"Torah Lights"
 
Video Insights on the Parsha
 
 by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel: “… And Sarai acted with mastery over her [Hagar], and [Hagar] fled from before her” (Gen. 16:6). 

In the Book of Genesis, the relationship between two women married to the same man is never simple; indeed, the B.T. Tractate Yebamot refers to the second wife as tzarah (literally, pain). In the case of Abraham, founder of the Hebrew nation and religion, the situation is even more complex, since Hagar’s son is Yishmael, progenitor of the Arab world, and Sarah's son is Isaac, the father of Jacob-Israel. To this very day an intense rivalry between these half-brothers continues, children of one father and two different mothers. 

I’d like to suggest that a close examination of the difficult lives of this complex family reveals with astonishing clarity insights into the current political situation in the Middle East.

In Canaan, the ten-year long marriage of Sarai and Abram has not borne fruit, prompting Sarai to turn to her handmaiden Hagar to provide her husband Abram with a much-desired son and heir. Hagar quickly becomes pregnant – “which makes her look at her mistress (Sarai) with contempt” (Gen. 16:4). Sarai complains to her husband, blaming Abram for the maid’s contemptuous attitude. Abram supports his wife; “‘Your maidservant is in your hands. Do with her as you see fit.’ And Sarai humbled her, and [Hagar] fled from before her” (Gen. 16:-6). 

A number of Biblical commentaries are critical of our forbears for their treatment of Hagar. The Radak (Rav David Kimhi 1157-1236) suggests that the Bible wants to expose Sarai's bad traits – in order to stress the importance of acquiring good traits. “Sarah acted neither in accordance with morality nor piety.” The Ramban (1194-1270) goes even further:  “Our matriarch sinned with this humbling, and so did Abraham by allowing her to act in such a way. And so G-d heard [Hagar’s] suffering, and gave her a son who would be a wild beast of a man, and would afflict the seed of Abraham and Sarah with all sorts of mastery afflictions.”  

Rav Elhanan Samet, in his commentary on the weekly portions, cites the Code of Hammurabi, (144, 146, 147) which totally justifies Sarah’s action. This ancient code of the King of Babylon which served as the legal standard for the Fertile Crescent during the period of the Patriarchs rules that if a wife gives her maidservant to her husband to bear him children, once she bears him a child, she rises from servant to the status of wife. But if she then tries to place herself on an equal footing as her mistress - the first and chief wife, then her mistress may demote her back to her original status of a servant, though she may not sell her to another master, because the servant may not be separated from her children. So Sarah's conduct was perfectly in accordance with the Hammurabi Code, which is why the angel instructs Hagar who has fled to the desert to return to Sarah and to allow herself to be dominated by her mistress. (16:9). 

Rav Samet understands the next Sarah-Ishmael-Hagar-Abraham encounter, which appears in Parshat Vayera a week from this Shabbat, also in terms of the Hammurabi Code. Abraham and Sarah are finally, miraculously blessed with their own son, Isaac, who is brought up in the home alongside Ishmael and Hagar. “Sarah saw that the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she bore to Abraham, was mocking (metzahek). And she said to Abraham, ‘Banish this maid-servant and her son, because the son of this maid-servant must not inherit with my son, with Isaac’” (Gen. 21:9,10).

Rav Samet explains that Sarah’s demand is based on another law of Hammurabi (170), which rules that if the children of the maid-servant are declared by the father to be his children and are counted along with the primary wife’s children, then – when the father dies – all the children have to divide the inheritance equally, with the primary wife’s children choosing their share first.

Sarah wants Ishmael to be banished to prevent Hagar’s son from sharing Abraham’s inheritance of the Land of Israel. After all, as G-d will soon explain to Abraham, “It is through Isaac that you will gain posterity” (21:12); Isaac is the son with the birthright! 

However, this does not explain why Ishmael was laughing in the first place nor why Abraham didn't merely disown, or disinherit, Ishmael rather than sending him out to the desert.  

It seems to me that Sarah was willing to live together with Hagar and Ishmael in one household – and even to have Ishmael and Isaac divide their father’s inheritance – as long as Hagar and Ishmael understood that she was the primary wife and that her son Isaac was the primary heir and successor to Abraham. The land itself could be divided (even equally); however, the moral birthright and bearer of the Abrahamic mission of righteousness and morality through which all the families of the earth would be blessed must belong to Isaac.  

When Sarah witnesses the mocking, scoffing, aggressive and supercilious manner of Ishmael towards Isaac, noting how much older, bolder and stronger Ishmael is than his brother, Sarah probably recalled the Divine angel’s blessing to Hagar: “Behold, you will conceive and bear a son, for G-d has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand over everything [insisting on taking it all] and with everyone’s hand against him; in the presence of all his brother’s shall he dwell” (Gen. 16:11,12). 

Sarah has no problem with the two half-brothers sharing the inheritance of the land, but she has begun to realize that Yishmael is incapable of sharing, his hand is over everything, insisting on having it all. This is why she wants him banished, as she declares to Abraham: “Banish this maidservant and her son, because the son of this maidservant will not [agree to] inherit with my son, with Isaac” (21:9); - he will try to grab it all for himself.  

And isn’t this today’s reality, “the stories of the Patriarchs foreshadow what will happen to the children.” From the very beginning of the conflict of the two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, claiming the same land, we have always been willing to share: we accepted the U.N. partition plan of Nov 29, 1947, we were prepared to remain in our borders following the War of Independence, only acting in self-defense in the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars when the Arab world wanted to push us into the Mediterranean Sea, and in the year 2000 we were willing to give up 97% of the West Bank lands that we won in the aggressive war fought against us. Even to this day, Mahmoud Abbas refuses to recognize the legitimate rights of the Jewish people to a Jewish state in Israel, and continues to incite the Palestinians against us in the authority’s textbooks and public media.  

Nevertheless, the Bible promises that Abraham will be the Patriarch of many nations (Gen 17:5), that Yishmael will have seed too numerous to count (16:10-12), that twelve princes will emerge from Yishmael (25:12), and that the descendants of Yishmael and the descendants of Isaac will always dwell in the same region of the world (16:12, 25:18). Our Sages also believe that we will eventually dwell together in peace. This they derive from the fact that Abraham was properly and respectfully laid to rest by, “Isaac and Yishmael his sons,” in the Cave of the Couples (25:9, Rashi ad loc). And once a mutually respectful peace is genuinely honored by both sons of Abraham, anything and everything is possible.  

Shabbat Shalom

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