Vayera 2023-Friday Eve-SOJC– Father and Son Relationships -11.3.2023
Our son Avi spent a great deal of time with his Abba during his early years. From taking Avi with him to minyan when he was saying kaddish for his father, playing soccer with his Abba as the coach, learning to fix things around the house, and reading scary books. Perhaps one of the sweetest things I noticed over the years was the nightly singing of “Shema” before Avi went to sleep. These experiences were endearing to me because I watched the flowering of the special relationship between our son and his father.
It was this context, I believe, which made Parashat Vayera difficult for me to read this year. The father-son tension which struck me the hardest this time was in verse 11 of Chapter 21. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, has asked him - in strong terms - to “cast out” Hagar and Ishmael (Abraham’s concubine and son). Abraham is quite troubled by this, but encouraged by God, Abraham listens to Sarah and soon cast out his concubine and his son. And that is the last time we hear of Abraham’s relationship with his son Ishmael until Abraham dies, at which time both Ishmael and Isaac bury their father. (Genesis 25:9).
Seeing what I saw in the relationship between my husband and my son, I had great difficulty understanding how a father could cast off his own child - one with whom he had lived with for more than 13 years - and never see that child again. It pained me to imagine this scenario, even though I understood the broader themes of the parashah.
Apparently, Abraham’s casting off of his son also bothered some of our ancient rabbis, for I found a midrash which presumed that Abraham never completely abandoned his son. In the midrash (Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer 30) Abraham goes to see his son Ishmael in the wilderness of Paran three years after Ishmael has married a Moabite woman. Ishmael is not at home when Abraham arrives, but Abraham speaks to his wife and asks her for some bread and water, which she refuses to give him - even though it is midday in the middle of the wilderness. Abraham asks her to tell her husband that an old man from Canaan came to see him, and to tell him that “the household of this house is not in good repair.” When the wife transmits this message to Ishmael, he divorces her, and his mother finds him another wife.
Three years later, Abraham goes to see his son again, and again does not find him home. Abraham asks this new wife for some bread and water because he is weary, and she brings them to him. The midrash continues: “Then Abraham entreated the Holy One on his son’s behalf, and Ishmael’s house was filled with all manner of good things. When Ishmael came back, his wife told him what had happened. Then Ishmael realized that his father still loved him.”
The midrash touched me, not only because it provided a reconciliation of sorts between Abraham and his son, but because it seemed to me the more accurate portrayal of what must have happened between Abraham - father of our people and fighter for justice - and his son Ishmael. The midrash lets us know that Abraham still loved Ishmael, and did whatever possible to better Ishmael’s life. This, to me, is a more natural description of Abraham and Ishmael’s relationship, and more a model for us even in difficult, strained parent-child relations. My prayer is that none of us should ever be placed in the situation Abraham was placed in, but if we must live with strained familial relations, that we will behave with as much concern and love as Abraham did in the midrash.
Shabbat Shalom.