Library:D'vrei Torah

D'var Torah - First Day of Rosh Hashanah 2006
Aryeh Gold
Dr. Leonard (Aryeh) Gold, Dorot Chief Librarian of the Jewish Division, The New York Public Library (retired)

Our Torah reading for today is the traditional one for the first day of Rosh ha-Shanah: Chapter 21 of the Book of Genesis, followed by a maftir consisting of the first six verses of Numbers, chapter 29. This is a passage occurring toward the end of Parashat Pinhas, where the people are commanded to observe a sacred occasion on the first day of the seventh month. Some congregations substitute the account of the Creation.

Before we get to the matter at hand let us back up to the previous chapter. Abraham and his household have come to dwell in the land ruled by Avimelech, King of Gerar. Abraham represents Sarah as his sister, and the king has her brought before him. God comes to Avimelech in a dream and tells him he will die because of this woman, since she is already someone else’s wife. The only way he can save himself is by returning Sarah to her husband. When asked by the King why he has done this thing, Abraham says he was afraid for his life: “Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.” This is a motif that occurred before, when Abraham went down to Egypt. Abraham goes on to explain that he wasn’t really lying, that Sarah is indeed the daughter of his father, but not of his mother. Reconciliation follows. Avimelech restores Sarah to Abraham together with gifts, and invites Abraham to live wherever he likes within his realm. In return, Abraham prays for fertility to be restored to Avimelech and his house. All of this is the prelude to what we shall read today.

Chapter 21 of Genesis consists of three distinct episodes: the birth of Isaac, the expulsion of Hagar and her son, and, finally, the resolution of another dispute between Abraham and Avimelech. Then there is a maftir consisting of six verses of detailed instructions for observing the sacred occasion on the first day of the seventh month.

As we follow the story I invite you to think about two questions: Why is this Torah reading appropriate for Rosh ha-Shanah? And what are we celebrating?

The chapter begins by declaring that God took note of Sarah and did for her as he had spoken. Rashi, the great medieval commentator who lived in the Champagne district of France from 1040 to 1105 and is actually thought to have earned his livelihood by raising grapes there, asserts that this immediately follows Abraham’s prayer for fertility to be restored to Avimelech in order to teach us that Abraham advanced his own cause when he asked God to grant to another person the very thing he wanted for himself. In fact, Rashi goes on, God enabled Sarah to conceive even before he healed Avimelech’s women. And the Italian renaissance Jew, Ovadiah Sforno, an exact contemporary of Michelangelo by the way, echoes a common belief of his time by saying that although a woman who gives birth late in life usually bears a daughter, Sarah has a son because that is what God had promised in Chapter 17.

The text goes on to say that Sarah bore a son at the set time of which God had spoken. And Rashi explains that an angel had come and made a mark on the wall and said “when the sun comes around to this mark next year Sarah will give birth.”

Abraham called his son Isaac, or Yitzchak, which we all know is connected to the Hebrew root of the verb to laugh. But the Midrash doesn’t leave it at that. (Midrash Rabbah. Genesis, p. 466) Unable to resist some wordplay, one sage asserts that the real significance of יצחק is חק יצא, that is, Law has gone forth to the world. Another sage, whose own name was Isaac by the way, [R. Isaac Hipusheh] plays with the numerical values of the Hebrew letters. He contends that yod, which is ten, stands for the Ten Commandments; tsadi is ninety for the age at which Sarah has given birth, het is eight for the eighth day, on which the boy was circumcised, and kuf is a hundred for Abraham’s age at the time of the birth.

Returning to the text, Sarah declares: “God has brought me laughter: everyone who hears will laugh with me.” She goes on to recite three more lines of verse:
    “Who would have said to Abraham
    That Sarah would suckle children!
    Yet I have borne a son in his old age.”

The Hebrew begins: מי מלל לאברהם

The Hebrew word for “said” in “Who would have said to Abraham…” is highly unusual. It is not אמר or הגיד or ספר, but, rather, מלל. Modern scholarship [Alter, p. 98] reminds us that this is a usage that appears only in poetry, and it may be archaic. But Midrash sees another opening for the numbers game: Mem equals forty, lamed thirty, and the second lamed, another thirty. Add them together and what do you get? One hundred: Abraham’s age when Isaac was born.

It is the second line of verse, however, that has posed a greater challenge to the traditional commentators: Why does it speak of Sarah suckling children when she has borne only one son? To resolve the apparent discrepancy a legend was devised. [See Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, Phila., 2003, p. 218, and Midrash Genesis Rabbah, p. 468] Abraham and Sarah were old and were afraid people might think this little Isaac was some foundling they had picked up and claimed as their own. To dispel such a thought they invited people from far and wide, including women with their babies, to see how Sarah’s breasts overflowed with milk. Not only was there enough for Isaac, but Sarah was able to suckle all the other infants present. And the legend goes that all the children whose mothers harbored pious thoughts while Sarah was nursing them would become ancestors of the gentiles who in future generations would convert to Judaism.

The second episode is that of Hagar and her son. It is very clear from a literary point of view that this is a foreshadowing of the Binding of Isaac story, the Akedah. In both cases Abraham is called upon to embark on a course of action, heart-wrenching and counter-intuitive, that he believes will result in the death of a son he loves. That the story is also about the rivalry between Sarah and Hagar, about social status and an inheritance, is emphasized by the fact that not once in this segment is the son who-is-not-Isaac mentioned by name.

Sarah sees the son of Hagar engaged in an activity that the Hebrew denotes as מצחק. The JPS translation says that she saw him playing. Soncino says making sport. One way or another, Sarah saw Ishmael horsing around. But the traditional commentators have had a field day with this. What was Ishmael actually doing? The first thing to notice is that מצחק is constructed from the very same Hebrew root as יצחק, or Isaac. Some take this to mean, therefore, that Ishmael was playing at being Isaac. Others say that he was making fun of Isaac. Still others, citing various biblical sources, that he was performing lewd acts, or worshipping idols, or even sacrificing grasshoppers to idols. Yet another concludes that he was engaging in what a modern scholar has called a “William Tell game,” in which, while pretending to practice with his bow and arrow, he was actually taking potshots at Isaac. In any case, what Sarah seems to see here is a Cain and Abel situation, and she tells Abraham to: “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” But Abraham loves Ishmael and is being asked to do something that goes against his instinct. Then God tells Abraham to do as Sarah says, because everything will work for the best.

I said earlier that the Ishmael episode foreshadows the ordeal of Isaac. How? Both stories involve a journey into the unknown, a child at the point of death, the intervention of God’s messenger, the parent seeing a way out, and the promise of future blessing [Everett Fox, p. 88].

Hagar and her son are sent forth. When the water gives out, Hagar sets the boy under a bush and sits a bowshot away כמטחוי קשת, for she cannot bear to look on as the child dies. Curiously, while it is Hagar the mother, who bursts into tears, the text tells us that God hears the cry of the boy. Note that even though the boy is not named here, his name is echoed in the words of the verse וישמע אלהים, God heard [the cry of the boy]. From this Rabbi Mendel of Worka teaches that God can hear the silent cries of the anguished heart, even when no words are uttered [Etz Hayim, p. 115]. Then an angel reassures Hagar with the promise that God will make a great nation of her son. Hagar’s eyes are opened, and she sees a well of water. Some medieval commentators have called attention to the fact she is able for the first time to see something that has been there all the time.

And now we come to the third episode. Avimelech, the local ruler with whom Abraham had dealings in the previous chapter, sees that God has favored Abraham. He therefore proposes a pact. Abraham agrees, but--- he has a grievance. It appears that Avimelech’s servants have seized a well belonging to Abraham. Avimelech pleads ignorance and agrees to restore the well to Abraham. Abraham gives Avimelech gifts of livestock, and they make an alliance. Abraham then sets aside another seven ewes. In response to Avimelech’s question Abraham replies: “You are to accept these seven ewes from me as proof that I dug this well,” and, of course, Avimelech accepts. The two swear an oath. Thus, the place name Be’ersheva is explained in two ways: as the well of the seven, that is the seven ewes, and the well of the oath: כי שם נשבעו שניהם.

The text then says Abraham planted a tamarisk. The Hebrew for tamarisk is אשל. Midrash Genesis Rabbah records a discussion among the sages about the true meaning of אשל. One rabbi, making a play on the words eshel אשל and esh’al אשאל , I will ask, concludes that an eshel is really an orchard, where you can get any kind of fruit you may ask for. Another maintains that an eshel is really an inn for wayfarers. Rashi, in his Talmud commentary, ventures that eshel: alef, shin, lamed, is actually an acronym for Akhilah, Shetiyah, and Levayah, that is, eating, drinking and accompanying on the first leg of the journey; that the eshel is a way-station Abraham has established where the traveler’s needs are met. And Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg [The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p. 103], the modern commentator, concludes: “This eshel, then, is a place where the stranger fulfills limitless desires, the feeding place that is reminiscent of the infant at the breast.”

Then, strangely, the chapter concludes by saying that: “Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines a long time.” Why is this strange? Modern scholarship informs us that in Abraham’s day this was not yet the land of the Philistines. The Philistines did not come to settle until several centuries after the patriarchs are thought to have lived. According to this view, then, since the story was set down long after the patriarchal epoch, the point of alluding to the Philistines is to make the location clear to a later generation.

And now we come to the maftir, the six verses in Numbers 29 that command the people to observe the first day of the seventh month, that is, the first of Tishri, as a sacred occasion. The instructions are detailed and explicit. But there is no why. What is it exactly that we are called upon to celebrate? Since the text does not seem to provide a direct answer, let us look elsewhere.

Obviously, earlier generations, too, asked the question. For an early liturgical poet, a paytan, who remains anonymous, put this together in his attempt to answer the question:
היום הרת עולם (והיום יעמיד במשפט כל יצורי עולם)

The Hebrew harah means pregnant. It is a feminine adjective, while yom is masculine. ‘Olam may mean the world, but it may also mean eternity.

This phrase survives, and we recite it today as part of the liturgy for Rosh Hashanah. (In our Mahzor it is found on page 633.) Traditionally it is interpreted in one of two ways. It may be taken as a reminder of the Creation. In our mahzor it is rendered “Today, the world is born!” Below the line Sheila Peltz Weinberg comments: “They [our ancestors] did not say ‘the anniversary of the world’s birth,’ but literally, ‘Today the world was conceived.’ This means that we can connect in this moment to the precise energy present at creation. This awareness can lead us to identify with a reality that is not bounded by time.”

Or it may be taken to mean that today is a great day of judgment, on the basis of the way the sages read “You shall present a burnt offering.” They imagined God saying to Israel: “My children! I will consider it as though you have this day been made before Me, as though this day I had created you as a new being.” [Midrash Leviticus Rabbah, p. 379]

Here I propose something different. Let us go back to the source of the expression harat ‘olam. It appears in the Bible in one place only, in Jeremiah 20:17, and that is where the anonymous liturgical poet found it. The prophet is lamenting the day he was born. He is cursing the man who brought his father news of the birth. “That he did not slay me while I was in the womb, so that my mother were my grave and her womb pregnant forever. Why did I go forth from the womb?” The image of a mother remaining pregnant forever is what the words harat ‘olam depict here. The passage understands ‘olam to mean not the world, but eternity.

Let us now try that interpretation with ha-yom harat ‘olam. Instead of saying “Today the world is born,” let us try saying “Today is pregnant with eternity,” or “The day is pregnant with eternity,” for that matter, since Hebrew doesn’t differentiate between “today” and “the day” the way English does. That would mean that at any time we call “now,” as distinct from what is past and can no longer be changed, we have potential, the possibility for choice, the ability to decide. And this can be true even under constrained circumstances. One need only think of Abraham deciding first to banish his beloved elder child and then to sacrifice the younger one. One need only think of our heroes and martyrs who resisted even when they knew they were doomed. What lies in the past can no longer be changed, but any moment we call “now” is pregnant with potentiality. And once a year our Jewish tradition gives us an opportunity to celebrate this gift: the ability to choose, to decide, to change, to act.

That is how I understand “Ha-yom harat ‘olam,” and why I think the ancient stories of the trials of Abraham are right for this occasion. Shanah Tovah! May the New Year bring us all peace, good health and happiness.
Ryeh Gold RH 5776 (2006)