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Genesis 12:1-17:27

Isaiah 40:27-41:16

by Rabbi Amy Eilberg

As a high school student, I was fascinated by the concept that, within all the grandeur of the created universe, creation also contained certain "mistakes." I remember studying an ancient midrash that asked why God had created the mosquito.

I could ask about many other apparent "mistakes." Why did God create Sudden Infant Death Syndrome? Why cancer? Why the human impulse to jealousy, hatred and murder?

In this week's parashah, we find the beginning of a terrible, ancient story of familial rivalry and hatred. It is one of those times when the pages of the Torah relate directly, and horribly, to the news of the day.

Parashat Lech Lecha tells us of Sarai's barrenness, and her painful decision to give her servant Hagar to Avram as a concubine, so that he could father a son. Hagar immediately conceived, and began to mock Sarai. Sarai responded with hurt and anger, blaming Avram for her pain. Avram told Sarai to do what she liked with Hagar. Sarai treated her harshly, and Hagar ran away to the wilderness (Genesis 16:3-6).

Who could blame these completely human characters for their pain? Hagar, the servant, after a lifetime of servitude, finally does something valued in her household. It is perhaps natural that she turns on her master, expressing long-suppressed envy and rage. For a moment, Hagar feels powerful, and seeks to avenge the master who has oppresse0d her in the past. Perhaps just as naturally, Sarai, filled with pain and a sense of personal failure, responds with hate and vengefulness.

Surely, the feelings are understandable. But can you imagine a different dialogue between these two women? Can you imagine a relationship in which the women do not act out their initial feelings of envy, rage and hate,

If only Sarai and Hagar could have sat down and talked together. If they could each have struggled to hear the other's grievances, owned their own pain and also acknowledged that of the other, without blame and without hate. If they could have found the common experiences that could unite them; if they could have wept in one another's arms.

Then, perhaps, they could have created a sense of family large enough to include Abraham, Sarah and Isaac, as well as Hagar and Ishmael. Imagine, then, what their children, raised in peace and generosity of spirit, could have taught their own children, and their children's children, about managing conflict and rivalry and power imbalance, about creating peace where hate once raged.

In this case, our foremothers, Sarai and Hagar, left us a terrible legacy. It is for us to reject the notion that the story of this family must end the way it began. It is for us, God's partners in the work of creation, to correct the mistakes — like the violent potential of jealousy, anger and blame. We must find the ways that are within our power to begin to write a different story.

I wish I knew the answer. But for now, one response suggests itself to me, and that response is prayer. Last week I received several e-mails asking me to participate in a worldwide effort to gather Jews around the world at the same moment — 6 p.m. Israeli time on Nov. 1 — offering prayers for peace in the Middle East. We were asked to stop for a moment, wherever we were at the appointed time, to offer a prayer that the cycle of violence might end, that the seed of peace might somehow begin to grow again.

I don't understand how prayer works, though I know that it does. I know that prayer alone will not end war or stem the tide of hatred and violence. But at this time, perhaps one of the best things that we can do is to consider a possibility that does not seem real at the moment: that dialogue may begin again, that trust may someday be possible again, that the seeds of peace can be cultivated again.

I wholeheartedly participated in the worldwide moment of prayer last week. But surely, one moment of prayer is not enough. What if all of us vowed to join in a moment of prayer every day at 6 p.m. Israeli time (8 a.m. in California)? What if we all circulated this invitation to every one of our e-mail correspondents? At the very least, we would have created a moment each day when people around the world — Jews and non-Jews alike — could gather their energies to imagine an end to the horror, the rage, the killing and the dying.

Maybe, just maybe, the God who heard Hagar's cry, and later, heard the cry of the boy Ishmael (whose Hebrew name Yishma'el means "God will hear") would hear our collective prayer for peace. May it be so.