TORAH PORTION: LECH LECHA
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Parashat Lech-Lecha
October 16, 2021, 10 Heshvan 5782
Torah: Genesis 12:1-17:27; Triennial 16:1-17:27
Haftarah: Isaiah 40:27-41:16
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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parashah by Ilana Kurshan called "Men Count the Stars, Women are From Venus", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions titled "Right or Left? East Is Not an Option" and Bex Stern Rosenblatt writes about "To “Steelman” Idolatry" in the Haftarah.
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Men Count the Stars, Women are From Venus
Ilana Kurshan
Parashat Lech Lecha depicts an acute marital crisis between Abraham and Sarah that takes place at a particularly difficult moment in their lives. As we learn from the beginning of the parashah, Abraham and Sarah have already been uprooted twice from their home – first they left Ur Kasdim with Abraham’s father, Terach, and then they packed up again and departed from Haran in response to a divine voice promising Abraham that he would become a great nation. Yet in spite of heeding God’s command, Abraham and Sarah have been living in Canaan for ten years, and they are still childless. The divine promise seems hollow; they are stuck, unable to move forward and realize their dreams. Then, in one dramatic and perhaps even violent altercation, all of their frustration with one another pours forth. Why is the relationship between Abraham and Sarah so fraught, and how can their marital drama offer insight into how we can strengthen our own intimate relationships?
To begin to understand the crisis in Abraham and Sarah’s marriage, we might consider the first times they speak directly to one another in the Torah. Direct speech is quite rare between them, and at first when they do communicate, it is only to ask favors of one another. This is evident when Abraham and Sarah arrive in Pharaoh’s court after fleeing Canaan on account of famine. Abraham is concerned that his own life is at risk – should Pharaoh wish to take Sarah as a wife, he might do away with Abraham. “I know what a beautiful woman you are.” (12:11), Abraham tells Sarah. While this might seem at first blush like a compliment, Abraham has ulterior motives. He is worried about how Sarah’s beauty might affect him: “If the Egyptians see you and think, ‘She is his wife,’ they will kill me and let you live.” And so Abraham asks Sarah to lie and to subject herself to Pharaoh’s harem so as to ensure that he will emerge unscathed: “Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you.” The Torah does not document Sarah’s response, suggesting perhaps that Abraham is not really asking her, but telling her what she must do.
The first time Sarah speaks directly to Abraham, she, too, is preoccupied with her own needs, and it is at this moment that the crisis between them begins to unfold. Sarah is distressed that she still has no children, and so she asks Abraham a favor: “Look, the Lord has kept me from bearing a child. Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a son through her.” (Genesis 16:2). Sarah asks Abraham to sleep with her maidservant, Hagar, in the hope that Abraham might have a child with her, since they have been unable to conceive together. Her words are strikingly devoid of the first person plural; she never speaks to Abraham as a “we,” but rather tells him what he should do so that she can get what she wants. We know from Abraham’s fervent pleas to God that he also wants a child. But at this moment it seems as if Sarah couldn’t care less about what he wants. She asks Abraham to sleep with Hagar not so that they will have a son, but so that she will.
And yet, as soon becomes clear, this is not really what Sarah wants, because when Abraham accedes to her request, she grows furious. Abraham takes Hagar as his concubine and Hagar conceives, exactly as Sarah had asked. But Sarah feels that Hagar looks down on her since she is with child whereas her mistress is not. She yells out to Abraham, “My wrong is upon you!” (16:5), and according to the midrash in Bereshit Rabbah, she scratches his face in violent anger. Why is Sarah so angry at Abraham? What has he done wrong?
The Torah does not record what Abraham said after Sarah asked him to sleep with Hagar. We are merely told, “And Abram listened to Sarah’s voice” (16:2). Perhaps the Torah is suggesting that Abraham listened to Sarah’s voice, but not to the sentiment behind her words. Abraham heard what she said, but he did not take the time—or perhaps he lacked the sensitivity—to understand what she meant. It seems Sarah didn’t really want Hagar to become pregnant with Abraham’s child. The midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 45:5) relates that as soon as Hagar became pregnant, Sarah placed an evil eye on her so that she lost the baby, and had to become pregnant a second time in order to conceive Yishmael. What Sarah really wanted was for Abraham to recognize her role in the divine promise. The midrash adds that when Sarah says “My wrong is upon you,” she is expressing her fury at Abraham for telling God, “You have granted me no offspring” (15:3) instead of saying, “You have granted us no offspring,” in the first person plural. The rabbis compare it to two men who go to a king to borrow seeds to plant. The first man says to the king, “Please lend me some seeds.” The king gives that man seeds, and then his friend says, “Why didn’t you ask for me as well? Why did you ask only for yourself?” So too, Sarah wished for Abraham to recognize that she is integral to God’s blessing, which could be realized only through both of them – as indeed God will later remind Abraham.
These midrashim suggest that when Sarah tells Abraham to cohabit with Hagar, she doesn’t really mean it. She is merely testing Abraham in the hope that he will respond, “Of course I can’t take Hagar! My destiny is through you, my beautiful wife. I don’t want a child with Hagar – I want a child with you!” Perhaps she is too embarrassed to plead with Abraham to notice her. Perhaps she has too much pride. For whatever reason, she feels she cannot speak her heart to Abraham, and so she tests him instead. “I am so desperate for us to have a child,” she is essentially telling him, “that I could even offer you my maidservant in my stead. Can’t you see how desperate I am?” But Abraham does not see. He hears Sarah’s words, but he is deaf to the pain and the longing that underlie them. Though he accedes to her request, he does not speak to the desires of her heart.
Sarah, in her frustration, appeals to a higher authority. When she is unable to get Abraham to hear what she is really trying to say, she turns to God. After all, she knows Abraham is quite close with God – she knows that Abraham has asked God for a child for himself, albeit not for her as well. Presumably she knows that Abraham gets out of bed at night—alone, without her—to look up at the heavens and muse on the divine promise. And so she denounces Abraham by invoking God: “Let the Lord adjudicate between you and me!” (16:5).
Ultimately God does adjudicate between Abraham and Sarah by explaining to Abraham that Sarah plays a crucial part in their destiny. The next time God reiterates the promise to Abraham, the patriarch responds, “O that Ishmael might live by your favor” (17:18) but God insists, “But Sarah your wife shall bear you a son” (17:9). Even God needs to tell Abraham that Hagar is irrelevant. It is at this point that God changes both Abraham and Sarah’s names from Abram and Sarai, as they were previously known. Each member of the couple gets an extra Hey—a letter from God’s name—added to their names, and the next time Abraham receives a divine visitation, Sarah becomes pregnant at last.
Rabbi Akiva famously notes that the letters Yud and Hey, which can be joined to form God’s name, are the only difference between the Hebrew words for man (ish) and wife (isha); the letters in common spell esh, meaning fire. He teaches that if a couple merits, then the divine presence dwells between them; if not, a fire consumes them (Sotah 17a). The relationship between Abraham and Sarah nearly leads to conflagration, but thankfully, God comes between them. We aspire to speak the true desires of our hearts and to listen deeply to one another in the hope that our intimate relationships—far from requiring divine intercession—might be blessed, instead, with the indwelling of the divine presence.
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Right or Left? East Is Not an Option
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Text: Bereshit 13:5-13
5And also Lot, who went with Avram, had flocks and herds and tents. 6Now the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together, for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. 7And there was strife between the herdsmen of Avram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock… 8So Avram said to Lot, “Please let there be no strife between you and me… for we are brethren. 9Is not the whole land before you? Please separate from me. If you go to the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left.”
10And Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered… (before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt... 11Then Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed forward… Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom. 13And the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the Lord.
- Why can Avram and Lot not live together? Is the reason only objective?
- Why is Avram the one to offer Lot land, not vice versa? (12:4,7 might help.)
- What might have happened if they would have followed Avraham’s offer of going one to the right and one to the left?
- How does Lot’s choice fit with Avram’s offer? How does the Torah evaluate his choice? How does it let you know that?
Commentary: Radak Bereshit 13:9
If you go to the left… -If you wish to go to the north of the land I will be in the south of the land in this corner in which we are today, for they were in the south of the Land of Israel as it said: “journeyed…toward the South” …
If you go to the right -And if you wish to stay here which is the south, I will be pushed away from you and go to the north of the land.
- What difficulty in the text does Radak’s explanation resolve?
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To orient themselves in biblical times people would face east (forward=Kedem, note the English term “orient”); that places the right hand to the south and the left to the north. Accordingly, what did Avram offer? When Lot goes “forward”, what direction does he choose?
- Why do you think that Avram did not offer Lot the east? Lot acted contrary to Avram’s wishes. Why? Why should he not have done so? What image of Lot does the Torah subtly paint here?
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To “Steelman” Idolatry
Bex Stern Rosenblatt
How many idolaters does it take to build an idol? Is this a whole community affair with a potluck afterward or can I do it in my basement on a rainy afternoon? Do I need technical expertise? Does building Ikea furniture qualify me for the job? If I’m just looking to worship an idol, do I really need to build my own? Can I get one ready-made?
Our haftarah portion, Isaiah 40:27 - 41:16, is largely a call to the exiles in Babylon to trust in God and their return to the land of Israel, following the journey that Abraham made more than a thousand years earlier. There is much talk about God’s role in creation and God’s role in the return. We find fairly typical language about the rest of the peoples as opposed to the chosen people of Israel. And then, in the middle of all of this, we get a confusing instruction manual on idol building in Isaiah 41:6-7, featuring a cast of supportive artisans.
Not only is the existence of the verse perplexing, the verse itself is also difficult to translate. It’s unclear who is involved, what material they are using, and what it is they are making. We can contextualize it by reading it together with Isaiah 40:19-20. Altogether, in Robert Alter’s translation, they read like this:
“The craftsman has shaped the idol, and the smith overlays it with gold and forges the links of silver. Mulberry wood for the gift, wood that won’t rot he chooses. A skilled craftsman he seeks for himself to ready an idol that will not topple… Each man helps his fellow and to his brother says, ‘Be strong.’ And the craftsman strengthens the smith, the hammer wielder—the anvil pounder. He says to the glue, ‘It is good,’ and strengthens it with nails that it not totter.”
These people do not seem evil. Everyone is helping out and pitching in! We even recognize that word, “be strong” from the repeated command in Deuteronomy and Joshua, given to us as we enter the land, “be strong and resolute.”
It is as if we have fallen through Alice’s looking glass. We are given a vision of what our lives might have been, if only they’d been a little different. Rather than being strangers in exile, about to embark on a perilous journey to a land our grandparents left with great trauma, we are given a moment to imagine life from the point of view of the people who belong - the happy society of skilled artists who create together in harmony. They even reuse God’s language from creation, saying to the glue, “it is good!”
We get to peer into their world for a minute from the point of view of those who can never quite enter it. It looks just like our world, but simpler, easier, and without God. Not only are we given the full Ikea assembly instructions, they are also offering us free delivery. The haftarah is in effect “steel-manning” idolatry: it makes the most persuasive possible case for idolatry, presents it in the best possible light, before demolishing it as an idea.
Even with the idyllic view of idolatry, what Isaiah tells to us is ours and it is better. We get God. On our side is the creator of the world, the maker and destroyer of mountains, the cause of storms. We get our heritage, a people who have existed for thousands of years, in relation with God. Having glanced through the looking glass, we come back home.
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