very specific location. A few verses before Abraham's death, we learn that "Isaac had just come back from the vicinity of Be'er-lechai-roi" (Gen 24:62), and as soon as the funeral is over, he returns to that place: "After the death of Abraham, God blessed his son Isaac. And Isaac settled near Be'er-lahai-roi" (Gen 25:11). Be'er-lahai-roi is not just any place; this is the name of the well where God had saved a thirsty Hagar when Sarah first became jealous and expelled her from the household, some 90 years prior, according to the Torah's internal chronology. This special place is also connected to Ishmael's birth story, as it's the spot where a messenger of God first announced to Hagar that she would bear a child and should name him Ishmael (Gen 16:14).
Pause for a moment to consider what this means. Isaac - having narrowly escaped his own killing - has been living his adult life in the very place that is associated with his brother Ishmael's existence in the world. The Torah doesn't give us more details than that about what Isaac been doing in Be'er-lahai-roi, but we can imagine that, during the intervening years, these two trauma survivors, Isaac and Ishmael, have taken refuge with one another, perhaps swapping stories of their tough upbringings, complaining about their parents. Maybe their own traumatic pasts have created an opening for a real relationship to form between them, such that the fresh loss of their father Abraham at the end of our parasha is enough to bring them into explicit reunion as they work together to complete a shared task of mutual importance.
I have been thinking about Ishmael and Isaac a lot over the past few weeks. As I've shared previously, I believe we're currently seeing an unprecedented degree of polarization around the events happening in Israel and Gaza. Social media feeds only seek to reinforce beliefs that this horrible moment we're witnessing now is all the fault of "one side"; many oppressive voices -- on both the extreme right and left -- insist (incorrectly) that if you believe X, you must also do, say, or support Y. It's coming to feel more and more to me like there are smaller proxy battles playing out within the American Jewish community too -- one that is largely (although not entirely) generational. I continue to believe that binaries and zero-sum-game thinking don't serve us at this moment -- it's not how we've ever practiced spirituality or Judaism in this community, and it doesn't ring true with the lessons of our Torah.
The more polarizing and toxic the American discourse has become, the less grounded it feels to me in the realities of the Middle East. Recently, I'm finding myself drawn towards Israeli and Palestinian voices, in an attempt to center the experiences of the human beings who are living through violence and trauma in their day to day (in a way that we simply aren't, here). I am also finding real data helpful. For example, this week I attended a webinar with Professor Khalil Shikaki (a preeminent expert on Palestinian public opinion) and learned that Hamas's approval ratings/popularity were at a historic low-point among both West Bank and Gazan Palestinians just prior to October 7th; I also learned that polling from recent weeks shows that 4 in 5 Israelis blame the Netanyahu government for the mass infiltration of Hamas terrorists on that day. These inputs support my deep convictions that the only future for Israelis and Palestinians is one in which both peoples can live in peace and security, with justice, freedom and dignity. Their fates are inextricably linked. It's not a contradiction to want to see hostages returned to Israel AND to want an end to the bombing of Gaza, to condemn Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups as terrorist organizations AND to condemn the far-right-wing Israeli government (which has allowed both settlers and its own army to kill hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank in recent weeks).
I am appreciating the voices of Palestinians and Israelis who "get" that the descendents of Ishmael and Isaac seem destined to need to find a way to live together in the small strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. (Pro-Palestinian calls of "from the river to the sea" that demand Jewish erasure and the Israeli government officials who promote the idea of "Greater Israel" and support policies that result in Palestinian erasure both feel equally morally repugnant to me.) In last week's New Yorker magazine, a long-form article by David Remnick (entitled "Letter from Israel: In the Cities of Killing") featured two such voices. Retired Israeli army general Yair Golan is quoted as saying: "The most frustrating thing to me is the inability of anyone to envision how these two peoples can live together. We are not going anywhere. And they are not going anywhere. Occupation is not a solution. Our peoples should both be led by sensible majorities, but both people are being led by their extremists. This is the challenge of Israel." Palestinian scholar Sari Nusseibeh, similarly, explains that Hamas and violent extremism, in general, will not recede without a political resolution; in his words: "No matter what, we will end up where we started, with the Palestinians and the Israelis living here together and needing to find a proper formula."
I have no illusions that finding a path forward will be simple. The horrors of October 7th for Israelis (and for Jews everywhere) and the national grief and trauma of every day since in Israel -- as rockets continue to fall across the country, some 240 civilian hostages remain in Gaza, and hundreds of thousands of reservists have been called up for military duty -- cannot be overstated. Nor can the casualties in Gaza (some 40% of which are children), the mass displacement of an estimated 1.6 million people, and the enormous scale destruction of homes, buildings and infrastructure... the Palestinians of Gaza are suffering at levels we here in the U.S. cannot even begin to fathom. And also, for both Israelis and Palestinians, this moment rests upon mountains of pasts traumas: the Holocaust, expulsion from Arab countries, pogroms and more on the Jewish side, and massacres, the Nakba ("catastrophe") of 1948, the mass displacement of 1967, and more for Palestinians.
And yet, there are still bold leaders trying to articulate a vision for a shared future. Like many of them, I find hope in the observation that so many times in the past, unexpected openings and overtures towards peace have happened in the wake of great tragedies and violence (for example, the peace agreement between Israel and Sadat/Egypt was signed in 1977, still in the wake of the 1973 war between the two countries; the First Intifada of the 1980s gave way to the Oslo Accords). In order to get there, we must make space in our world -- both here and there -- for a wide range of non-extremist positions, so that we can build coalitions to combat extremism everywhere it manifests, whether it is Jewish extremism or Muslim extremism, Israeli extremism or Palestinian extremism, extremism on the political left or extremism on the political right.
If you are interested in learning more, there are many organizations committed to such work. Here are but two such examples/invitations from organizations that Kavana has partnered with many times in the past:
This Sunday at 5pm Pacific Time, the New Israel Fund is sponsoring a conversation with the Arab-Jewish grassroots movement in Israel called Standing Together (Omdim Beyachad / Naqif Ma'an). At a time of extreme tension and strife, leaders Sally Abed and Alon-Lee Green are as committed as ever to promoting a message of a shared, equal and just society, and real work and organizing to make it so. Click here for more info and to register.
Last week, Combatants for Peace hosted a conversation entitled "Solidarity: A Path to Liberation," featuring their Palestinian and Israeli co-founders. Souli Khatib encouraged listeners to hold fast to their values, especially now, saying: "I feel this can offer an alternative to other people - rather than the voice of darkness or the voice of us vs. them." Click here to watch the recording anytime.
As we enter into this Shabbat, I am clinging to the hopeful ending to Parashat Chayei Sarah: the one that features Isaac and Ishmael hanging out together in Be'er-lahai-roi and uniting together to bury their father Abraham. I hope and pray that if they could find healing and reconciliation in the wake of their loss-upon-trauma, we can be courageous enough to learn from their example today. I hope and pray for an end to the terrible violence we are witnessing now. I hope and pray that we can hold fast to our values as we build a "big tent" that can combat polarizing forces and extremist tendencies in our society. I commit to doing my part from here in America to support the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael who live together in the Holy Land, such that someday -- God-willing -- they will be able to work together, side-by-side, as they undertake the task of building a shared society where there is space for all.
Wishing us all a Shabbat of comfort and healing, prayers and hope,
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum
P.S. For the past few weeks, Rabbi Jay and I have been focused on providing pastoral care for the Kavana community. The email above represents a conscious pivot: an invitation to engage with Torah, with current events, and with the Israelis and Palestinians who are most directly involved in a sensible, non-extremist, non-proxy way. And yet, we know that many folks in our community are still struggling mightily under the weight of this time. If you need pastoral support, please know that you're not alone and don't hesitate to reach out to either of us.
