Dear TBZ community:
Sometimes I feel that I can't keep up with the world and at times, it feels even as I try, it is a struggle to hold on to hope. We watch and read about the impeachment proceedings and the presidential debates; the indictment of Israel’s prime minister and a possible third election in Israel; the uprisings in Hong Kong, Chile, Bolivia and the ongoing oppression of human rights. And these headlines just covers the first pages of the newspaper.
Is there a possibility of return to a world of hope. Is there a new story to be written? Or is this it? These are not questions that can be answered, but I find in this week's parsha some comfort and a reminder of our capacity for reconciliation, for healing and for the redirection of our stories to a new path.
Parshat
Chayei
Sarah
begins with Sarah’s death, tells us the story of the search for a wife for Isaac, and ends surprisingly and unexpectedly with an unpredicted wedding announcement:
וַיֹּ֧סֶף אַבְרָהָ֛ם וַיִּקַּ֥ח אִשָּׁ֖ה וּשְׁמָ֥הּ קְטוּרָֽה׃
Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah.
At 140 years of age, Abraham remarries and fathers six more sons! Interestingly, we don't know much about Keturah, besides the listing of her children. But who is Keturah?
Rabbinic imagination, perhaps because its bold and radical, or perhaps because it has a hard time imagining a third character entering the life of Abraham, identifies Abraham’s new wife as Hagar, his former concubine. If you recall, the last time Abraham and Hagar were together, he had agreed to have her and their son, Ishmael, banished to the desert. A story that brings pain and hurt to Abrham and that sends Hagar and her son Ishmael to their almost certain death.
This rabbinic interpretation imagines reconciliation and the possibility of coming together after brokenness. How could anyone imagine that they would reconcile?
The medieval commentator
Rashi
makes his case based on wordplay based on the midrash in Genesis Rabbah 61.
קטורה זוֹ הָגָר, וְנִקְרֵאת קְטוּרָה עַל שֶׁנָּאִים מַעֲשֶׁיהָ כִּקְטֹרֶת
Keturah: This is Hagar. She was named Keturah because her deeds were as beautiful (sweet) as incense (Ketoreth).
(Genesis Rabbah 61)
Rashi adds that Hagar stayed loyal to Abraham all those years, not marrying anyone else nor bearing children for anyone else.
Hagar, means “the stranger.” In her first appearance, Hagar functions for Sarah and Abraham as the oppressed outsider in their triangle of love and fertility.
The person who is named “stranger” at the start of this story comes back at it’s denouement with the new identity “sweet incense.” Hagar as Keturah offers the possibility of healing past wrongs.
Of course, this is not so simple and raises many questions about reconciliation, about Abraham and Sarah’s relationship and much more. But this connection between Keturah and Hagar offers a model for imagining that the end of a story can be very different from what we could ever have imagined.
We don't know that Hagar is Keturah. The Torah does not tell us that explicitly, but rabbinic interpretation invites us to imagine that they are. And in this way the rabbis encourage us to imagine a world that can bring reconciliation even in the places that seem the most impossible.
Their hopeful vision of Hagar as Keturah encourages me to see beyond darkness to new possibilities, and gives me renewed strength to create and to fight for reconciliation and redemption. My hope is that we can all access the creative courage of the rabbis who chose to imagine that oppression could be transformed into sweet incense and do our part in creating that better world.
May this Shabbat bring blessings to all of you and your loved ones.
May we be imagine new paths of healing and reconciliation and work towards them.
May we have a joyful Shabbat!
Shabbat Shalom,
