Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 9/7/2003
Midrash — reinterpretation of the text of Torah — like reinterpretation of any sacred text, can point us toward violence and war, or point us toward peace and compassion.

This essay focuses on the Abraham Saga as we traditionally read it on Rosh Hashanah.

But let us look at a story that is not on the traditional readiungs for the days of Awe and Turning — yet perhaps should be, for Yom Kippur. It provides a healing for the tales of Rosh Hashanah.

Abraham's sons Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury him (Genesis 25: 9-11). Indeed, only in this passage are they named together as "Abraham's sons," as if to teach us that they became truly his sons — and together — only by joining in their grief (or relief? or both?).

After that they are able to live face to face with each other; Isaac goes to live at the Well of the Living One Who Sees Me, and finally the prophecy comes true in which Ishmael is to live "facing all his brothers." (Gen. 25: 18).

The two are able to live together after they have mourned the most dangerous and threatening person in their lives.

Now — what does this weave of text and midrash have to say about today, about the lethal violence between the two families of Abraham in our own generation?

Each grieves its own dead, killed at the other's hands.

We might draw a lesson from the shared grief of Isaac and Ishmael, and the release it gave them to face each other. Can Jews and Palestinians together share feelings of grief about the deaths of members of our two peoples at the hands of the other — at the hands of those who are dangerous and threatening to each of our peoples?

Could Jewish and Arab groups (in Israel, the US, or elsewhere) arrange for public ceremonies of grief and mourning for BOTH those Israeli Jews and those Palestinians who have been killed by violence from the other side in the current conflict?

The mourning could include the recitation of the names of those who have been killed. (The names of the dead of both communities, listed according to their status, the status of those who killed them, and place of death, are available on the Web at www.btselem.org. When you get to this site, click on "Current Intifada" and then on "Statistics" and then on "Persons Killed.")

Where joint ceremonies cannot be arranged, I suggest that Jewish groups express publicly their grief at all these deaths, and that Arab groups do the same, separately.

I am NOT suggesting that the decision of one community to do this be made conditional on the decision of the other. There should be an authentic sense of grief over these deaths that does not depend on anyone else's willingness to express that grief.

Among Jews, one appropriate and important time might be on Yom Kippur, after the ten days in which we are to do tshuvah — turn our lives in more just, peaceful, and holy directions.

The traditional Torah reading on Yom Kippur morning includes a passage in which the High Priest sends one goat out into the wilderness (like Ishmael) and sacrifices another — on the same mountain where according to tradition Isaac was bound for sacrifice.

These two goats echo Isaac and Ishmael. The goats can be seen as our Yom Kippur act of tshuvah — No, we will NOT do this to human beings. And then we stop doing it to goats as well; we tell only the story.

On Yom Kippur, we could add as a Torah reading the passage about Abraham's death. (For synagogues where this seems halakhically or liturgically difficult, the passage could be read as "study," not from the Torah Scroll.)
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The Rosh Hashanah Torah readings focus on Abraham's two families. With Hagar, his son Ishmael becomes the mythic forebear of the Arab peoples; with Sarah, his son Isaac becomes the mythic forebear of the Jewish people. The readings about them can be directed either to increasing Jewish hostility toward the Palestinians, or to encouraging the seeking of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Some of the classic rabbinic comments are hostile to Ishmael .

But in the last 25 years, a number of reinterpretations of the same texts have encouraged open-heartedness toward Hagar and Ishmael.

One example is Phyllis Berman's retelling of her mother's extraordinary midrash, rooted in the tales of many generations of Jewish women, about the "real" story of Hagar and Sarah, as it appears in our co-authored book Tales of Tikkun (Jason Aronson, 1995; see the Rosh Hashanah section of this Website for her story).

But for this essay, I intend to focus on the tale of Ishmael.

The ancient rabbinic midrash is clearly ethically distressed by Sarah's demand that Ishmael be expelled from the family for "mitzacheyk" — simply making laughter (Gen. 20: 9). So it soothes this distress by finding places in Chumash where this word is connected with the golden calf (Exod. 32: 5) and Potiphar's wife (Gen. 39: 17) - that is, with idolatry and adultery — and then "proves" the case with two more passages that actually use a different verb - "missacheyk" - II Sam. 2: 14 and Prov 26: 18-19 - through which they connect it with murder.

So if they can view Ishmael as an idolator, an adulterer, and a murderer — obviously it's OK to throw him out of the family. If the early rabbis are in conflict with the (pre-Islamic) Arab communities of their day, this works nicely.

But not only is this clearly at variance from the Torah text, which sees Ishmael as an early recipient of God's blessings and Hagar as the first woman to have a full and direct conversation with God, but it ignores a very different way of seeing the text, far richer for the task of "Seek peace and pursue it."

This much deeper midrash first emerged in the Torah-study of the Washington havurah Fabrangen in the early 1970s. It pointed to the deep connection between Ishmael "mitzacheyk" and Yitzchak's own name — "Laughter" — which is connected with the laughter of Abraham and Sarah on being told of Yitzchak's imminent conception and then his birth (Gen. 17: 17 and 18: 9-15 and 21: 3).

It seems very unlikely that all this overlapping "laughter," including "mitzacheyk," is accidental.

So what could it mean?

Very simply, that Isaac (Yitzchak) and Ishmael are very SIMILAR to each other. Not identical, but so similar that like a cloudy mirror, the constant presence of each in the other's face was distorting each of them, making it hard for them to grow up together. (Think of how children can drive you and each other crazy by imitating what others say and how their faces look.)

So to become themselves, they must live separately, free of each other's control and imitation.

But this separation is not to last forever. For the text sets forth God's messenger's prediction of the sequential path of Ishmael's life:

First he will live as a nomadic "wild donkey /human" ("pereh adam") in the desert. (For the Bible, wild donkeys were archetypally neither domesticated, like sheep and cows, nor dangerous, like lions and wolves. Neither prey nor predator. Such a person, or a people, would be neither conquered, nor conqueror. Neither ally nor enemy.)

His hand will be "bakol" (literally "in the all," but most translations say "against all") (very different!) and everyone's hand "in his," ((v'yad kol bo) but usually translated "everyone's hand against his"). (Everyone's hand in everyone else's is in fact more accurate for the way in which most nomads live. The hospitality of Bedouin today, as of Abraham more than three thousand years ago, is legendary.)

Then he will dwell "facing all his brothers."

God will hear him - "Va'yishma YHWH" -same word as "Sh'ma! Hear! Listen!" — so he shall be named Yishma'el, "God hears." And God will make Hagar's offspring "many, many; too many to count." God will "hear" the mother of this son who is to be named "God hears," and will make of him a great nation.

So the two brothers who cannot face each other because they are too much alike to look each other in the face- will ultimately be able to see each other face to face, live facing each other.

And to make this possible, a well is revealed to Hagar while she is still pregnant with the unborn Ishmael - a well named "Be'er Lachai Ro'i, Well of the Living One Who Sees Me." (Gen. 16 for this whole episode.)

After she and Ishmael are driven out of the family, driven into the desert, after they almost die of thirst, after Hagar has been unwilling to see her son die, after her eyes pour tears into the world, God opens her eyes and she sees a well of water that she gives to Ishmael (Gen. 21). Surely this is the Well of the Living One Who Sees Me, and surely it is her tears, falling, that give rise to this wellspring.

Rabbi Mordechai Gafni has suggested that because God responds to Ishmael's voice rather than Hagar's, God has rejected her tears because they are tears of resignation and despair. This is one reasonable and instructive understanding, but I see and hear the teaching differently: That Hagar closed her eyes not in resignation but in a direct challenge, refusing to see her son so as to force God to see him - to open the Well of Seeing that she had seen so many years before. Refusing to hear her son so as to force God to hear him as she had been promised long ago.

And indeed God Hears - "Va'yishma elohim!" "Yishma'el" becomes his name in fact as well as in truth.

Soon after, Abraham takes an even more direct hand in threatening the life of his other son, Yitzchak, Isaac: leads him up a mountain, lifts a knife to slay him as an offering to God, and at the last moment hears a messenger from God commanding him to let the boy live. He lifts his eyes, sees a ram caught in a thicket, and offers the ram instead. He calls the place "YHWH Sees" and it becomes known as the Mountain of YHWH Seeing. (Gen. 21)

These stories are obviously intertwined and echoed. In our generation, some have suggested that this echo is meant to convey that God's test of Abraham in regard to Isaac emerges from Abraham's behavior toward Ishmael. Not just the stories but the fates of the two sons are intertwined.

The fullness of the prophecy that Ishmael will ultimately live facing all his brothers is not lived out until after Abraham, the father who would have allowed both sons to die from his own actions, has himself died.

That is when Abraham's sons Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury him (Genesis 25: 9-11). Indeed, only in this passage are they named together as "Abraham's sons," as if to teach us that they became truly his sons — and together — only by joining in their grief (or relief? or both?).

Only after that are they able to live face to face with each other; Isaac goes to live at the Well of the Living One Who Sees Me, and finally the prophecy comes true in which Ishmael is to live "facing all his brothers." (Gen. 25: 18).

The two are able to live together after they have mourned the most dangerous and threatening person in their lives.

Now — what does this weave of text and midrash have to say about today, about the lethal violence between the two families of Abraham in our own generation?

First, I think it teaches us to look at our similarities, not only at our differences.

This is hard to do with our enemies. We would mostly rather describe them as utterly different from ourselves.

But if we swallow hard and try this, we can begin with the most basic: Both peoples claim, and in fact have, a strong relationship with the land between the Jordan and the Sea.

And some within both peoples often fall into denying the other's claim and connection because it is so painful to realize that others love and are beloved of that same land, and because both peoples fear that recognizing the other's claim and connection would delegitimate its own.

In the last century, both peoples have experienced disastrous abuses of their peoplehoods — the Shoah, the Naqba. We do not have to measure one against the other to know that each left deep wounds and scars, yet unresolved, on the soul of each.

And so we see that two abused peoples, still suffering, are thrown into conflict with each other. For each, an act that seems defensive in its own eyes is seen as abusive by the other people.

Each grieves its own dead, killed at the other's hands.

We might draw a lesson from the shared grief of Isaac and Ishmael, and the release it gave them to face each other. Can Jews and Palestinians together share feelings of grief about the deaths of members of our two peoples at the hands of the other — at the hands of those who are dangerous and threatening to each of our peoples?

Could Jewish and Arab groups (in Israel, the US, or elsewhere) arrange for public ceremonies of grief and mourning for BOTH those Israeli Jews and those Palestinians who have been killed by violence from the other side in the current conflict?

The mourning could include the recitation of the names of those who have been killed. (The names of the dead of both communities, listed according to their status, the status of those who killed them, and place of death, are available on the Web at www.btselem.org. When you get to this site, click on "Current Intifada" and then on "Statistics" and then on "Persons Killed.")

Where joint ceremonies cannot be arranged, I suggest that Jewish groups express publicly their grief at all these deaths, and that Arab groups do the same, separately.

I am NOT suggesting that the decision of one community to do this be made conditional on the decision of the other. There should be an authentic sense of grief over these deaths that does not depend on anyone else's willingness to express that grief.

Among Jews, one appropriate and important time might be on Yom Kippur, after the ten days in which we are to do tshuvah — turn our lives in more just, peaceful, and holy directions.

The traditional Torah reading on Yom Kippur morning includes a passage in which the High Priest sends one goat out into the wilderness (like Ishmael) and sacrifices another — on the same mountain where according to tradition Isaac was bound for sacrifice.

These two goats echo Isaac and Ishmael. The goats can be seen as our Yom Kippur act of tshuvah — No, we will NOT do this to human beings. And then we stop doing it to goats as well; we tell only the story.

On Yom Kippur, we could add as a Torah reading the passage about Abraham's death. (For synagogues where this seems halakhically or liturgically difficult, the passage could be read as "study," not from the Torah Scroll.)

And immediately after reading it, the congregation could read the names of BOTH Palestinians and Jews who have been killed in the conflict of the past three years.

Then there could be congregational discussion in a Torah-study atmosphere about how this passage bears on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This reading could be followed by either the full Mourners Kaddish or just the last paragraph of Mourners Kaddish (to distinguish this from the Kaddish said in memory of one's closest beloveds).
In the Oseh Shalom paragraph, after "v'al kol Yisrael," the phrase "v'al kol Yishmael" could be added. — "May there be peace/ harmony for all Israel and all Ishmael " — that is, for the Jewish people and for the Palestinian people.

When either community mourns the deaths only of those on "its side" who have been killed by those on "the other side," the outcome is often more rage, more hatred, and more death. If we can share the grief for those dead on both "sides," we are more likely to see each other as human beings and move toward ending the violence.

Finally, we should face the truth that translations and midrash often bear a political imprint and have a political impact. I make no bones about it — except the bones of Ezekiel's dry-bones vision of the Jewish people shattered, disconnected.

May our midrash help to reconnect those bones and fill them with the Breath of Life.

That is indeed how The Shalom Center sees the practice of midrash in our generation: necessary to heal the abusive aspects of our inherited text, and so to help in healing the shattered world we live in. That is why Phyllis Berman and I wrote Tales of Tikkun new Jewish stories to heal the wounded world.

For it is not just the families of Abraham that might learn from these stories how to heal the wounds between them but the larger, rounder world as well.

As God tells Abraham: "All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you." (Gen. 12: 3)

Here we are, when all the families of the earth need to learn to share this planet with each other — not only to share it among the different human communities, but to share with all earth's families, all species and even such "life-forms" as the ozone layer.

Need to learn. The margin of error, of dominion, of arrogance, of control, is far too narrow to go on in the old pathways. We are stuck, squeezed, breathless, in a Tight and Narrow Place, and we need to turn that narrowness into the birth canal of all the families of the earth — or die in the Narrow Spot.

And at just that moment of our planet's history, Abraham's two families confront each other in the land where he and his wives and children herded sheep so long ago.

You can say this coincidence is magical and eerie, or you can say it is mechanical and obvious:

Modernity brought the Jewish people into this land again, a national entity, a state.

Modernity brought the Palestinian people into a place of national consciousness and the demand for a national state.

Modernity brought all the families of the earth into this crisis where a failure to share means not just war but co-annihilation.

The timing is one timing. History's railroad, or God's joke. (From such a joke you can die laughing. No wonder the story plays so much with "laughter.")

There are no obvious boundaries by which the two families can divide the land. Yet they need to claim their distinctiveness, and shape their selves through self-determination.

And that is also true of adam and adamah, of earthy humans and this all-too-human earth. For we all live on the great unboundaried earth, and most peoples love a scrap of land some other people loves as well. In our generation of H-bombs and global scorching, the journey to Peace has seemed hard — but necessary.

So once upon a dream, I imagined the two peoples that share the narrow land between the Jordan and the Sea becoming a model for peacemaking to the peoples of the earth.

Precisely because their journey from hostility to peace has been hard, I felt that if they could walk the journey, their path would matter to all the peoples, whose path toward peace is also hard.

The upshot? It has all come about precisely as I dreamed - — but with all
the colors reversed into their opposites. The green of life turned to the red
of blood and fire, silver hope turned into black despair. From the violence between our two close-connected peoples, the world is learning violence. Learning to imitate a violent, repressive occupation; learning to imitate a desperate terrorism.

Can we find anywhere in the Rosh Hashanah stories a blessing from the two families of Abraham to the other families of earth?