Vayera

Synopsis

We, the readers, are informed that God appears to Abraham who, sitting at the opening of his tent, actually notices three men approaching. The men accept Abraham's offer of hospitality and then announce that Sarah will bear a child. Sarah, 90 years old, responds to this news by laughing, although when challenged by God about her laughter, she denies it. As the visitors leave, Abraham accompanies them. God tells Abraham of the plan to destroy the sinful city of Sodom. Abraham responds by arguing with God, interceding on behalf of the innocents who live in that city (of whom one of course is his own nephew Lot). He haggles with God, saying “Will You really sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” He sets up a deal that if fifty righteous people would be found there, the city would be saved. God agrees, and then finds that Abraham barters, reducing the number by five each time. They get down to ten, at which point God walks away, but when not even ten righteous people are found in Sodom, God destroys the city.

Abraham's nephew Lot, who tried to protect the messengers from the inhabitants of the city, escapes the destruction with two of his daughters and his wife, who looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. Later, thinking that they are the survivors of the catastrophe, Lot's daughters get him drunk and sleep with him, hoping to repopulate the world. From these incestuous unions the Moabites and the Ammonites are born. Abraham moves south to G’rar, and practises the same wife/sister deception on Abimelech, King of G’rar, as they did on Pharaoh.

Then we are told that Isaac is born. Abraham, who is now a hundred years old, circumcises his new son with great celebration. But Sarah becomes jealous of Hagar and her son Ishmael, and insists that Abraham send them away. Abraham consults with God, who assures him that Ishmael too will become the father of a great nation, and so Hagar and Ishmael are sent away into the wilderness. Immediately after this story of the abandonment of Ishmael and Hagar, is the story we know as the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. Abraham is tested by God who commands him to go on a journey to a mountain, and offer Isaac there. They travel together to Mount Moriah where Abraham binds up Isaac and raises his knife to slaughter him. But he is stopped by God, who provides a ram as a substitute. Abraham then returns to his home at Beer Sheva. There is no sign of what happens to Isaac as this sidra ends.

D’var Torah

So much happens in this sidra that it is almost impossible to focus on it, yet this too is a trick designed to catch our attention, for right from the first sentence we are being shown more than one reality, and this is captured in the name of the sidra – Vayera – meaning “and he appeared”.

The narrative begins with God deciding to appear to Abraham, but immediately the perspective changes and through Abraham’s eyes we see three ordinary men travelling in the desert, and requiring hospitality. Are they divine messengers? Angels? Ordinary people who somehow will carry out a special function? And where are they? Standing right over him or at a distance which forces him to run over to them to offer this hospitality? The confusion carries on right through the narratives here. One verse begins with the three speaking, the next has one (human) voice, the one after is clearly described as the speech of God. Sarah, on hearing the news, laughs inside, yet God hears her... Always a multiplicity of perspectives are woven into the story telling, a little like seeing an event through a variety of cameras, in real time and in flashback, from one angle and then another.

Why is the bible telling these stories in this way, sometimes slowing down the motion so we get almost every footstep of the journey to Mt Moriah and the verbatim conversation between father and son, sometimes speeding up so between Hagar leaving her son at a distance so she could weep, and the angel hearing the voice of the boy, there is barely a blink of the eye?

The torah readings for Rosh Hashanah are both taken from this sidra – the first day’s being the story of the abandonment of Hagar and Ishmael at the insistence of the frightened and jealous Sarah, the second day’s being the taking of her own son up Mt Moriah in a terrifying ceremony apparently at the insistence of God, after which we find that Isaac never speaks to either parent again. What messages are being conveyed in these choices of torah reading? Why are both taken from Vayera?

Could it be that we are being reminded of the many perspectives involved in understanding an event, that sometimes things are hidden and sometimes they are not; sometimes we understand and sometimes we simply don’t; sometimes people do things for the best intentions and get the worst outcome, and sometimes we do things not with good intentions but because we are afraid or territorial or jealous or determined to second guess God.

Could the rabbis who chose these two contiguous chapters do so to remind us not only of the close relationship we have with Ishmael, but also of the fact that our perspective is not the only one that is important in the story of who inherits the Covenant God made with Abraham, indeed that God promises Abraham that he should follow Sarah’s demand because “of the son of the bondwoman I will make a nation, because he is your seed.”(21:13)

The more that we read this sidra, the more the puzzlement grows. What is the sin of Sodom? Why does Lot behave as he does when the visitors come? What do Abraham and Sarah see and understand when the three strangers visit them? Why is God telling Abraham of his intentions with regard to Sodom and allowing Abraham to bargain him out of the plan – but only insofar as God allows. Why does God ‘test’ Abraham with the threatened sacrifice of his remaining son, and does Abraham pass the test or does he fail it?

There are so many perspectives given in this sidra, yet we still cannot encompass what is going on – only become aware of the multiplicity of viewpoints, and the complexity of relationships. Maybe that is the lesson in itself – as we form a view of our world and our role in it, we shouldn’t let ourselves look for simple answers, but always be aware of the many threads in the weave, each holding a truth of its own. And each action we take – be it the frankly terrifying decisions that Abraham makes for his sons, or the tragic actions of Lot’s daughters – each action has a consequence and leads to yet more complexity. On Rosh Hashanah it is important we come face to face with our own history and with the multiplicity of perspectives and lenses through which to view it. The rest of the year we shouldn’t lose the lesson – religion isn’t a matter of good versus bad, there isn’t a battle between the forces of light and those of dark, but in each of us there is a complex mixture of views and perspectives, and the choices that emerge from how we value those views will dictate whether our future will be one of resolution and peace or of continuing struggle. We tell ourselves a story about what is happening in the world or in our lives on a daily, even hourly basis. We should remember in our story telling that ours isn’t the only way to tell the story.

Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild