Toledot

Posted on November 20, 2025 by sylviarothschild

Parashat Toledot is the one time that we focus on the life of the adult Isaac. His parents, Abraham and Sarah are dead and buried. He is married to Rebecca, whom his father’s servant has brought back from their ancestral homeland for this purpose. He is in love with her and faithful to her and she is apparently barren. So Isaac entreats God on her behalf and she conceives his children Jacob and Esau, twins whose struggle begins even in the womb. Isaac is set up to follow his father, and to become the Patriarch of the next generation – a man who speaks to God and is heard by God, who is the head of a large household and the father of sons. One would expect now that the stories of this new Patriarch would take us further into our history, give us new aspects to consider. And this does happen, but in a somewhat unusual fashion.

Following the birth of the children and the parental choices that will forever mark the relationship of Esau and Jacob, Isaac and Rebecca go on to repeat the journey taken by Abraham and Sarah. They go to escape the effects of famine just as Abraham and Sarah did, but theirs is not simply a physical journey – by virtue of the repetition something extra happens and defines the process by which Isaac becomes himself. Isaac and Rebecca have almost the exact same experience in the same city of Gerar as did his parents, Abraham and Sarah, and its effect creates something quite new.

The famine is described to us as being a famine Bilvad hara’av harishon asher haya bimei Avraham – not the same famine as before, that happened in the days of Abraham, so we are already conscious once more of the journey that Abraham took in his response to the famine. On this journey however, God appears and warns Isaac not to leave the land, not to follow his father’s example and go to Egypt.

Isaac goes to Abimelech, the king of the philistines, in Gerar, according to tradition the very same Abimelech that Abraham and Sarah encountered all those years before. There he tells king Abimelech that Rebecca is his sister and not his wife, just as Abraham had done with Sarah in Genesis, chapter 20. Of course this caused problems in both cases as the king was taken with first Sarah and later Rebecca. Abimelech is very upset when he discovers that these women are none other than wives, not sisters. Can this really be the same king? one would have thought would have learned his lesson! But that is exactly what this week’s parasha is about. Lessons learned and lessons not learned; encountering the same thing again and again, and responding to it differently or not.

We see this story as a slightly weak repetition of the Abraham stories, and might be led into thinking of Isaac as somehow a weak and uncreative man. He is indeed often described as being the middle link, the son of a famous father and father of a famous son who himself has no claim to fame except as the link between the two. But we can look at this story in yet another way. We might see that Isaac, as patriarch of the next generation, must first walk in the footsteps of his father in order to make his journey grounded. He has to plumb the depths of his father’s experiences in order to move on and to make meaning for himself and his family, develop the traditions of his growing tribe. When confronted with similar moments in time, the choices that Isaac will make will not only shape him but shape generations to come. He has lessons to learn. Will Isaac learn from these lessons? Will he miss them and miss how they relate to incidents in his own life? And how will we, the readers, know?

Though Isaac may once have fled from a father he may have feared, (after the Akedah on the mountain top Isaac is not mentioned as returning with is father and we later see him come together with Ishmael to bury Abraham – neither of them seem to have had an adult experience with Abraham the patriarch), he now meets him in a different way, by re-living similar experiences.

We learn about our ancestors when we have to grapple with similar decisions and incidents. We gain valuable insights into who they were and their character. What we could not understand as children or earlier in our lives, we understand differently when placed in similar situations. It is often only when we become parents that we understand better the feelings our parents must have had toward us. Only when we have to bury a parent or care for a sick spouse that we truly understand what an earlier generation must have gone through.

This repetition of the story of Abimelech and the wives/sisters is a vital requirement for Isaac if he is to grow into being his own person, no longer overshadowed by his father. By reliving some of the major events in the story of his father’s life, he will have to respond to many similar choices.

Isaac was almost sacrificed on the altar by his father in response to the command of God. His father apparently was fulfilling a divine call. Isaac will do the same to his son Esau when he gives Jacob the blessing even as he senses that Jacob is masquerading as Esau. And though Isaac won’t literally hold a knife over Esau’s head, he will sacrifice him and his future in a different way. Sometimes we repeat our parent’s mistakes; sometimes we are able to amend them. Sometimes we repeat our own mistakes, sometimes we are able to learn from them.

The sedra concludes with Rebecca helping Jacob to receive the blessing by apparently deceiving the blind and dying Isaac. It is never clear quite whether she does so because she remembers the divine prophecy about the older child serving the younger when her pregnancy was so painful she too enquired of God; it is never clear if this prophecy was the reason she so favoured her son Jacob over her son Esau. But it is clear that she will act to achieve the succession for her favoured younger son Jacob, just as her mother in law Sarah acted in order to achieve the succession for her child, Abraham’s younger son Isaac.

With the help of the manipulation and skills of his mother, by the end of the sidra the focus is on Jacob, who has received the blessing of the heir from his father. Esau returns from his mission to get something special for his dying father and cries out in terrible pain “Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too Father (27:36). He receives a blessing from his father which is perhaps more than Ishmael ever did, but not the blessing he so craved.

When we look at these stories of Isaac acting out the life of his more colourful and confident and arrogant father we see that Isaac does indeed walk in his father’s footsteps, and not only as a pale shadow. We see that Isaac was his father’s son, able to understand more about his father than perhaps he realized, able to repair some of the mistakes at least a little.

As we read his story in Toledot, maybe it will cause us to reflect a bit about ourselves, for perhaps all of us walk in our parents’ footsteps more than we would like to acknowledge, and maybe we have a chance to repair some of the damage done, rather than pass it on to the next generation.

Chayei Sarah – the lives of Sarah the matriarch

Posted on November 13, 2025 by sylviarothschild

“V’hayu chayei Sara meah shanah vesrim shana v’sheva shanim, shenei hayei Sarah. Vatamot Sarah b’kiryat arbah hi Hevron b’eretz Canaan, v’yavo Avraham lispod l’sarah v’livkotah. Vayakom Avraham me’al pnei meito”

And the life of Sarah was a hundred years and twenty years and seven years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kiriat-arba–the same is Hebron–in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to eulogise Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham rose up from before his dead, and spoke unto the children of Het”

Sarah, the first Jewish matriarch, is last seen in bible having given birth to Isaac through a divine intervention when both she is in her nineties and Abraham is a hundred. We see Isaac named – unusually – by his father, and circumcised at the age of 8 days old, as required by God. We hear Sarah say: ‘God has made me a laughing stock; every one that hears will laugh on account of me.’ And then: ‘Who would have said to Abraham, that Sarah should be able to feed a child? For I have borne him a son in his old age.’ And then on the day Isaac celebrates his weaning feast, Sarah, seeing Ishmael (the son born to Abraham through her own intervention in offering her Egyptian maid Hagar to him, in order to provide a child for Abraham so that God’s promise is fulfilled), recognised the threat Ishmael poses to his younger half brother, and tells Abraham’ Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.’ Abraham is upset but does not speak to Sarah – instead he goes to God who tells him “Let it not be grievous in your sight because of the lad, and because of your bondwoman; in all that Sarah says to you listen to her voice; for through Isaac shall your descendants be called.”

After that, we never hear the voice of Sarah again. Instead we have the two terrible stories of Abraham sending off his older son Ishmael into the wilderness to what he must believe is likely death, and then taking his second son Isaac up a mountain, to what he must again believe is likely death. And then we have a genealogical list which takes us to Rebecca the daughter of Betuel the nephew of Abraham through his brother Nahor. The next thing we hear is that Sarah is dead, that she has been living not at Beer Sheva with her husband but in Hevron, and that Abraham comes to eulogise her and to weep for her, before getting on with the practicalities of arranging a funeral.

What happens to Sarah in between her arranging for the removal of Ishmael, the person she saw as a threat to the wellbeing of Isaac her son, and the death as reported in bible? Where is the voice of the woman who has been a powerful presence up till now, a formidable partner for Abraham, a true incarnation of what the bible calls the ‘ezer k’negdo’ – a help who is equal and powerfully separate from her husband? Was Sarah’s death somehow related to what nearly happened to Isaac? And was that related to the choice she forced on to Abraham to remove a much beloved son from his household? Had she already removed herself from the household when Abraham went to offer Isaac on a mountain top?

We do know that Sarah is not herself party to what turns out to be the most important decision of her life. Abraham does not discuss with her the test he sees God as having set him. There is indeed a huge irony working in that once Abraham is told “in all that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice”, we never hear her voice again. But what does her silence tell us? And what can we learn from the powerful absence we feel?

Sarah’s death is told us in the context of her life – indeed the Hebrew tells us clearly that her life was full and complex – the literal translation of the first verse would be “and the lives of Sarah were a hundred years, and twenty years and seven years, these are the years of the lives of Sarah.” And Jewish tradition takes from this the learning that a full life is made up of a number of separate strands, all of equal value though not all of equal length. So one might read this description as being that most of her adult life was as a barren woman, wife to a man who had been promised descendants. She then had a shorter period as a mother, and another short period living separately from her child. Each of these lives helped to define her, each was a fully experienced era, and the fact they were of unequal length is irrelevant in terms of the value of each life she lived.

Sarah was clearly a formidable woman. Any view that women in the bible were somehow simply adjuncts to their menfolk cannot be sustained in the face of any of our matriarchs, but it is Sarah who sets the pattern. She is named as an equal figure in the story of the travelling from Ur of the Chaldees with her husband – and from this text Sarah emerges in the Talmud and Midrash as an equal partner with her husband in God’s work, and a prophetess in her own right. She is described as someone who worked alongside Abraham to build up his wealth and “acquire souls” in Haran, where they stopped off before going to Canaan (Gen 12:5). She is the woman who intervened in order to bring what she thought was God’s promise to fulfilment – When she cannot have children, Sarah takes the initiative and gives her maid-servant, Hagar, to Abraham so that he can have children through Hagar on Sarah’s behalf. She is the woman who is taken – apparantly willingly – into the households of both Pharaoh and Abimelech in order to protect her husband, and then quickly released again untouched, and with compensatory wealth. Sarah acts independently on a number of occasions, taking the initiative to decide the future of her family, even against her husband’s wishes.

The modern scholar Tikvah Frymer-Kensky argues that although the Bible portrays a patriarchal social structure, it has a gender-neutral ideology. The women in the Bible may be socially subordinate but not essentially inferior; they have strong, independent personalities, and they often act to guide the course of events. So when Sarah gives Hagar to Abraham she is keeping ancient Near Eastern tradition. We have evidence of three ancient Near Eastern marriage contracts stating that if the wife remains barren after a specified number of years, she gives her husband her slave to have children on her behalf. On her behalf note, not simply for him.

Another scholar Carol Meyers applied insights from sociology, anthropology, and archaeology to reconstruct the ordinary women’s place within Israelite society in various periods of biblical history. She argues that when agricultural work and childbearing, two spheres in which women played an active role, were central to biblical society, social and religious life in ancient Israel was relatively egalitarian. Only when the political state and the monarchy emerged, and religious life was institutionalized in the Temple cult and priestly bureaucracy (beginning in the tenth century B.C.E.), were women increasingly excluded from the public arena and lost access to communal authority. Sarah then is from a period when women were able to be active in society and in determining how the family should operate, and we can see forcefully how she does this in a number of stories about her.

But however powerful she was in the prime of her life, in old age and with the added vulnerability of parenthood, Sarah found herself less able to voice her ideas. With the birth of Isaac she gained a new role and meaning for herself, but she also became more aware of her own mortality and vulnerability. So when God tests Abraham, seeming to require him to take the so beloved child of Abraham and Sarah and offer him on a mountain top. Is Sarah’s absence because she knows that this is happening and cannot stop it? Oris it a result of her shame at the treatment of Ishmael and desire to move away. Or is it something different – to do maybe with having now become a parent she no longer has the relationship with Abraham she once did. From being a tight unit they are now a family of three and having to adjust to the demands of another person in the relationship.

We cannot know what causes Sarah’s voice to fall quiet in the text. Whether it is protection of her that she does not have to be party to this most horrible test of faith or punishment for what happened to Ishmael. But what we can know is that in this final life of the lives of Sarah, she has struck out alone and left her husband behind. She is, once more a woman of strength, no appendage to her husband but living alone and with some status in Hebron.

When the last of Sarah’ lives are over and Abraham hears of her death, he comes to Hebron in order to fulfil the requirements of family and religion. And it is interesting what he does and the order in which he does them. He first come ‘lispod’ then liv’kotah and finally to buy a burial place and perform the funerary rites.

The first thing he does is “lispod” to give a Hesped – in effect a eulogy. He tells the stories of Sarah, who she was, what she did, how she lived her life in its many parts.

Only then does he mourn her through his weeping – livkotah. And then he gets up from before her dead body and takes on the practicalities of the living – to make a funeral for her, to perform the rites of burying the dead and then to go back into life. I can’t help wondering as I read this chapter whether the very first verse is indeed the hesped – that Abraham actually said “these are the lives of Sarah, who lived a hundred years and twenty years and seven years – three different and distinct lives all of which should be honoured, and which may have been of different lengths but are most certainly of equal and complete value.”

Vayera – we may not see the full picture, but that doesn’t mean we should not act on what we see.

Posted on November 6, 2025 by sylviarothschild

Parashat Vayera is packed with stories, a veritable smorgasbord of the founding myths of Judaism. Within it there is the story of Abraham and Sarah, now very elderly, still wondering exactly how the promise of God’s covenant with them is going to work out. The heir designate Lot had separated from them after a struggle over wealth and space with Abraham and his herdsmen, even though he had been with their household since the whole family were still in Ur Kasdim, after the death of his own father and the brother of Abram – Haran.

Sarah has organised for Ishmael to be born to Abraham via a surrogate, Hagar, but clearly that relationship is not one of ease and joy and it is not certain that Ishmael will indeed be the inheritor of the particular Abrahamic covenant. Now, Abraham having circumcised himself and his son Ishmael at the end of the sidra last week, we have the story of the mysterious visitors to Abraham and Sarah, and this elderly couple being told they will have a child within the year. Sarah in particular is clear that this prophecy is ridiculous – she is post menopausal and Abraham 99 years old. However Isaac IS born in this sidra, and then we have the story of the jealousy and anxiety of Sarah who tries to protect her son Isaac from the previous presumptive heir Ishmael. We have the story of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away to fend for themselves. We have the story of Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed after the bartering of Abraham for the city to be saved does not go low enough for God to have to save it. And we have the story of the binding of Isaac and the grim reality that the relationship between father and son is broken forever.

So many stories, so many themes and threads. The most important maybe is the creating of the links in order to allow continuation of the covenant; then there is the theme of the treatment of women – Abraham using Sarah as a shield once again to save his own life, and claiming that she is his sister rather than his wife. And Hagar, used to supply a child and then once that child is seen as unwanted and maybe even a threat, sent off to probable death in the wilderness. And finally the women surrounding Lot, in particular his two unmarried daughters who are offered to the angry mob at door of the family home, in place of the visitors who have come to his house. Lot seems prepared to sacrifice his children, as of course Abraham appears to be prepared to do in relation to both his sons.

All these themes and threads fill the sidra, but there is one theme that we find resonates in modern life more than most.

Vayera also deals with challenging authority — not just authority in general, but the ultimate authority – that of God. And it also deals with what happens when authority is NOT challenged, when people just go along with what is happening.

The most famous example of the challenge to authority is the bartering that Abraham engages with God, who, when God decided he should include Abraham in his plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah since Abraham is designated the one in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, is appalled that the “innocent would be swept away with the wicked” and asks “shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?”

Much is made of Abraham’s challenging God’s authority, negotiating from 50 righteous people, five at a time, until he gets down to ten – a minyan – and God seems to quickly retreat at this point. Abraham, who has so much to lose if he loses God’s favour, still stands up for his values – justice and mercy, righteousness and decency. We model ourselves on his willingness to take on even the divine creator, seeing ourselves as Abraham’s descendants, who are willing to make a stand for morality, no matter who is the adversary. We do not see ourselves as people who submit thoughtlessly, but who need to have reason and rationale in order to follow a particular ruling or expectation. Faith without reason or understanding is not a stable Jewish position, even if we are willing to take on something as a matter of faith ab initio – famously we quote the descendants of Abraham at Sinai – na’aseh v’nishma – we will do it, and then we will gain understanding.

We also find Abraham challenging Sarah’s imperative that he must get rid of Hagar and Ishmael – that they cannot be allowed to be near her son as he grows up. Abraham here does not challenge Sarah, but he does go and challenge her demand to God. And God’s answer is clear. What Sarah tells him to do, he must do. And so, without further ado, though clearly with a heavy heart, Abraham gets up early in the morning, gives Hagar and Ishmael provisions, and sends them into the wilderness with no clear destination.

And so we slide into the time when Abraham offers no challenge to authority at all – when God tells him to take his son, his only son, the one he loves, and offer him on a mountain some days journey away. The Akedah can be read as either seeing Abraham as being a lonely man of total faith, upon whose full obedience to even the most dreadful demands of God we see ourselves provided with a powerful role model and also the zechut, the reward, of the religious Jew. Or else we can read it as a terrible failure of Abraham to challenge the divinity that looks to him to provide a balance in the relationship between Creator and created – a man who having started out challenging God on behalf of the moral imperative of protecting the vulnerable and innocent, whoever they may be – somehow lost his nerve when it came to protecting his own son, after his protest on behalf of Ishmael was brushed aside.

We see other instances here in this sidra about people not challenging the prevailing authority. Hagar for instance is not recorded as protesting at all at her treatment, though one could read through the text in order to hear her protest to God. Ishmael is not recorded as protesting his treatment, though God – as predicted by his name – in fact hears the boy. Lot does not seem to protest at either the appalling behaviour of the mob when they find he has guests in his house – indeed he panders to them by offering his unmarried daughters to placate them. And he does not protest when his wife challenges the authority by looking back at the city where they have left their older children and is turned into a pillar of salt. Lot takes his lack of protest even further by abdicating from responsibility at all – he simply gets so drunk he is unaware of the rather unorthodox actions of his younger daughters in order to repopulate the world, and seems unaware too of the people who are the results of these drunken encounters. Only Isaac shows some desire to challenge when, walking up the mountain with firewood and knife, he asks his father about the whereabouts of the sacrifice they will presumably be making. The answer he gets – “God will provide, my son”, is ambiguous but also unanswerable. How is the young boy going to challenge his father’s apparently certain faith? One feels for the boy whose question could have provided his father with a platform for dissidence against an unfair test, but instead is used to close down just such an activity.

With the hugely powerful example of Abraham arguing with God, not just once but repeatedly, and God gently ceding to Abraham’s argument, why then do we have so many other examples of either half hearted or simply non existent challenge to authority? Is bible warning us that it may feel too hard to challenge? or is it reminding us that even Abraham fell prey to the uncertainty and self doubt that can undermine us all? Is it warning us what happens if we do not challenge unfair dictats from those in authority, having reminded us that such a challenge is actually welcomed by God?

What we know is that all those who do not take it upon themselves to challenge immoral and unacceptable behaviours do not ultimately profit. Sarah, having disposed of Hagar’s son, finds her own son in the firing line. Lot offering his daughters to a mob ends up in an incestuous union with them, bringing about the historic enemies of Israel, Moab and Ammonites. Abraham, not challenging God about Isaac, never speaks to either of them again. Isaac, having half-tried, remains somehow personally maimed in his own confidence and leadership skills.

The word “Vayera” with which the sedra begins means “And he appeared” – We are told clearly that God appeared to Abraham, though immediately we look through Abraham’s eyes and we see not God, but three strangers visiting. Appearances may be deceptive, may not be the full picture. But they are all we have, and we must respond to them. The truth may be more complex than we see, but that is no excuse to plead ignorance and to not react.

In our world we see only a partial view, yet even that must be responded to with immediacy rather than delay. We see great deal that is immoral, that is improper, that is unacceptable. Vulnerable people of all kinds are taken advantage of or left to survive without proper resources. Our environment is plundered and damaged. Racism is on the march once more, xenophobia is evolving a new framework and vocabulary.

We must act whole-heartedly to challenge the abuses of power that we can see. and stand up and challenge them however frightening that may feel, or however we might undermine ourselves with the sense that we can’t know the whole story, that we should wait for some imagined clarity to explain what we see. Then maybe we too will become part of the narrative for good, fighting for the moral virtues of justice and righteousness, of mercy and compassion. And the one thing we know is that God, when challenged, responds positively. There is nothing to wait for, as Hillel said, “if not now, when?”

Parashat Toledot – Fighting for the space to live in safety and for important resources to be accessible to all who need them has a long history

Posted on November 5, 2021 by sylviarothschild

“and [Isaac] grew richer and richer until he was very wealthy: he acquired flocks and herds, and a large household, so that the Philistines envied him. And the Philistines stopped up all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham, filling them with earth. And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you have become far too big for us.” So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the wadi of Gerar, where he settled. Isaac dug anew the wells which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death; and he gave them the same names that his father had given them. But when Isaac’s servants, digging in the wadi, found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” He named that well Esek., “contention.” because they contended with him. And when they dug another well, they disputed over that one also; so he named it Sitnah.^– harassment.” He moved from there and dug yet another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he called it Rehovot, saying, “Now at last the Eternal has granted us ample space(breadth)” to increase in the land.”” (Genesis 26:13ff)

The stories in the life of Isaac often parallel those of his father Abraham. There is a famine in the early story of Abraham, and a famine in the early life of Isaac. In both cases they left the land of Israel – Abraham went down to Egypt, Isaac to Gerar in Philistine controlled territory, having been explicitly told by God NOT to go to Egypt. Isaac encounters an Abimelech, King of Gerar and lies about the relationship he has with Rebecca, calling her his sister rather than his wife, (something Abraham had also done, both in Egypt and in Gerar)

Abraham also has an encounter with an Abimelech, the king of Gerar, over the issue of the ownership of wells, just as Isaac does in the narrative here. The digging and ownership of wells is of importance in both their lives. Both father and son have issues with the large size of their flocks and herds and the resources needed to sustain them, and both father and son react most of the time by removing themselves from conflict – Abraham with his nephew Lot, Isaac with the herdsmen of Gerar. Both have two sons, and have what might be called fraught relationships with them and with the passing of the legacy of covenant. Abraham sends Ishmael away from him and involves Isaac in whatever the mysterious event of the akeidah, never seeing him again afterwards. Isaac is tricked by Jacob pretending to be Esau, passes on the covenant apparently unaware the recipient is not Esau (or at least there is ambiguity in his mind), and Jacob is sent away, never to see his father again.

Yet there is more to Isaac’s life than his simply repeating the leitmotif’s of his father, and echoing the experiences of that great Ivri, crosser of boundaries.

Isaac – often seen as the least significant of the patriarchs, the son of a famous father and the father of a famous son. Yet his is a story with much to teach us. A man who never leaves the Land despite many trials. The only one to be described as being in love with his wife. A man who has to deal with complexity and ambiguity in navigating his life, and with fewer certainties. A man who has survived the terrible trauma of his father’s apparent attempt on his life – or at least a seeming willingness to do so.

The story told above – of the re-digging of the Abrahamic wells and the negotiations that ensue – resonated particularly for me this year as we watch the COP 26 conference and the postures and positions on display.

In the Abrahamic parallel we are told: “At that time Abimelech, with Phicol the commander of his army, said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do; now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my offspring or with my posterity, but as I have dealt loyally with you, you will deal with me and with the land where you have resided as an alien.” And Abraham said, “I swear it.” When Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech’s servants had seized, Abimelech said, “I do not know who has done this; you did not tell me, and I have not heard of it until today.” So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant. Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs of the flock. And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs that you have set apart?” He said, “These seven ewe lambs you shall accept from my hand, in order that you may be a witness for me that I dug this well.” Therefore that place was called Beer-sheba; (well of seven or well of oath) because there both of them swore an oath. When they had made a covenant at Beer-sheba, Abimelech, with Phicol the commander of his army, left and returned to the land of the Philistines. [Abraham] planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the Eternal, the Everlasting God. And Abraham resided as an alien many days in the land of the Philistines. (Gen 21:22-34)

In this narrative we are confronted with the need for trust between the various powers or participants to the agreement who are involved – without that trust nothing “agreed” can be said to really be agreed. We are confronted too with the issues of ownership of resources, of the fair sharing of such resources, with the actions of the people who reside on the land and those of people who control resources but do not “belong” to the land on which they are situated. Abraham and Abimelech appear able to make a treaty with a reasonable level of success – though we are never told why the servants of Abimelech had seized Abraham’s well in the first place.

By the time of Isaac, the wells had not only been taken back but actively stopped up – a strange phenomenon given the preciousness of the resource. Does this somewhat aggressive action date from unresolved issues from the time of Abraham? Is it to prevent others coming in from outside to use the water improperly? We can only speculate. But the continuing quarrelling and harassment that Isaac faces when trying to reclaim his father’s property shows us that the matter has not only not been resolved, but that there is ongoing acrimony and anger ready to erupt into violence.

Isaac does not go to the King as his father had done, he simply moves away and tries to settle elsewhere near a “family well”, and eventually he digs and finds what may be a new watersource, one that is not contested, and understands that now he has found a place to settle down.

Yet strangely, the next verse tells us that he moves on the BeerSheba, where he encounters God and receives the covenant promise, then builds an altar and worships, then pitches his tent and only then digs a well…

Abimelech and the Philistines come to find him to make a treaty with him, and responding to his challenge about their hostility to him which has forced him to move on, tell him that they now see that God is with him. (26:28) They make their own treaty with him, and leave. Only then do Isaac’s servants come to tell him that they have found water, which he names “Sheba” (oath) and again we have a story about the naming of Beer Sheba.

What comes down to us from these narratives is how the trust and the treaties need to be ongoing, that having been made once is not enough – they must be kept in good repair. We see that was accepted once may not be acceptable going forward. We see that pressure on resources will not only not go away, but will engender resentment and anger if not addressed fairly and regularly. We see that the actions of one (or more) rich and powerful agent (s) can be hugely detrimental to others with less power but with a real stake in the issue. And this power differential cannot be allowed to continue.

If we want to have a fairer world, a world where there is access to resources by all who need them, a world where there is trust and where people work to keep that trust alive and responsive, then we need to ensure that we are part of the solution, able to see the realities and to ensure that our leadership both acknowledge and respond in a timely and appropriate manner to those realities.

Watching the COP26 and seeing the posturing, the lobbying, the arrogance of the more powerful countries and the despair of those less powerful, we can see we have a long way to go to make a fairer and more sustainable world. The time is short, but this is no reason not to continue to involve ourselves and our values. Isaac eventually finds a place where there is space for everyone to have their own needs met without treading on the needs of others. It is a goal worth aspiring to.

Toledot – sometimes we can dig wells, sometimes we have to find other ways

Posted on November 26, 2019 by sylviarothschild

And [Isaac] had possessions of flocks, and possessions of herds, and a great household; and the Philistines envied him. Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth. And Abimelech said to Isaac: ‘Go from us; for you are much mightier than we.’ And Isaac departed thence, and encamped in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water, which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham; and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of living water. And the herdsmen of Gerar strove with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying: ‘The water is ours.’ And he called the name of the well Esek; because they contended with him. And they dug another well, and they strove for that also. And he called the name of it Sitnah. And he removed from thence, and dug another well; and for that they strove not. And he called the name of it Rechovot; and he said: ‘For now the Eternal has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.’ And he went up from thence to Beersheva. (Gen26:14ff)

The story is one of Isaac finding his role both in the Land of Israel and as Patriarch of the family tribe– after a problematic childhood with two parents who each had powerful and somewhat overwhelming personalities. Isaac is clearly a different character, often described as the son of a strong father and the father of strong sons, he seems gentler, less “alpha”, less willing to take what he wants, although admiring of those who can. But the story is also of the problem of how – and even if – to share resources, in particular the water which has always been a fragile and essential resource for life.

Water stress is a constant problem in Israel, the land which is watered only by the rainfall and should the rains not come, or not come at the right time, there will be drought and famine, and death.

We read in Deuteronomy 10ff “But the land…is a land of hills and valleys and drinks water as the rain of heaven…the eyes of God are always upon it….and if you obey my commandments…I will give the rain of your land in its season, both early and late rains, so you may gather your corn, wine and oil. And I will give grass in your fields for your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied… Take care less you …turn aside and serve other gods, for the anger of God will be against you and God will shut up the heavens and there will be no rain, and the ground will not yield her fruit and you will perish quickly from off the good land which God gives you”

The Land of Israel has always known water stress; The people Israel have built a theology around it, a routine of mitzvot in order to avert punishment by water, a choreography of teshuvah and fasting when the rains are delayed. It is in the DNA of rabbinic Judaism following the biblical exhortations – lack of rain follows the disruption of our relationship with God

But water stress is also a problem – and a growing one – in the rest of the world, and we know that there the causes and solutions are quite different.

New data reveals that 17 countries – home to one-quarter of the world’s population—face “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress, where irrigated agriculture, industries and municipalities withdraw more than 80% of their available supply on average every year.

Twelve out of these 17 most water-stressed countries are in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The region is hot and dry, so water supply is low to begin with, but growing demands have pushed countries further into extreme stress. Climate change is set to complicate matters further: The World Bank found that this region has the greatest expected economic losses from climate-related water scarcity, estimated at 6-14% of GDP by 2050.

44 countries – one third of the world’s population, already face high levels of water stress. On average in these countries, more than 40 percent of the available supply is withdrawn every year. The World Bank also estimates that by 2025 about 1.8 billion people will live in regions or countries without enough water. Many other factors contribute to water scarcity – such as weak political will, climate variability and groundwater pollution – but climate change makes all of these challenges worse. When threats combine to lead to rapid water stress, the poorest suffer the worst consequences. (https://www.wri.org/news/2019/08/release-updated-global-water-risk-atlas-reveals-top-water-stressed-countries-and-states)

In the past decade floods, storms and fires, heatwaves and droughts have been increasing in frequency and in intensity. It is clear that this is a consequence of climate change. The top 20 warmest years on record have occurred in the last 25 years, with 2017 the hottest without the contribution of El Nino. The effect of this warming climate is an increasing impact on the water resources available to populations, and the effect of that drought will of course be famine, mass movement of desperate populations, potentially even war.

Isaac tried to reclaim the resources his father had used and presumably owned, but was no match for the resident population and each time moved on. It is a story of tribal struggle, of becoming a resource migrant, of learning that one cannot behave as we have been doing earlier, we must find new solutions to the problem of managing our resources alongside all who need to share them.

Abraham was insistent Isaac should never leave the land, but we know his descendants were forced by famine to go into Egypt where ultimately their fate was that of oppression and slavery. Returning to their own land after so many years away was a journey fraught with danger, but also requiring them to acknowledge that they would not take any of the resources of the land through which they were passing. (see Moses’ appeal to the King of Edom Numbers 20:17): “Let us pass I beg through your land, we will not pass through field or vineyard, nor will we drink of the water of the wells, we will go along the King’s Highway and will not turn right or left till we have passed your border” But Edom said to him “you will not pass through me, I will come out with a sword against you. And the children of Israel said: ‘We will go up by the highway; and if we drink of your water, I and my cattle, then will I give its price; only let me only pass through on my feet; there is no hurt.’ And he said: ‘Thou shalt not pass through.’ And Edom came out against him with much people, and with a strong hand.”

This is the reality to this day. “Economic migrants” has become a term of abuse – how much more so when thousands of people fleeing water shortages, drought and famine will beg to come through or to our land? And what will our fate be when the floods wash away soil and crops, damage or destroy our houses? We are already seeing the effects of what rabbinic Judaism terms “judgement by water”.

We could go the route of ancient Israel and make teshuvah. Not by fasting and praying necessarily but by changing our behaviour, becoming more mindful of the wastage of water in our own lives. Whether it be use of water in our homes – leaving taps running, long showers etc., or awareness of the way the products we buy are using water )it was a shock for me to discover that the making of one small chocolate bar is takes 21 litres), whether it be smarter plumbing (or simply a brick in the toilet cistern) , we all need to learn how to conserve our water supplies. It may seem an odd thing to read in rainy and flooded England currently (other countries too), but the floods here are the other side of the coin of drought there, and they wash away infrastructure, soil and crops leaving agriculture and transport vulnerable.

Isaac moved to Rechovot – the broad place where there was space for him and his family to live and to thrive. We don’t have that option. Climate change and water stress is a global phenomenon, a global emergency. We are all responsible for each other, we are all responsible for the earth and her resources. It is time for the tikkun, to help heal the world and to treat her with the respect she deserves. As the psalmist writes:

The earth is the Eternal’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For God has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. (Psalm 24)

If you want to read more about water stress and ways to help:

https://blog.ucsusa.org/pablo-ortiz/the-world-is-in-a-water-crisis-and-climate-change-is-making-it-worse

https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/

https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/17-countries-home-one-quarter-world-population-face-extremely-high-water-stress

https://www.watercalculator.org/water-use/climate-change-water-resources/

https://washmatters.wateraid.org/climate-change

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/07/it-takes-21-litres-of-water-to-produce-a-small-chocolate-bar-how-water-wise-is-your-diet

https://friendsoftheearth.uk/natural-resources/13-best-ways-save-water-stop-climate-breakdown

Lech Lecha – the story of a famine which displaces vulnerable people needs to be heard

Posted on November 7, 2019 by sylviarothschild

When Abram and Sarai, his nephew Lot and the souls they had made in Haran travelled on God’s instruction to the Land of Canaan, they arrived and stopped at Shechem, where Abram built an altar and where God promised that land to his descendants. Abram journeyed on, via the mountain near Beit El, where he built another altar, and continued southwards travelling the length of the land of Israel until they exited the Land on its southern border with Egypt.

It reads rather as an anti-climax to that famous imperative in the first recorded encounter between God and Abram:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָֹה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵֽאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ:

God said to Abram “Go for yourself from your land and your birthplace, and from the house of our father, to the land which I will show you”

No introduction, no explanation, no conversation – just a command to go elsewhere, the trust that the journey will have an end is implicit, God will show Abram the place when he gets there.

But it isn’t exactly what happens. Because there is famine in the land – very heavy famine. Abram and Sarai will die if they stay there, so, prefiguring the Joseph narratives, they travel into Egypt for refuge.

Famine appears with grim frequency in bible. Each of the patriarchs will suffer serious famine – Abram goes to Egypt, Isaac goes to the Philistine King in Gerar rather than go to Egypt(Gen 26:1). Jacob and his sons go down into Egypt to buy food when the famine takes hold. The book of Ruth describes the famine that led Ruth and Elimelech to flee to Moab (Ruth 1:1). In David’s time there was a famine lasting three years (2Sam 21:1). The story of Elijah records the famine in the land (1Kings 17:1) and in Elisha fed the famine starved people of Gilgal (2Kings 4:38). Famines are also recorded in Jerusalem in the time of Tzedekiah (2Kings 25:3) (see also Jeremiah’s painful description of the drought 14:1-6) and in Canaan in the time of Nehemiah (Neh. 5:3)

The Land of Israel was dependent on the rainfall for its crops and trees, so drought and therefore famine were always to be feared. There was also fear of pests or diseases that would destroy the crops (Joel 1:4ff)and which we see most dramatically in the plague in Egypt just before the Hebrew slaves were able to leave.

War and sieges would also bring famines – again described in biblical texts with painful clarity. Famine, along with Pestilence and the sword (war) (Dever v’Herev v’Ra’av) appears regularly in a triumvirate in the Hebrew bible (cf. Jer. 14:12; 21:7, 9; 24:10; Ezek. 6:11,) and has entered the liturgy in both Avinu Malkeinu and in the Hashkiveinu prayer (second blessing following shema)

הָסֵר מֵעָלֵינוּ אוֹיֵב דֶבֶר וְחֶרֶב וְרָעָב וְיָגוֹן

Talmud also discusses the problems of famine. We read in Ta’anit 5a “Rav Nachman said to Rabbi Yitzḥak: What is the meaning of that which is written: “For the Eternal has called upon a famine and it shall also come upon the land seven years” (II Kings 8:1)? Specifically, in those seven years, what did they eat?

Rabbi Yitzḥak said to Rabbi Nachman that Rabbi Yoḥanan said as follows: In the first year they ate that which was in their houses; in the second year they ate that which was in their fields; in the third year they ate the meat of their remaining kosher animals; in the fourth year they ate the meat of their remaining non-kosher animals; in the fifth year they ate the meat of repugnant creatures and creeping animals, i.e., any insects they found; in the sixth year they ate the flesh of their sons and their daughters; and in the seventh year they ate the flesh of their own arms, to fulfil that which is stated: “Each man shall eat the flesh of his own arm” (Isaiah 9:19).”

The starvation and breakdown of social norms that famine brought can be seen across the literature. In the Talmud we read the pitiful story of one of the wealthiest women in Jerusalem, Marta bat Baitos who could not buy food with all her silver and gold, and who died after picking out the grain from the animal dung she stepped on (Gittin 56a; Josephus mentions the eating of children in Jerusalem during the Roman War (Wars 6:201–13). There are at least three historical references to famine caused by the observance of the Sabbatical year, one during the siege of Jerusalem by the forces of Antiochus IV (Ant. 12:378), one in the war of Herod against Antigonus (Ant. 14:476) and one during Herod’s reign (Ant. 15:7).

Drought, with the rains withheld, has generally been theologised into punishment for transgressions, a tool wielded by God when we do not follow the rules that acknowledge God’s ownership of the land by bringing tithes both to thank God and to feed those who cannot grow food for themselves, and when we fail in our our obligations to the Land to treat it well and allow it to rest.

Rabbinic responsa are also very sensitive to drought and famine, with a growing list of actions to pray for rain with special prayers added into the liturgy, fasting etc. So seriously did the rabbis take the realities of famine that they permitted emigration from the land of Israel in the case of famine, albeit only when survival would become extremely difficult(BB 91b; Gen. R. 25).

Rabba bar bar Ḥana says that Rabbi Yoḥanan says: They taught that it is prohibited to leave Eretz Yisrael only if money is cheap, i.e., not excessively difficult to obtain, and produce is expensive, similar to the case in the baraita where two se’a of wheat are sold for a sela. But when money is expensive, i.e., it is difficult to earn money for sustenance, even if the price of four se’a of grain stood at a sela, one may leave Eretz Yisrael in order to survive.(BB91b)

Basing themselves on Genesis 41:50 the rabbis (Ta’anit 11a) also forbade procreation during the years of famine.

Our tradition knows about the difficulties of living and thriving in a world where the rains may not come, where crops may fail and people may starve. It understood that while famine may come as a result of war, it is more likely to be because we, the human stewards of the world, do not treat the world as it must be treated, and the consequences of this lack of care will come to haunt us.

Abram and Sarai left their home to reach the land God had promised, but having reached it they immediately became environment migrants. The land would not let them stay and thrive, they had to put themselves at greater risk and depend on a foreign power to survive. This part of their story is not often emphasised – the great journey to the promised land is a far more palatable thread to take from this sidra, but the short verses that tell of the famine that would have killed them should they have stayed are maybe more instructive in these times of climate change happening across the globe as a direct result of human carelessness and greed.

Lech Lecha is the call to activism – Get up and go, make something happen! We Jews are called as our ur-ancestors were called. We should pay heed to the increasingly serious warnings our planet is giving us, and return to the work of stewarding, protecting and supporting a healthy and diverse world.

Toledot: the family ties that bind a people together

Posted on November 14, 2017 by sylviarothschild

Jewish history is told in terms of Jewish family. We chart our progress through the generations, marvelling at how we are able to adapt and to change, to move countries and to begin again, yet never having to begin at the beginning – we take with us the wisdom and the tradition of our ancestors to support and nourish us as we add our own experiences and our own lives to the chain.

We are part of an eternal covenant. Since Abraham’s first encounter with God that set him off on his journey as an Ivri (one who passes over into a new place), and since the encounter at Sinai when the whole Jewish people – (including all who were yet to be born and all who would willingly join with us) – we have been a family with a powerful tradition that has enabled us to retain our identity despite huge shifts in geography, language, autonomy, and cultural expression. Whenever one tries to dissect and define Jewish identity, there is immediately a problem that no absolute characterization can be agreed upon – there are secular and religious Jews, culinary and cultural Jews, Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Italkit and Romaniot; there are Jews who passionately believe in a personal God and others who are passionately agnostic. What binds us is the notion of peoplehood – specifically that of toledot – of family.

The word itself comes from the root to give birth, yet we first find it early on in the book of Genesis when God is creating the world: – אֵלֶּה תוֹלְדוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ, בְּהִבָּרְאָם: בְּיוֹם, עֲשׂוֹת יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים–אֶרֶץ וְשָׁמָיִם.:

“These are the generations (toledot) of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Eternal God made earth and heavens. (Gen 2:4).

The term is clearly much more than the physical giving birth – it has to do with developments, with outcomes, with the next stage, and virtually every time it is found in the book of Genesis it has a transitional function, introducing the new and concluding the story of the old. In the ten passages in which the word is used in Genesis, each time there is an important liminal point –a break but at the same time a kind of continuation. So for example we have the toledot of the creation of the world which is then left to run, the toledot of Adam whose sons bring chaos into the world, the toledot of Noah, upon whom rest the hopes of mending the world, of the three sons of Noah who are the founding ancestors of the known world, and then the specific genealogy of Shem from whom we descend and which takes us to Abraham. Then we have the generations (toledot) of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Isaac, of Esau and finally of Jacob.

I find it deeply interesting that the bible gives us the generations not only of the line from whom we ourselves descend, but also of those who are connected to us but who are no longer “of” us. The recording of the other genealogical threads reminds us of what is truly important:- that there is family and family, connections and bonds, and some are closer and others less so, but we are ultimately all one humanity even when our stories and our lineages diverge.

The story today begins with the toledot of Isaac, but is really interested in the fate of his younger son Jacob. And it is Jacob, shortly to be renamed Israel on account of his own encounter with God, who is the ancestor from whom we generate our own history. In this sidra Jacob is given two blessings by his father: the first is the blessing of the first-born that his father had intended for Esau, the second is given to him as he departed for Paddan Aram to find a wife for himself and to begin a new life. One blessing was about the recognition and importance of the ancestral tradition of covenant, the other was about striking out into new territory. One was concerned with material well being, the other about spiritual direction and the future of the Jewish people.

What becomes clear is the inextricable link between past and future, that to try to have one without the other is to misunderstand the nature of Jewish identity. And what becomes clear too is that each new generation has to find their journey and their meaning for themselves, building upon what has been given to them by their parents and grandparents, but creating something new as well, to pass on to their children and grandchildren.

Our history really is about toledot – the concluding of the story of one generation and the new story of the next loosely threaded onto it. With each new generation there is always going to be change, but at the same time we know that the fundamental blessings continue down the years, and that while some of the paths seem to disappear over the horizon and out of our sight, that is only to be expected and accommodated.

We do the best we can in our own generation, and we trust the ones who come after us to have their own encounter to add to the richness that is passed on. Isaac cannot ever have expected the boy he named from youth as Ya’akov – the bent one, the one who clung to the heel of his brother, the one who delayed – to become Yisrael, the one who struggles with God and overcomes.

Toledot: there are more generations and more branches in our family tree than we notice – meet Mahalat bat Ishmael the fragrant bringer of hope

Posted on November 30, 2016 by sylviarothschild

וַיַּ֣רְא עֵשָׂ֔ו כִּ֥י רָע֖וֹת בְּנ֣וֹת כְּנָ֑עַן בְּעֵינֵ֖י יִצְחָ֥ק אָבִֽיו: ט וַיֵּ֥לֶךְ עֵשָׂ֖ו אֶל־יִשְׁמָעֵ֑אל וַיִּקַּ֡ח אֶת־מַֽחֲלַ֣ת ׀ בַּת־יִשְׁמָעֵ֨אל בֶּן־אַבְרָהָ֜ם אֲח֧וֹת נְבָי֛וֹת עַל־נָשָׁ֖יו ל֥וֹ לְאִשָּֽׁה:

“And Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were displeasing to Isaac his father. So Esau went to Ishmael and he took Machalat the daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, sister of Nevayot over his women/ in addition to his other wives, for a wife for himself.”

So ends the sidra of Toledot. It began with Isaac marrying Rebecca and pleading with God for her to have children. Having conceived twins who are struggling within her, Rebecca is informed that she will give birth to two nations who would be not be equal. The firstborn, Esau, was red and hairy. The second born was holding on to his brother’s heel so they named him Jacob (heel). Esau became a skilled hunter and was the favoured child of his father, but Jacob remained close to home and his mother. The bible recounts the story of Esau coming home famished after a hunting trip and selling his birthright blessing for some of the delicious red stew that Jacob had made.

The narrative continues with the story of a famine and Isaac goes to the Philistine King Abimelech for support, having been told by God to not leave the land as his father had done. Isaac settled in Gerar, and for fear of being killed because of Rebecca’s beauty, he follows the example his parents had given and told Abimelech that Rebecca was not his wife but his sister. Abimelech however found the lie out, and in order not to attract punishment from God, warns the Philistines not to mistreat the couple. Isaac grows wealthy and the Philistines begin to hate and envy him to the point where he is unsafe. Isaac moves his household away to Rechovot, and then has an encounter with God at Beersheva where he receives the covenant of blessing. Abimelech, understanding that Isaac is the heir to his father’s relationship with God seeks a peace treaty with him which is sealed with a feast.

Now we return our focus to the family. Esau married two Hittite women, Judith bat Be’eri and Basemat bat Elon, and Isaac and Rebecca are bitterly upset.

Now we come to the last phase of Isaac’s life. He is old, his sight is poor, he knows it is time to give the blessings to his sons. He asks Esau to hunt and prepare a dish of his game for him after which he will bless him. Rebecca overhears, and, when Esau is gone, she instructs Jacob to bring her young goats in order for her to make a meal for Isaac that Jacob can take him and receive the blessing. Jacob does not think this will work- Esau is hairy, Jacob is not. Isaac on touching his son will understand the deception and may curse him. Rebecca responds by taking the curse upon herself, and demands that Jacob do as she has told him. She makes coverings from the skins of the goats and food from the flesh, dresses Jacob in Esau’s clothing and sends him to his father. The text is ambiguous as to whether Isaac recognises which of his sons is with him, but he goes with the flow, blessing Jacob with the special blessing. Esau returns, discovers his blessing is already given to his brother and in his distress asks his father for another. Isaac blesses him with abundance, but also with the hope that he will one day break the yoke of subservience to his brother. Esau’s fury is a danger to Jacob and so his mother arranges that he is sent to safety with her family under the pretext that this will keep him away from Canaanite women and help him to marry within the family group. Esau hears this, understands that his first two choices of wife were not acceptable to his parents, and so he goes to Ishmael his uncle in order to marry Machalat, his cousin, the daughter of Ishmael.

Machalat is family. She is the daughter of Ishmael the beloved son of Abraham and of Hagar, whom God comforts when she and her son are near to death in the wilderness having been expelled from the camp. Hagar is the first person who is recorded as giving a name to God. We are told that “she called the name of the Eternal who spoke to her, You are El Ro’ee (a God of seeing)” (Gen 16:13) So Machalat is the grandchild of a woman who encountered God.

There are two biblical texts naming the wives of Esau, and they do not exactly coincide. One tells us the three wives are Yehudit bat Beeri, Basemat bat Elon and Mahalat bat Ishmael (Gen 26) whereas the second tells us they are Adah bat Elon, Basemat bat Ishmael and Oholivamah bat Anah (Gen 36). The gemara resolves the problem by saying that Basemat/Machalat were the same woman, and whereas the name Basemat means fragrant, Machalat comes from the same root as forgiveness – mechilah – and that in marrying her all the sins of Esau were forgiven (JT Bikkurim 3:3)This would explain how, when the brothers meet up again years later, Esau is warm and welcoming, having given up the bitterness and anger caused by his brother’s betrayal, he too, having been forgiven, is able to forgive.

Basemat, whose name implies great sweetness, gives Esau a son and names him Re’u-El –friend of God. Is it accident that the name plays with and even seems to echo the name her grandmother gave to God – El-Roee? What is clear is that while Esau has many other children, only this son is named with a reference to God.

It feels like a hint – Hagar and Basemat were not destined to be part of the main thread of the narrative, but they were important nevertheless, they had their own very good relationship with God and their lives impact upon our history.

The bible may not be focussed on these women, or on this lateral branch of the family tree, but it considers them important enough for them and their descendants to be recorded. We know about Rebecca, her initial infertility and her later challenge to God once her difficult pregnancy was begun. We know how she took care to direct the narrative so that Jacob would become the link in the chain of tradition. We know about Sarah, her initial infertility and her derisive laughter in responding to God’s telling her that she would yet bear a child to be the link in the chain of tradition. But the bible reminds us there were other women who also had encounters with God, yet who did not go on to become matriarchs in our tradition.

Our historic commentators do not much notice these women, and if they choose to do so it is usually to make a point about the men they are connected with, and to be honest, they are not often kind to the women nor interested in them and their experience. But now we have a different set of lenses, modernity chooses to unpeel the layers of patriarchy and look again at the unvarnished text. Machalat the daughter of Ishmael appears to be a woman who, like her grandmother, knows God. Her marriage to Esau seems to change him, their son is a friend of God, the same God who appeared to abet Esau’s trauma. She brings forgiveness – mechilah – and she brings hope. Hope for the brothers who were destined to be in an unequal power relationship but whom we see later in life are both wealthy, settled family men. And in bringing the hope that transforms the relationship of brothers born to struggle against each other, surely she can be the touchstone for us in our generation when we know we are not forced or destined to hate each other. Machalat bat Ishmael, she brings the fragrance of hope and optimism. She deserves to be noticed.

Image is “Mahalat” [Yishmael’s daughter, Esav’s wife] by Siona Benjamin

Sarah, a matriarch whose multifaceted life gives us all something to live up to.

Posted on November 22, 2016 by sylviarothschild

The Matriarch Sarah is the only woman for whom a sidra, the weekly torah reading, is named. The first wife of Abraham, the mother of Isaac, she is the also the first of the four biblical matriarchs. What do we know about her? No genealogy is given for her when we first meet her as the wife of Avram living in Ur of the Chaldees, although Avram does at a later point say she is his half-sister. (Gen 20:12). Her name when we first meet her is “Sarai” which may be a name derived from the goddess Ishtar who was also called “Sarrat”, and although scholars also suggest it may be a name meaning priestess of that pagan cult, we tend to assume her name comes from the Hebrew for prince or leader –S.R.R. making Sarah a princess of our people.

The first thing we know about Sarah is that she is unable to conceive a child, and so when she does so at the age of 90, her husband being one hundred years of age, this is clearly because of divine intervention and both parents laugh in disbelief when God tells them. Abraham asks God to give Ishmael the role of heir (Gen 17:17-19) but God is very clear – the covenant with Abraham will be passed down through a son he shall have with Sarah. She is an important and necessary figure in the divine covenant and as proof of this her name is to be changed along with Avram’s and she too is blessed in similar language to the blessing given to Abraham.

The change of names must catch our attention. When Abraham’s name is changed it is to clearly alter his destiny. God tells him “your name will no longer be called Avram (exalted father) but your name shall be Avraham because I have given to you the fatherhood of a multitude of nations”. The letter ‘hei’ has been added to Avram’s name – and this letter, with the numeric value of 5 which is the magical number for protection, is also a letter which symbolically denotes the name of God.

Sarah’s name change is rather different. God speaks not to her but to Abraham, saying “You shall not call her name Sarai, because her name is Sarah. And I will bless her and also give you a son with her. And I will bless her….”

Sarah is already her name – there is no change except that now Abraham will call her by her name. There is no added letter to her name – instead one could argue that part of her name has been taken away, the yod (numerical value ten, symbolically used for the name of God) has transmuted into the letter hei. It has been halved, and one half given to Avram in order to fit him for the role he is to take on. You could say that Sarah is diminished in order to enrich her husband. Some of her divine spark is taken in order to build him up. She is the woman whose descendants will gain the eternal covenant. She has a special relationship with God – the only woman in torah to whom God talks directly – it is through the merit of Sarah that Abraham is able to achieve his destiny.

Another way of reading what happens to Sarah’s name is that the yod is turned into a hei by the addition of the letter dalet – when a scribe writes the letter hei in a torah scroll, it is by the combination of a yod and a dalet. So while at the same time as creating two hei letters from the yod, one could reason that Sarah had the letter dalet added to her name. The letter dalet is an ideogram for a doorway, as the Hebrew word delet reminds us. So knowing that she is Sarah means that Abraham begins to understand that she is the doorway and the gatekeeper to a deeper spirituality, a way to connect with God not just for himself but for the generations to come. Sarah emerges as liminal, as the connector between two worlds, a woman who transcends experienced reality.

Sarah’s relationship with God is defined by the phrase we use in liturgy – “pokeid Sarah”. The verb p.k.d has a number of meanings: to attend to, to visit, to muster, to remember, to account, to command. God remembers Sarah’s desire for a child, God visits Sarah to announce that she will have a child, God appoints Sarah to be the matriarch of peoples, God pays attention to her and tells Abraham to do the same.

Abraham and Sarah were said to have been noticeably hospitable, open and inclusive. Sarah’s tent was said to be open on all sides to welcome desert travellers needing a warm welcome. The midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 60:16) tells us also that as long as she lived the Shechinah hovered over her tent, her challah dough was blessed and her Sabbath lights lasted the entire week until the next Shabbat.

She was also a notable prophet – the Talmud (Yerushalmi Sotah 7:1) tells us that her prophecy was greater than that of Abraham , and that God was referring to her prophetic power when telling Abraham “whatever she tells you, do as she says” (BT Sanhedrin). It also lists her among the seven women prophets (BT Megillah 14a)

Sarah lived to the age of 127, and the way the bible describes this implies she lived a number of different lives in these years. She was a woman of great complexity, a woman of great strength who was destined to become the progenitor and matriarch of many peoples. It took time for this to be revealed – she is a woman both hidden in the tent and open to the world; a wife who travelled with her husband wherever he went at some real inconvenience to herself and a wife who was living in a different city from him when she died. Her relationship with Isaac was a strong bond – she ensured his protection when she saw that Ishmael was assuming a position of power that might damage him, and he was comforted for her death by the love of his wife Rebecca, a touching phrase which tells us a great deal about the bond between them.

Sarah’s relationship with Isaac is at the core of the text. The covenant of blessing is destined to be the given to the child of both Abraham and Sarah, but Abraham is clearly fond of both boys, even suggesting to God that rather than have another child, Ishmael could take the role. So it is Sarah who must protect Isaac, who must shape and form him ready to take on his destiny. It is Sarah who engineers the removal of Ishmael from the scene, and who having protected her son from a potential rival retires from the fray.

But her protective action did not end the danger. God appears to ask Abraham to offer up Isaac on a specific mountain and Abraham does not argue but takes the boy on the journey, prepares him for his fate and is ready to slice the knife into him as a bound offering to God, only stopped by the urgent cry of an angel of God at the very last moment.

Because of the story of the death of Sarah being reported in bible immediately after this terrible text of the binding of Isaac, the midrash links the two, saying that Satan tricked Sarah into believing that Abraham had indeed killed their only son, and the soul of Sarah flew out of her body in her deep distress as she wished to live no longer. Another somewhat less believable version is that she died of happiness when she realised that she had been tricked and her son was still alive. (Pirkei d’R.Eliezer 32/ Ginzburg Legends of the Jews)

Either way, her life ends much sooner than that of Abraham who goes on to marry Keturah and have more sons, but who has become irrelevant to the purpose of the biblical narrative after that moment on Mount Moriah – except to buy the land in Hebron for her final resting place, the Cave of Machpela which will become the family mausoleum to this day.

The text moves on to focus on Isaac, son of Sarah and Abraham. Isaac will marry Rebecca and he will love her till his death. The love of his mother has made him who he is, a strong but unobtrusive figure perfectly placed between his famous father and his famous son, providing stability and warmth and entrenching the place of the covenant of blessing into the family firmly and steadfastly. The legacy of Sarah provided many things in rabbinic tradition – land properly bought within Israel, many converts to the one God, hospitality, steadfastness, divine merit, but for me her best legacy is Isaac. Often misunderstood and seen as less important than his colourful father and sons, he is a man who has shown himself to be so well loved that he can overcome the trauma of near filicide to build a relationship of love and trust with wife and sons, and to put down roots and live alongside the other tribes. That, I am sure, is the inheritance he got from Sarah. That, and the covenant of blessing which is usually – wrongly – ascribed to Abraham alone. but which was given to him only because of the merit of Sarah. I used to have a fridge magnet that said “behind every successful man is an exhausted woman” – certainly the aphorism that most fits our first and most wondrous matriarch.

Lot: a cautionary tale of superficial success and the victimisation of the powerless

Posted on November 16, 2016 by sylviarothschild

Lot, the nephew and heir apparent of Abraham is a man with barely any redeeming features in the biblical account. We meet him first in the genealogies following the flood, when we are told that “Terach begot Avram, Nahor and Haran, and Haran begot Lot, and Haran died in the presence of his father Terach in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldees.” The fatherless boy is taken into the household of his grandfather, and Terach, Avram and Lot leave Ur to go to Canaan, but settle in Haran, where Terach dies. God speaks to Avram, and he moves on towards Canaan, taking Lot with him. Famine drives them to Egypt where Avram claims that Sarah is not his wife but his sister, and while this saves his life it also puts Sarah into Pharaoh’s harem – until God intervenes and together they all leave Egypt much richer than they had arrived.

The land could not support the flocks and herds of both Avraham and Lot; there is fighting between the herdsmen of the two men, and Abraham suggests that they part company and go in separate directions. Lot journeys east towards the cities of the plain, Avraham goes to Canaan and again he is promised all the land as far as he can see, to be the eternal possession of his – so far non-existent – descendants.

We hear no more of Lot for a while, instead we witness the births of first Ishmael and then Isaac, and it becomes clear that Lot is no longer the heir apparent – the two households have separated permanently, whatever might have been is no longer a thread in the narrative.

And then comes the cataclysm at Sodom, and Lot’s family are back, centre stage, as we watch with horror the different tragedies unfold.

We get a good, close look at Lot, and we learn too about his family. It is not a pretty sight.

To begin with he parallels his uncle Abraham’s hospitable behaviour. The two messengers of God arrive at Sodom in the evening, and come across Lot sitting at the city gate. It is a significant time as the night is coming, and a significant place in the city where all the communal activity is centred. The implication is that Lot, whose youth was rootless and dependent, is well integrated into the city, either doing business or demonstrating his status in some other way.

Lot is keen to offer his home hospitality and we soon find out why – a mob surrounds his house apparently demanding he hand over his guests for the sexual pleasure of the crowd. Lot goes out not to send the people away but to suggest a compromise – he will not hand over the men who were guests under his roof and his protection, instead he will hand over his two virgin daughters for the use of the crowd. It is at this point the modern reader despairs. While apparently taking his hospitality duties seriously, Lot is prepared to sacrifice his daughters to the baying crowd. We can only wonder what he learned from the actions of Avram who called Sarah his sister rather than his wife and allowed her to be taken into the pharaoh’s harem in order to protect his own life.

The visitors reach out to Lot, bring him back into the house, and smite the crowd outside with blindness so that they are comically unable to find the doorway, though they kept on trying. Lot is told to find his family and take them out of the city which God will destroy. Lot goes to speak to his sons in law, but they do not take him seriously. He makes no attempt to talk to his daughters. As dawn rises the angels urge him to go with his wife and two unmarried daughters but inexplicably he lingers, and a merciful God transports them out of the city almost magically, warning him to head for the mountains and not to look back, but Lot prevaricates, saying the mountains are too far away, asking if he can survive in a nearby city, Zoar, and God agrees to protect that city from the coming catastrophe.

The fire and brimstone comes, the cities of Sodom and Gemorah are destroyed, Lot’s wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt, but through the merit of Abraham Lot is saved. He and his daughters are afraid to stay in Zoar, so they leave and go to live in the mountains, where his daughters conclude that no one else is left alive and so they make a plan to sleep with him in order to ‘preserve his seed’. Having got him drunk, first the elder and then the younger daughter sleep with Lot in order to become pregnant by him, and thus bible tells us of the origins of two important – and inimical – peoples, the Moabites and the Ammonites.

Lot comes over as a man who has been given wealth and status but who below that surface is a weak and selfish buffoon, a man of straw. He is interesting to the narrative only through his relationship with his uncle Abraham, a branch of the family tree that might have been important but which now is irrelevant. He is the father of four daughters, none of whom he thought to protect. His wife deserves our pity – unnamed, unspoken to, she is referred to only in relation to leaving the cataclysm, she isn’t given the message not to look behind them and so she does, with fatal consequences, though I can’t help feeling that there may have been some relief in no longer having to hitch her life to his.

She is a “Netziv melech” a standing monument made out of an easily eroded material. Salt represents value and wealth, it is used to preserve food, it has medicinal qualities, the beautiful crystals reflect light, it speaks to us of the sea and of tears. Salt is the symbol of the covenant (see Lev 2:13, according to Talmud salt from Sodom was burned in temple ritual (Ker 6a) and it is present to this day on the Kiddush table alongside the challah as an echo of that ritual. Lot’s wife escapes the fate of the rest of her family, she is preserved at one with her environment before the descent into degradation that follows.

The younger daughters of Lot do not escape. Bereft of their mother and older sisters, left alone in the mountains with the weak old man who is their father, fearing the world has ended – theirs is a sorry plight. They have grown up in an emotionally abusive family; their father cared for the superficial success he could enjoy living in his adopted city, working out his own damage of three times losing his own father figures, he did not himself seem to know how to be a good husband or father. He had already offered these daughters for rape by the baying crowd seemingly in the bizarre belief that this was the action of a good host. He must have known the nature of the city he had chosen to make his home and the home of his daughters. His sons in law clearly had no respect for him, he was a weak and laughable figure to them. In a patriarchal world, Lot was no alpha male. Even his name, meaning ‘tightly wrapped’ or ‘covered’, seems to describe a man who draws his blanket around him and hides inside.

With such a father what chance do the girls have? Yet they seem determined that he will have descendants. Is this a case of Stockholm syndrome whereby the captive will do anything to support and empathise with their captor? Are they actually fearing more for themselves than for their father, whom they describe as old – possibly near to death – and they may be left without any male relative to support and defend them? Will a son born from incest be better than no man at all? Have they believed the story of his superficial success, and refused to look deeper? It is interesting that his wife actually looks mei’acharav – from behind/after him rather than behind her – she is not looking at the city she is fleeing, but instead maybe she is really seeing who her companion in the escape really is and crystallising in horror about both the past and the future, fixing in an eternal present.

The daughters of Lot had not known any man. Their choice to get their father drunk in order to sleep with them is curious – did they think he would refuse them? Did they think he would be easier to control if he was so stupefied he would remember nothing about what happened? Is it believable that they would choose the actions described in bible, or is it possible that bible is subtly shifting responsibility, making what can only be described as incestuous rape the fault of the young women involved, rather than the responsibility of Lot himself? We already know that he was ready to hand them over for rape in Sodom, have they internalised their use as sexual objects of no real value otherwise? And is there an ambiguity in the statement that “there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth”? The daughters must surely have seen that Zoar was not destroyed, they must have been able to realise that not everyone had died. Are they saying that they are tainted already simply by their relationship to their father. That no man would want them, coming as they do from a city so wicked and a family so weak? Given that they would be unmarriageable in their society, might they at least preserve some kind of descendant who might even remedy their faultlines in some way? Why the use of the word ‘seed’ rather than children? Is this an early intimation of the messianic line which will eventually derive from Ruth the Moabite woman?

The problem with Lot – damaged from childhood, whose name implies that he is tightly wrapped up and thus insensible to the realities of the outside world, who argues over money with his patron and uncle Abraham, who chooses to live among wicked people and be honoured in their society, who does not value his wife or children – the problem with Lot is he is, from the point of view of the bible, family. Somehow the narrative shifts the blame from him again and again, because of the merit of Abraham. He is the progenitor of two of the tribes most hostile to the Israelites, the incest resonant in their names – Moav (from my father) ben Ammi (son of my people). He has distorted the narrative horribly. But bible and midrash choose instead to focus on the faults of his wife who, all unknowing, looks backwards (and midrash ascribes a whole series of unpleasant attributes to her in order to explain her punishment), and to ascribe to his young daughters the rapists charge that they were complicit, that they wanted it, that the drink removes all culpability. It is almost as though the text continues to abuse the daughters, to blame them, to disappear them into only being the objects of sexual exploitation.

There is no more mention of Lot after this episode. He disappears into history drunk, insensible, incestuous, irrelevant. There is no more mention of his daughters – they have served their purpose and they were always irrelevant from the point of view of the narrative.

The individuals have gone, but the systemic abuse goes on. Weak men who crave status and who use their families to win what they want. Superficial signs of wealth with no respect underlying it. Blaming the victims rather than challenging the abusers. Narratives that shift blame, horror hiding in plain sight, the emergence of different groups determined to assert themselves against others.

Lot is the ultimate cautionary tale – of what we could become if we don’t pay attention, if we don’t try to follow the path of Abraham, if we don’t challenge what we see is wrong. And if we allow Lot to sit in the gates, to achieve status in our society, then we risk being his victims, just as surely as his wife and daughters were.

rabbisylviarothschild

the occasional thoughts of a working woman rabbi in England

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