Sarah and Hagar in Jewish Tradition

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, November 22, 2008

The yearly cycle of Scriptural readings for the Jewish community begins in the fall and so this week we are reading from the book of Genesis, chapter 23, which tells of the death of the Matriarch Sarah.

We are first introduced to Sarah at the end of Chapter 11 where we are told that she is barren.  Perhaps that is all we need to know about her to understand the motivations for her actions throughout her life. To be a woman without children in a society where your status rests on producing sons is despair. God has promised that Abraham will be the father of multitudes, but as the years pass, and Abraham and Sarah age, Sarah takes matters into her own hands and presents Abraham with her slave girl, Hagar: “perhaps I will be built up through her” she says. In this, Sarah is following the customs of the ancient Middle East, as we have texts like the code of Hammurabi and the Nuzi contracts which attests to the legality of surrogate motherhood in that time and place.  

In the Jewish Bible, though polygamy is allowed, things never work out well when a man has multiple wives, and here too, problems immediately arise. The pregnant Hagar feels empowered and treats her former mistress Sarah as an object of scorn. Sarah comes to Abraham with her complaint and he returns Hagar to her authority. Treated like a common slave again, Hagar runs away into the desert, where an angel of God urges her to return, with the promise that her son too will be the father of peoples.

A son is born to Abraham and Hagar and Abraham names him Ishmael, God hears, words that will turn out to be prescient.

Thirteen years pass and now Sarah too gives birth to a son, named Yitzchak, the laughing one, for who does not laugh at the idea that such old people will bring forth progeny. There is something about the relationship between Ishmael and Isaac which disturbs Sarah and she pleads with Abraham to cast out both his son and his woman servant. Abraham is grieved at this, but God tells him, “Do whatever Sarah tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be called yours. Yet I will also make a nation out of the children of the slave’s son, for he too is your offspring.”

Hagar and Ishmael head out into the desert, with supplies that Abraham personally packs for them, but they get lost and wander hopelessly. Eventually, without water, they give up and Hagar sits down to weep. Again God steps in, hearing the voice of the boy, and with a promise and a blessing, Hagar’s eyes are opened. She sees a well, and the boy grows up to become the father of 12 sons; these are the peoples of Arabia. In the Biblical text there is no animosity between Ishmael and Isaac, Isaac dwells for a while in Be’er Le Chai Roi, a place associated with Hagar, and together the two sons bury their father, Abraham.

In difficult times, when it seems like there is no possible solution to our problems, the rabbis urge us to remember the story of Hagar in the wilderness. She is in despair, despite the promise she received from the angel that her descendents would be many. The solution to her problems is just a few feet away but she cannot see it. When God opens her eyes, the well, which was there all along, becomes available to her. When we are in difficult straits, when we are depressed, our vision too is narrowed, it is like we are wearing blinders. With help and support, with faith in the future, in God’s past promises to us, our eyes can be opened and solutions to our problems will appear.

Finally, in Jewish tradition, Sarah is criticized for her treatment of Hagar. A connection is made between the harshness of Sarah’s rule over Hagar, the Egyptian, and later Israelite servitude in Egypt. Hagar, means literally the stranger, and 39 times in the Jewish Bible, more times than any other single commandment, we are commanded not to oppress or afflict the stranger, remembering that we were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Our tradition urges also that we remember Sarah when we are tempted to think that we can overcome basic human instincts and passions. When Sarah offered her handmaiden to Abraham, she was sure she would not become jealous, but she did.

We are urged not to attempt to be overly righteous, lest it become a snare to us, but understand that the Halachah, Jewish law, will ask us to do only things that are within our human potential. Rather than attempting to be angels, we should focus on succeeding to be human.

It’s my pleasure to introduce Ameena Jandali who will speak about Sarah and Hagar from a Muslim perspective.