(Learning new things all the time. Arik Einstein has a classic song, “Hagar.” A beautiful background on the most perfect Maine fall day.)
Rabbi Isaacs here: This week I am sharing the words of my colleague, Lauren Cohen Fisher, Director of Jewish Student Life and Lecturer in Jewish Studies at Colby College. This is the sermon she delivered on the first day of Rosh HaShanah at Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, ME.
14 years ago, I had my first Rosh Hashana in Waterville, as a first-year student at Colby. At the time, there was not a vibrant and active Hillel on campus, and no one had told me where the synagogue in town was.
In the Shulchan Arukh – a compilation of Jewish legal codes written in the 16th century –we read:
אם מקצתן בפנים ומקצתן בחוץ וש"ץ תוך הפתח הוא מצרפן:
If a few of them are inside and a few of them are outside, and the prayer-leader is in the middle of the doorway, he joins them [together for a minyan].
I came into my Jewish adulthood in Waterville when the Hillel stood outside the building, and the congregation gathered inside the building. To be here a decade later, seeing one community, woven together, warrants gratitude and awareness. Gratitude to Rabbi Isaacs for being a prayer leader who stood in the doorway bringing everyone together. And gratitude to every one of you, who has stood in the doorway in your own ways, so that we can be one kahal (community). May 5784 be a year where each of us feels that we stand in the doorway, taking our turn to bridge those on the outside and those on the inside into one community.
This teaching from the shulchan aruch has me thinking more broadly about insiders and outsiders. Which, if you’ve ever taken one of my classes, should come as no surprise. How do people end up on the outside, the periphery, the margins? What can we learn if we meet them where they’re at? And how much of the whole picture are we missing when we don’t know their stories?
Has anyone here ever seen Wicked? Read the book? Did you like it? Why?
I was obsessed with Wicked when I was in middle school. I remember seeing it on a middle school trip, certain I would hate this “Wizard of Oz spin off” only to discover that I was absolutely captivated. There was so much to learn about the “wicked witch of the west,” not only that she had a name, but a story of her own. She had experienced loneliness, and friendship, and heartbreak. Things that weren’t so foreign to me. At the end of the musical, I remember feeling guilty – why had it never occurred to me that the villain had a story of her own? I couldn’t let it go. So much so that I wrote my bat mitzvah speech about Wicked, about misunderstood characters, and about the ways in which we sometimes forget to ask people what their stories are because we’re too lost in our own assumptions.
And so, as I look to the Rosh Hashanah liturgy this year, I am drawn to the characters that live on the margins of the story. Or, as Margaret Atwood once wrote, “the blank white spaces at the edges of the print”. This year, rather than look to our main characters, to our known, tried, and true characters… I am instead looking for those we might forget. To find the characters that aren’t as central to our teachings, whose stories are present but often untold. And this, my friends, brings us to Hagar.
Over Rosh Hashana, we’ll read torah starting at Genesis 21 -- when God tells Sarah that she is going to bear a son of her own -- but I want to roll the tapes / scroll back 4 more verses to Genesis 16.
And because I love a good dramatic retelling, let me set the stage for you. We have three primary characters: Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar.
Raise your hand if you know who Abraham is? And Sarah? Now by a show of hands, who is familiar with Hagar?
Fewer of you. Something my dear friend and Rabbi, Charlie Schwartz, often reminds me that the sages say there are no extra words in the Torah. Which means that if Hagar is in the Torah, there is something meaningful to be learned from her story. And so, in the spirit of standing in the doorway and gathering those on the outside with those on the inside to make one kahal // one community // I want to bring you with me on a journey to see what Rosh Hashanna wisdom we can glean from the story of Hagar.
First of all, for those who have heard of Hagar, what do you know about her?
Fabulous. Some things to know about Hagar:
Servant taken from Egypt to be Sarah’s servant.
Sarah desperately wants a child, but can’t conceive, so she asks her husband Abraham to sleep with Hagar, in hopes that Hagar can be her handmaid.
And it works. Hagar becomes pregnant, Sarah is going to have a child!
BUT a real cruelness develops in Sarah. She goes to Abraham and says, “Hagar thinks she’s better than me just because she’s pregnant.”
And Abraham essentially says, “she’s your slave, do with her what you want.”
She resents Hagar. She treats Hagar horribly. In fact, she treats Hagar so horribly that Hagar runs away into the desert.
And this brings us to the moment that I want to focus on today:
As Hagar is wandering in the desert, one of God's angels descends and says:
Genesis 16:8
וַיֹּאמַ֗ר הָגָ֞ר שִׁפְחַ֥ת שָׂרַ֛י:
אֵֽי־מִזֶּ֥ה בָ֖את וְאָ֣נָה תֵלֵ֑כִי
וַתֹּ֕אמֶר מִפְּנֵי֙ שָׂרַ֣י גְּבִרְתִּ֔י אָנֹכִ֖י בֹּרַֽחַת׃
(8) And he [the angel] said: ‘Hagar, Sarai’s handmaid, from what have you come? And where are you going?’
And she says: ‘I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.’
Okay.
Here’s my question.
If God is this “all knowing” being, an omniscient narrator to the world as we know it, then God and the Angel should know why Hagar was fleeing.
So why ask? Seriously, why do you think the angel asks Hagar why she is fleeing?
Rashi, a medieval French Rabbi famous for his commentaries on the Talmud and Torah, gives us some insight:
Rashi on Genesis 16:8:1
The angel certainly knows where Hagar was coming from, rather the angel asked in order to give Hagar an opening to enter into speech. The language of "Where have you come from," this is the place that allows Hagar to say, "this is what I have come from.":
Rashi is very specific. He doesn’t say that the angel allows Hagar to say “this is where I have come from”. Rather, this is *what* I have come from. He is asking specifically about her experiences, her perspective, and viewpoints. What I hear Rashi saying here, is that the angel asks the question because the angel knows that sometimes we need to be invited to share our pain. We need someone to tell. We need someone to listen.
Maybe, then, the Torah of Hagar is a charge to remember that part of our spiritual work during the holiday season is to give others an entry into speech.
I spend so much of my time during Rosh Hashana thinking about myself – who I wronged, who wronged me, what I wish I did differently, what I wish others did differently, that I forget that I’m not unique. I’m not the only one wrestling with myself and my past. But in fact, I am in a community where we are all, in our own ways, doing our best to look at that which lies heavy on our hearts. The days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur beg us to ask ourselves “what have we come from,” and “where are we going.” But sometimes, it’s too much to answer those questions and we need someone who really sees us, who draws us in, asks, and listens.
This year, these next 10 days, I invite you – in fact I urge you – to take the time to be the angel. Take the time to remember Hagar, to see Hagar, to give Hagar your time. Because at the end of the day, the angel isn’t so different from the prayer leader who stands in the door between the community inside and the community outside. Standing in the doorway, bringing us together to be one kahal together, because we are seen as important, regardless of how central or how marginal we might appear.
Shana Tova.