Torah portion: Living with pardon

A genocide here, a massacre there. Somewhere a theocrat falls, elsewhere a despot rises. Tent cities spring up like grass. Shantytowns and refugee camps sprout forth like fields of wheat.  

Who by poison gas, who by machete, who by bullets and who by bombs? Who shall expire quickly, whose soul will languish in a dark cell of hell? How terrifying was this week’s news of men cut down like weeds, women and children butchered like sheep? But was last week’s news less cruel? In Africa, or Asia, or the Middle East, the bloodshed is endless.

“And the Lord said, the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, their sin grave indeed” (Genesis 18:20). 

Great evil is nothing new under the sun. Before the flood we read, “The Lord saw how great was man’s evil upon earth” (Genesis 6:5).  And there is nothing novel about a victim’s cry either, as God said to Cain, ‘Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground’ ” (Genesis 4:10). 

When murder and massacre are as commonplace as sunshine and rain, the essential question is: How are we allowed to remain? Why are more cities not overturned like Sodom? Why is the earth not drowned as it was in Noah’s day?

The prophet Ezekiel’s writings about evil complicate matters even further: “This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters had power, an abundance of food and untroubled tranquility, yet she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49).  

A remarkable description, as it casts a wide net of blame. God judges those who perpetrate death and destruction, as well as those who have the power to stop the violence and cruelty yet fail to lift a hand. We are told that it was only in Abraham’s merit that Lot and his daughters were saved by angels from Sodom’s fate (Genesis 19:29). Perhaps the fact that we still stand here indicates that we, too, have been gifted with divine grace. 

Two stories in Parashat Vayera that speak to this idea are remarkably similar in substance and plot. The first is the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, and the second is the binding of Isaac. 

To review briefly, on the day Hagar and her son were driven away, we read that “Abraham awoke early in the morning” (Genesis 21:14). He placed food, a skin of water and the boy on her back and sent them off. Hagar wanders in the wilderness till the water runs out. Out of despair, she throws the boy beneath one of the bushes. 

Throughout, Ishmael is repeatedly referred to as “the boy” or “the lad.”  Eventually, mother and child are saved by an angelic messenger of the Lord, who hears “the cry of the lad where he lies” (Genesis 21:17). As Hagar lifts Ishmael up, she sees beside him a watering hole. (Fascinatingly, medieval Rabbi David Kimchi points out that these green bushes where Ishmael had been lying all along were themselves an indication of water.) Afterward, “The boy grew and became a bowman” (Genesis 21:20). He settles in Paran, and his mother finds him a wife. 

The binding of Isaac follows a similar pattern. “Abraham awoke early in the morning” (Genesis 22:3). He saddles his donkey with provisions as he had earlier “saddled” Hagar. A few verses later, he saddles Isaac with wood for sacrifice. Like Ishmael, Isaac is repeatedly referred to as “the lad.” Here, too, an angel cries out from heaven, saving Isaac and promising Abraham that his seed shall number as the stars, a promise similar to that made to Hagar and her son. Shrubbery also has a role in Isaac’s rescue: “And Abraham lifted his eyes and afterward saw a ram caught by its horns in the thicket” (Genesis 22:13). The ram’s neck was substituted for Isaac. A short time later, Abraham tasks his steward to find a wife for his son.

As both lads were saved from near death by divine intervention in a strikingly similar fashion, one must look to places of divergence for a parting lesson. The most salient difference between the sparing of Ishmael and the sparing of Isaac is in what they do afterward, who these children become. Ishmael becomes an archer, he settles in the area of Paran, which is a pun on perah adam — “a wild-ass of a man” — an earlier prophetic description of Ishmael (Rashbam citing Genesis 16:12). In contrast, the next time we observe Isaac, he is “meditating in the field,” having returned from a godly place named “The Well-of-the-Living-One-Who-Sees-Me” (Genesis 24:62). Ishmael turns to the sword, Isaac to a contemplative life of the spirit. 

I have always found it fitting that the story of Ishmael and Hagar is read on Day 1 of Rosh Hashanah, while the story of Isaac and Abraham is read on Day 2. Undoubtedly, the two lads were hardly deserving of death. But on the Day of Judgment, a day in which the entire world is judged, we wonder aloud if this has been another year in which humanity has been spared its due judgment. 

There is so much hate and so much violence, and far too much averting of our eyes. These readings suggest that it is only by the mercy of God that we are spared the flood of Noah or the fire of Sodom. Perhaps the real lesson is that we are always being pardoned, and the true test of character is in what we do with this knowledge. 

Rabbi Yehuda Hausman is the spiritual leader of the The Shul on Duxbury, an independent Orthodox minyan. He is a teacher at the Academy for Jewish Religion, CA, and a lecturer at American Jewish University’s Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies. He writes about the weekly parasha on his blog, rabbihausman.com.