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Rabbi Michael Beals October 2, 2024
Temple Beth El Newark, DE
Rosh Hashana Day 1 5755
DISCOVERING THE BACK STORY
Gut yontev.
Everyone has a back story. Understanding that back story helps us put their comments, behaviors … even their political affiliation into context. It may not help us agree with their choices, but if we understand someone’s back story we might react, or not react, differently. And at its heart, that is what Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are really all about. Coming to synagogue, we fill our hearts and our minds with new ideas, new realizations, so we may be better equipped to make different, to make BETTER choices in the new year.
What we normally experience in our encounters with others, is just the tip of the iceberg, not realizing that most of what makes a person think and react the way they do, is submerged way beneath the surface.
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Let’s review Abraham and Sarah in today’s Torah reading. This morning, we read about Sarah becoming a mother. The Rabbis chose that reading for First Day Rosh Hashana to inspire us that God actually DOES hear our prayers and even the most unlikely things might be possible, so we might as well ask.
That’s not the difficult part of the Torah reading. What comes next, IS. We learn how, after having his miraculous child, Sarah will later send her handmaid, Hagar, and her son, Ishmael packing. On the surface, it looks like Sarah is heartless, but there’s a lot going on beneath the surface.
First, Sarah is saddled with the Divine promise that Abraham’s seed will be as many as the grains of sand in the desert. Well, at age 90, Sarah has been infertile for all of her married life with Abraham. So how is she supposed to make that happen? Thanks to a famine in Canaan, Abraham and Sarah are forced to find food in Egypt. And while there, Abraham acquires Hagar as a concubine, and he gives her to Sarah. The Midrash, ultimate compendium of biblical back stories, states that Hagar is none other than a daughter of Pharaoh, so she is royalty in her own right.
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Realizing she can’t conceive and that there is a Divine promise on the line, Sarah does the only thing she CAN do. She allows Abraham to mate with her young handmaiden, Hagar, so that the covenantal promise of a family line can be preserved. We read in the text that Hagar looks down on Sarah because of her own ability to conceive while Sarah, her mistress, remains barren. So, the relationship between mistress and maidservant is strained to begin with. In fact, Hagar actually flees her mistress’ cruelty, but an angel of the Lord entreats her to return.
But later, Sarah catches Hagar’s son, Ishmael, metzaheking with Isaac. Sarah sends Ishmael and Hagar away. What’s in this word, metzahek? The shoresh, or Hebrew three-letter root tsaddi-het-kuf, is the SAME root as Isaac’s Hebrew name, Yitzhak. In the context of Sarah naming her son, it means laughter, because Sarah laughed when she learned she was pregnant at 90.
That seems innocent enough. Joyous laughter should not be a reason for Ishmael and his mother to be dispatched from Abraham’s tent. However, metahek has other meanings which are more troubling. In the translation provided in most humashim, metzahek in this case means “making sport.”
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Still NOT clear. Fast forward a generation to Isaac and Rebecca. While sojourning with the King of Gerar, Isaac, following on the example of his late father, Abraham, tells the King that Rebecca is his SISTER, not his wife, so Isaac will not be physically harmed. I guess as a husband he ran the risk that the king would have him killed in order to take his wife into his harem. How strange: adulty -- bad, but murder ------- acceptable?!
The King of Gerar discovers Isaac is lying to him when he accidentally discovers Isaac and Rebecca metzaheking with one another. The JPS translation is “fondling.” But whatever they are doing, outside the behavior of some notoriously naughty Roman caesars, this is NOT the behavior of a brother and a sister. And when Sarah witnesses the older half-brother, Ishmael metzheking with his younger, vulnerable brother, Isaac, she has him removed from the house. It breaks Abraham’s heart as he is fond of both Ishmael and Hagar. In fact, the midrash states that after Sarah dies at the age of 127, Abraham actually sends for Hagar and he marries her. The text calls her Keturah, but the Midrash states that she’s actually Hagar.
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The back story makes the behaviors more understandable, even if you disagree with them. And I could just as easily shared a backstory on Abraham, Hagar, or Ishmael which might make their behaviors more sympathetic.
What’s my back story? As your new rabbi you certainly deserve to know. And although I cannot tell you EVERYTHING this morning, perhaps I CAN give you enough to help you make sense of some of my choices, especially as your new spiritual leader.
As the English High Tea-themed Installation Reception may have hinted, I am the product of a British born father (of blessed memory) …. And many of you already met my Bronx-born mother. As a first generation American on my dad’s side, I have seen America through the eyes of a very grateful immigrant. It colors my patriotism and love of country. I also grew up hearing Yiddish in the house, something rare for kids my age, unless you were born in Borough Park.
My British Bubba and my Bronx mother used to argue when I was a child – typical daughter-in-law, mother-in-law stress. As I grew up in the age of Henry Kissinger, the first Jewish Secretary of State, I fancied myself as a diplomat doing shuttle diplomacy between two warring nations.
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And that early experience shaped my undergrad studies in political science and Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley, my life at International House, my internships with the Organization of American States and the International Visitors Program at the USIA, my master’s in Intercultural Communication and US Foreign Policy, and work as Assistant Director of the International Students Office at American University’s School of International Studies in Washington, DC, and my post-master’s work as a Raol Wallenberg fellow at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
That’s an awful lot of detail. Plainly stated: I wanted to be a diplomat. I find cultural, racial and religious differences fascinating and compelling. And today I am a rabbi, after 27 years, still playing the role of diplomat for one of the most challenging nations in the history of the planet – the Jewish people! And my serving as the gubernatorial-appointed chair of the Delaware Interfaith Council, as well as my ability to successfully navigate between Chabad, Traditional, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist communities here in Delaware, all comes from a passion for diversity and differences.
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As for my politics? “Remember, Rabbi, NO POLITICS from the bimah.” But it IS useful to know my mom grew up as a New Deal Democrat in The Bronx, wept as a child when FDR died in office, and wept as an adult when JFK was assassinated rocking me in my cradle. At age six, she had me leafletting homes for 1968 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hubert Horatio Humphrey, the greatest stateman of his era from Minnesota. All of these very early childhood experiences, plus my ongoing loving relationship with my mom, have helped shaped my political outlook.
I will stop there with my own autobiography. We will have, please God, plenty of shared cups of tea in our future to explore further. But the fact is this: We live in a very politically polarizing moment, with elections just weeks away. It is important to remember, that just as Abraham and Sarah in today’s Torah portion, and I, as your rabbi have a back story, the people you encounter who speak and vote for people who make your skin crawl --- THEY ALSO have a back story. It is a back story connected to their childhood, their parents, their experiences in life.
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We all need to take a moment. Before taking people on for their posts on Facebook, or Instagram, or X (it is X, right? Not Y or Z?), we would be wise to remember that these social media pontificators have a back story, too. During yontev meals in your dining room, or as a guest is someone else’s dining room, you might very well encounter some opinions you don’t like. But before you answer them, and IF you answer them, imagine all the things that led to their opinions. If they are mishpucha, family, you don’t need to imagine too hard. You might know very well why they hold the opinions that they do.
And I would encourage you, in the difficult days ahead, to make sure you and your loved ones know the back story of the State of Israel as well. Nobody ever makes this connection in the media, but I will remind you that Israel is only 80 years, at best, from the national trauma of the Holocaust, where six million of our Jewish brothers and sisters were slaughtered. It’s not something you get over quickly as a nation. On October 7th, almost a year ago, Israel experienced the largest pogrom since the Holocaust. As much as time can put protective layers over old wounds, that mass murder of more than 1200 Israelis ripped all those protective layers off on one fateful day.
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And although we may not condone the deaths of so many Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank, and now Lebanese civilians in Lebanon, we CAN understand Israel’s need to ensure its security at all costs. And Western Public Opinion, even the opinions of American political leaders and allies, are unlikely to impact Israel’s defense decisions because where were these Western leaders during the Holocaust?!
It’s all about the back story. May we spend these next few days of reflection to consider our own back stories with the hope that by better self-understanding, we can then make better choices in the New Year. And may we endeavor to also understand the back stories of others, especially of those with whom we vehemently disagree. From such contemplation, may rays of understanding shine forth allowing us to reconcile with those with whom we disagree politically, because there are other bonds which are far more important.
L’shana Tovah!