Tag Archives: texts of terror

Lech Lecha – but should it have been Lechi Lach? Finding Sarah in the text

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“Then Abram journeyed by stages toward the Negev. There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. If the Egyptians see you, and think, ‘She is his wife,’ they will kill me and let you live. Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you.” When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw how very beautiful the woman was. Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s palace. And because of her, it went well with Abram; he acquired sheep, oxen, donkeys, male and female slaves, jennies, and camels. But GOD afflicted Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram. Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me! Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her as my wife? Now, here is your wife; take her and begone!” And Pharaoh put some men in charge of him, and they sent him off with his wife and all that he possessed.”   Genesis 12: 9-20)

Three times in the book of Genesis we have the strange story of the “wife-sister tale”, what the late feminist biblical scholar, Phyllis Trible, called “texts of terror”, where the woman is used as a chattel or commodity in the negotiations between the men.

Here in Egypt where Abram fears that the Pharaoh will take Sarai into his harem and kill Abram if he knows that Sarai is married to him; again a few chapters later when Abraham and Sarah meet Abimelech, the Philistine King of Gerar (Genesis 20), and finally when Isaac and Rebecca meet Abimelech in Gerar (Genesis 26).

In the story here in Parashat Lech Lecha, Abram persuades Sarai to lie both because he is afraid for his life. In the other two stories, at least Abram and Isaac tell the lie themselves rather than expect the woman to lie on their behalf, and commit herself to the unwanted attentions of another powerful man.

Abram is acutely aware of the beauty of his wife, indeed, he refers to it and to the danger it places him in should an Egyptian man see her and desire her. And his fear is borne out – her beauty is such that even the Pharaoh hears of it, and takes Sarai into his harem – but with the twist that Abram is given huge wealth as payment for her.

It seems that Abram is content with this arrangement – as the “brother” of the beautiful foreign woman he gains power and status. It takes God to intervene, and luckily for Sarai, God does.  Pharaoh and his household are afflicted with mighty plagues – a foreshadowing of events in the Book of Exodus. And apparently Pharaoh understands the reason for this great misfortune.

So much is left unsaid in this passage. How does Pharaoh know to ascribe the plagues to God’s displeasure on behalf of Sarai? The Midrash – Bereishit Rabbah – comes to the rescue:

“Rabbi Aḥa said: Even the beams of his palace were afflicted. *[This is the meaning of “The Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his household [beito],” the literal meaning of beito being “his house.” ] And everyone was saying: “It is over the matter of Sarai, Abram’s wife.” Rabbi Berekhya said: All the insolent ones have come in to touch the noblewoman’s shoe. [*This is a saying, referring to insolent behaviour on the part of lowly people who dare to touch the princess’s shoes, and are severely punished. The Midrash applies this saying to the members of Pharaoh’s household who acted disrespectfully toward Sarah.]
Throughout that night Sarah was prostrated on her face and saying: ‘Master of the universe, Abraham departed [from our home country] with a promise, and I departed only on faith. Abraham departed outside the cage, but I am in the cage.’ [*I am here is the cage with all these beasts.] The Holy One blessed be He said to her: ‘Everything I do, I do on your behalf.’ And all of them were saying: “…over the matter of Sarai, Abram’s wife.”
Rabbi Levi said: Throughout that night, an angel was standing with a rod in his hand. He said to her: ‘If you say: Strike, I will strike; if you say: Cease, I will cease.’ [*This is what is meant by “over the matter [al devar] of Sarai.” Al devar Sarai can also mean “by Sarai’s word.” ]
Why [was Pharaoh punished] to such an extent? It is because she kept telling him: ‘I am a married woman,’ but he would not keep away from her. [*“Over the matter of [al devar] Sarai, Abram’s wife” is expounded to mean: “by the words of Sarai, who said that she was Abram’s wife.”] “  Bereishit Rabbah 41)

But it introduces another problem – it looks like Sarai doesn’t tell the lie that she is Abram’s sister. Instead she prays, and her prayer is extraordinary – “Abram began this journey away from our home country with a promise from you, but I didn’t get that promise, I acted only in good faith in You – and where does that lead us? -Abram gets a great life, but I am trapped in this terrible situation”

She is up front with Pharaoh too, repeatedly telling him not to touch her, she is a married woman and not available to him.  Not a chattel to be bargained away, but a strong an courageous person of integrity.

In Parashat Lech Lecha we begin the story of Abram, the man described as Ivri – who crossed a border and became a Hebrew, the man whose covenants with God are foundational to the history of Judaism. And we see from the midrash that the story of this man who is often upheld as the role model for great faith is incomplete without the woman who journeyed with him – that her faith was greater than his, for she did not hide who she was, nor allow herself to be a passive actor in this story. The midrash fills in the missing details. God intervenes because of  Sarai’s prayer, and God’s reassurance to her – “everything I do, I do on your behalf” is a far greater commitment than the promise to Abram of an eventual homeland and myriad descendants. The scene is set for the divine blessing to be bestowed on both Abram and Sarai – it will ultimately be Sarah’s son with Abraham who will continue the covenant, not any of the other sons of Abraham listed in bible.

The pattern of these texts of terror, of male fear and even self-centredness, of women’s strength and faith, and of God’s interventions in history, raise many questions about how bible understood our patriarchs and matriarchs.  So often what bible presents as the male preserve of power is undermined or redirected by the women in the text – think of Sarah and Hagar, of Rebecca ensuring her favourite son gets the blessing from his blind father, of the race to bear sons between Leah and Rachel… But I think the relationship between God and Sarah shows a respect and a tenderness towards her that is particularly worth noticing. And I cannot help noticing that when Abram and Sarai have their names changed in this sidra, for him the addition of the letter “hey”  a letter used to signify the name of God, for her not only the “hey” but she loses the “yud”. The letter yud is used to denote the number 10. The letter hey denotes the number 5. It is as if Sarah has given half of her “ten” to Abraham, to bolster his faith – another hidden nudge to remind us that without the supportive presence of Sarah, Abraham might have been yet another biblical figure who fades into the text without changing it. 

Phyllis Trible wrote of the bible and its patriarchy (ironically quoting the book of Joshua)  “I face a terrible dilemma: Choose ye this day whom you will serve: the God of the fathers or the God of sisterhood. If the God of the fathers, then the Bible supplies models for your slavery. If the God of sisterhood, then you must reject patriarchal religion and go forth without models to claim your freedom.” (Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation Phyllis Trible Journal of the American Academy of Religion Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp. 30-48

Indebted as I am to the works of Phyllis Trible, I would venture to say that we can in fact find the models in the biblical text to claim our freedom, and in this parasha it is, quite unequivocally, the matriarch par excellence, our ur-mother Sarah.

From Bar Hedya to Charlie Hebdo: the power to shape the world is in our hands

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In the Talmud in tractate Berachot (56a) we learn of Bar Hedya, the interpreter of dreams, who would give a favourable interpretation to the one who paid him, and an unfavourable interpretation to the one who did not pay. The third century amoraim Abaye and Rava went to see him, each claiming to have had the same dream, and Abaye paid him whereas Rava did not. The Talmud records a collection of his interpretations to each man, where Abaye is told of all the wonderful things that his dreams portend, and Raba is told only terrible outcomes. Subsequently Rava revisited him with new dreams, and still was given terrible news of his future, some of which the Talmud records as happening. Then finally Rava went to him and gave him money for the interpretation and suddenly his future looked rosy – he would be miraculously saved from danger, he would take over Abaye’s role as teacher par excellence (which again we know happened). One day Bar Hedya was travelling with Rava in a boat, when he said to himself “why should I accompany a man whose dream I have interpreted to mean he will be miraculously saved from danger [and therefore I will drown] and so he quickly got off the boat, letting his book fall as he did so. Rava found the book and looked into it to find the words “All dreams follow the mouth”. Rava exclaimed “you wretch – it all depended on you, and you gave me all this pain”….

The narrative reads with almost comedic intent, although real tragedy ensues. It seems to be an empirical experiment by two scholars as the power of dreams and their interpretation – are they really prophetic foretellers of the future or do they have no power over us in the waking world? And is the dream itself the power or the interpretation and understanding of the dream?

I was reminded of this passage as I read article after blog post, social media comment after theological discourse in the last days, trying to make sense of the terrible murders at Charlie Hebdo.

I believe in religion. I believe in the power of religion to do good in the world. I believe it is one of our most important tools to visualise and to create a better world. I understand religion to be designed to take some of the most frightening and frightful options away from human choices. When Moses quotes God as saying “Li nakam ve’shilem” (Vengeance is Mine, and recompense) (Deut 32:35) this is not describing a hateful angry and punitive God, but is taking away the obligation of vengeance against one’s tormentor from the person and ascribing it to God. Religion transforms our mortal powerlessness and allows us to let go of our frustrations with what we cannot change, in order to address ourselves to our lives with the power and abilities we have. We leave to God the things we cannot face or cannot deal with, and we move on.

All religions do this essential thing, albeit in differing ways. They function to give us the head and heart space in order that we are able to forward the aspirations expressed in every religion – the treating of all others with respect, the working for a better world, for peaceful living together, for growing our own souls….

Every religion has its foundational myths and texts, and every foundational text shares and restates the basic premise that every human being is of absolute value, and how we get on with each other is of absolute importance, and that there is a bigger arena than we can see or even imagine from within our own contexts.

Every religion has within its foundational texts and myths texts of horror which seem to sacralise violence against individuals or nations; every religion also has within its foundational texts and myths texts of hope and assurance, which mandate loving care of the other, and the search for peaceful living together, valuing each other’s humanity.

And so to the blogs and articles and social media comments which everywhere protest that murderous things done in the name of religion or people of faith or in defence of God are distortions of that true religion, the result of false teaching, and the reassuring quotations from Hebrew Bible or Quran or New Testament are applied to the arguments. Because, as Bar Hedya knew, everything is open to interpretation, and it is the interpretation which gives the power to the text/dream rather than the text/dream simply standing on its own. Every religion can defend itself with its texts of hope and love for the other, can gloss its texts of terror as being of a particular period or not meaning what it seems to mean. The Jewish teaching of every word or verse having a ‘pardes’ of possible interpretations and exegisis: (the pshat- plain meaning of the word/s; the remez – allusion or hints of deeper symbolic meaning; the drash – enquiring or comparative meanings; and the sod – the esoteric and mystical meaning) surfaces the importance of understanding a text in as rich and complex a way as we can, for this is what will ultimately create the meaning of that text for us within our own contexts.

So when I read of the apologetics for whatever a particular religion has done now/ someone has done in the name of a particular religion, part of me is so grateful for these urtexts of shared values and aspirations towards love and justice for all, and part of me is furious and wants to scream out to the writers – well that may be in your sacred book, but why are people not interpreting this original intention of religion for the sake of justice and humanity and valuing others above all? Why are people instead interpreting their religious texts for the purpose of murder and hatred and violence and repression of otherness? Why are people oppressing others or murdering them in the name of their God?

We cannot rely on the texts of hope in our sacred literature and ignore what Bar Hedya knew – that how we choose to interpret the basic text matters even more than the text itself because it gives us the power to ignore what our religion is for and to weaponise our traditions to use against others. Everything has to be in the interpretation, and the reality is that the interpretation we allow to prevail at any given time isn’t the most “true”, it is the one most amenable to the power of the time. We choose to allow interpretations that let us hate the other, or ignore their plight, or suppress or even oppress them. We choose to allow the interpretations that mean that people murder others in the name of their religion. We choose the interpretations that give us a sense of power over others. Our urtexts may be screaming out that these interpretations are not what were intended, but until we hear the voices of modern scholars of every religion both admitting to our own texts of terror and neutralising them, until we hear the voices of religious people refusing to accept teachings of hatred of the other, we will be stuck with the teachers of hatred, the radicalisers of those who feel powerless, the focusers of chaotic feelings of aimlessness and anomie where no good future can be envisaged let alone aspired to.

It is time to admit that the interpretation of our texts have a real power, and to give those who interpret them the necessary tools to understand that it is in their hands to bring forth the future into existence.