Safety after the Tree of Life

Seven years ago, the 18th of Cheshvan fell on October 27 in the Gregorian calendar. The parashah that morning was Vayeira, which includes both the birth of Yitzchak and the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. At the corner of Shady and Wilkins in Pittsburgh, three congregations were meeting for morning services: Tree of Life — Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash, and New Light. I was not at the Tree of Life building that morning. I was at synagogue eight blocks away. We knew what was happening. We did not yet know if it was a single shooter, multiple shooters, a contained attack, or an attack preceding more to come.

By the time morning services concluded, we knew that people had been murdered although we did not yet know the exact count. When we stepped outside of shul into the streets of Squirrel Hill, the normally vibrant neighborhood was virtually silent. No cars were on the road, no people were walking on the sidewalks. There were only the sounds of light rain and a cold autumn breeze rustling the leaves. Everything felt precarious, uncertain. Nothing felt safe.

Ever since that day, every time I think about entering a Jewish space, I think about the distinction between security and safety. And in the midrash related to Hagar, I found a story of two expulsions – abrupt precarity and unexpected safety.

Bereshit Rabba explains that Hagar was an Egyptian princess. The pharaoh gave her to Sarai and Avram, because after witnessing the miracles performed by God, Pharaoh decided his daughter was better off in Avram’s household as a servant. He wanted his daughter to come under the divine protection that shielded Avram and Sarai.

As we know in Lekh Lekha, Sarai and Avram did not conceive, so she gave Hagar to Avram as a wife. Hagar became pregnant. Sarai accused Hagar of acting above her station, of despising her as if she were better than Sarai. In midrash, Avram quoted both Deuteronomy and Exodus. He attempted to convince Sarai that treating Hagar harshly or forcing her out from the home into which she had been bound — first by her father giving her to them, and second by marriage to Avram — simply because she no longer found favor with them, would be unnecessarily cruel.

Based on either her status as an enslaved handmaiden or as a wife to Avram, Hagar should have been safe. She was not. Sarai prevented Hagar from being with Avram, hit Hagar in the face, and made her take buckets and towels to the bathhouse. Even more, Sarai cast the evil eye on Hagar and forced her to miscarry. Unsurprisingly, Hagar fled into the wilderness.

The miscarriage is why, the rabbis tell us, a messenger of the Lord comforted Hagar in the wilderness by saying she would conceive in the future. Midrash further explains that Hagar could easily interact with this messenger, and the three others they count in the parashah, because she was accustomed to communicating with angels in Avram’s household. This observation of midrash reveals the silence of Avram and the angels of the Lord: they did not shield Hagar from experiencing harm. No one with influence or authority chose to secure or guard Hagar’s safety in Avram’s household.

In the wilderness,, Hagar did not only hear from the messengers of the Lord. She also called directly on God. This is the only moment that the rabbis acknowledge God speaking directly to a woman without going through a man. In contrast, when God spoke to Sarah about her laughter, this was an indirect conversation through Avraham. And even when Rivka communicated with God, the rabbis say that she went through Shem. This first expulsion establishes that even though Hagar was harmed and ultimately forced out of her home into the wilderness, she found protection and comfort from angels and from God. She trusted in the messages from God in the wilderness and agreed to return to the home of Avram and Sarai.

In Vayeira, we read that Hagar and Ishmael are cast out into the wilderness because Sarah saw Ishmael playing. Rashi summarizes the midrash: Ishmael’s actions could relate to idolatry like the Golden Calf, to sexual misconduct like Potiphar’s wife, to murder like the war games between the soldiers of David and Shaul, and to a heated argument between Ishmael and Yitzchak about who would inherit a greater portion. There were, in other words, many reasons why Sarah was justified in telling Avraham to expel Hagar and Ishmael.

Ramban, however, disagrees with most of these justifications. He points out that the other accusations against Ishmael and Hagar would mean that Avraham allowed idolatry, sexual immorality, and murder in his household. For Ramban, the only option is that Ishmael mocked everyone celebrating the weaning of Yitzchak and boasted openly that he would inherit double. Ramban backs this up by pointing to Sarah’s complaint, “the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Yitzchak.”

Other than Ramban, rabbinic commentary in Vayeira makes it rather easy to cast Hagar and Ishmael as the violent, idolatrous villains. The other commentators focus on the immediate context: the celebration of Yitzchak’s weaning and the fraught interactions leading up to Hagar and Ishmael being expelled. Ramban broadens his consideration to the world of Avraham’s household.

By putting this second incident in conversation with the first, where Hagar is a woman who easily speaks with angels and with God, Ramban’s commentary seems more plausible. Hagar, an Egyptian princess, an enslaved handmaiden, a wife grieving a miscarriage and conversing with angels, then calling upon God — she does not seem to be someone who would engage in idolatrous or violent practices. By the time we see her in Vayeira, she had not only been enslaved and a wife, she had become the mother to a son of Avraham. And once again she was not safe.

Neither Avraham nor anyone in his household, including angels, secured her safety. Once again in the wilderness, a messenger of the Lord reassured her, provided water for Ishmael, encouraged Hagar to continue, and promised that Ishmael would become a great nation. In both incidents, Hagar trusted God and she found more safety in the wilderness.

I admit that I am disappointed and frustrated that Sarah was allowed to harm Hagar and cast her out. I want to expect better of Sarah, of Avraham, and of the angels. But in the end, as it turns out, the wilderness was unexpectedly a safer place for Hagar and for Ishmael. Leaving the security of Avraham’s household, even filled as it was with heavenly visitors, turned out to be the safer choice. 

After the Tree of Life shooting, I did not think to expect that the wider community of Squirrel Hill and of the entire city would mourn along with us. But they did. The Pittsburgh Steelers logo has three hypocycloids that look like four-pointed stars. The Steelers allowed the yellow hypocycloid to become a yellow Star of David and this version was accompanied by the slogan “Stronger than Hate.” The Starbucks down the street from Tree of Life added window art with ahavah, chesed, and tikvah in Hebrew. And local businesses all over Squirrel Hill put up 8 by 11 sheets of paper, printed with a black background, “Our hearts cry for Shalom” with 11 candles pictured prominently. These things, more than the armed security that now guarded every synagogue’s doors, ultimately restored my sense of safety.

I know that today we live in a different world. It’s not 2018, it’s not 5779, and of course it’s not Pittsburgh. Maybe, like Hagar, we are worried for the futures of our families and our children in a world that seems increasingly dangerous. Maybe we find ourselves deeply focused on security, advocating for stronger or more visible forms of strength, because we are afraid that the wilderness is a more precarious, more deadly place.

Yet when I see Hagar deciding to trust God even after being cast out of her home and her son’s home, I have been thinking — sometimes when we are forced out of what we thought was safe we find out God has not abandoned us. We find safety and security in unexpected places, we strike out trusting God to help us along the way. We build bridges and create a wider community than we ever thought possible, a community where we can celebrate together, remember those we have lost, and invoke their memories for a blessing. 

In honor of the 11 who were murdered because they were Jews and because they were at Shabbat services — who were collectively mourned as yinzers, Pittsburghers, Pennsylvanians, Americans, humans, and yes of course also as Jews, here are their names.

May we find the courage to trust God and to fight for a world where communities do not secure themselves against one another but where we build shared safety together. Shabbat Shalom.