• This Week's Torah Portion

The last time we see Sarah alive, she is celebrating the weaning of her son, Yitzḥak. Suddenly, she sees Hagar’s son “metzaḥek” (playing). Metzahek is an ambiguous term suggesting inappropriate behavior, or, in its proximity to the name Yitzḥak, an effort to seize Isaac’s place for himself. Sarah quickly determines that Hagar and Ishmael should be sent away. Then, at the start of this week’s Torah portion, we learn that Sarah has died. Classical commentators link Sarah’s death to the shock of being told that Abraham had taken her long-awaited son to Moriah to offer him as a sacrifice to God (Genesis Rabbah 58:5). It’s a tragic culmination of a long, difficult life.

Contemporary Israeli poet Ruhama Weiss encapsulates Sarah’s difficult life in a 2008 poem comprised of a catalog of passive verbs, adjectives, and clipped sentences:

The Life of Sarah: An Abstract Was Married off Barren Taken on a journey Taken on another journey Beautiful Desired Given to Pharaoh Returned with her husband (and with property) Barren Gave her handmaid to her husband Her handmaid got pregnant Abused her handmaid Taken on another journey Received a promise Laughed (and denied it) Given to the King of Gerar Returned with her husband (and with property) Gave Birth Expelled her handmaid Died.

חיי שרה תקציר חֻתְּנָה עֲקָרָה נִלְקְחָה לְמַסָּע נִלְקְחָה לְעוֹד מַסָּע יָפָה נֶחְשֶׁקֶת נִתְּנָה לְפָרְעֹה חָזְרָה עִם בַּעֲלָהּ (וְעִם רְכוּשׁ) עֲקָרָה נָתְנָה אֶת שִׁפְחָתָהּ לְבַעֲלָהּ שִׁפְחָתָהּ הָרְתָה הִתְעַלְלָה בְּשִׁפְחָה נִלְקְחָה לְעוֹד מַסָּע קִבְּלָה הַבְטָחָה צָחֲקָה (וְהִכְחִישָׁה) נִתְּנָה לְמֶלֶךְ גְּרָר חָזְרָה עִם בַּעֲלָהּ (וְעִם רְכוּשׁ) יָלְדָה גֵּרְשָׁה אֶת הַשִׁפְחָה מֵתָה.

Weiss’s poem portrays a beautiful woman acted upon instead of acting, dragged from place to place, and twice passed off as Abraham’s sister to foreign kings. When Sarah acts independently, she appears morally suspect, offering her handmaid Hagar to her husband, only later to abuse Hagar and expel her. Sarah laughs upon overhearing that, as an old woman, she is about to become pregnant (Genesis 18:12). She is scolded for this, even though Abraham does the same without consequence (Genesis 17:17). Weiss’s poem makes no mention of the Akeidah; Sarah does not participate in that story. The single-word last line — metah (she died) — suggests a lonely death, Sarah having been separated at the end of her life from Abraham’s religious and familial mission. All told, Weiss’s “The Life of Sarah: An Abstract” offers a stinging critique of this founding mother’s life with Abraham. The poem participates in an important strand of feminist Bible criticism, aimed at exposing the patriarchal nature of the Bible and the limits it places on female agency, bodily autonomy, and voice. For those of us feminists who want to live with the Bible as a guiding, influential force, this cannot be the last word on Sarah. We need to find something positive in Sarah’s life story, some redemptive addenda to the abstract. After all, God repeatedly insists that Sarai/Sarah needs to be the mother of this new nation. In Genesis 17, when God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, saying that he will be the father of many (hamon) nations, he also changes Sarai’s name to Sarah, a transitional moment in Sarah’s life not included in Weiss’s summary. However, this is the only time in the Bible when God changes a woman’s name. Abraham, doubting Sarah’s capacity to give birth at her age, petitions God to let Ishmael be the chosen son instead (Genesis 17:18). But God declares that Sarah will be the one to birth Abraham’s legal and spiritual successor. When Sarah resolves to banish Hagar and Ishmael, God endorses this plan and orders Abraham: “Shema bekolah!” (Hearken to her voice!) (Genesis 21:12). All this suggests that there is something about Sarah that ought to be heeded and revered. What positive details can we cull, then, from the resources of tradition, to round out the picture of Sarah’s life and legacy? Recently, I puzzled over this question with one of my HUC rabbinical students, Brooklyn Michalowitz, as she prepared her senior sermon. Together, we identified a few traditions about Sarah’s life and character that deserve highlighting, beginning with her name: שרה (Sarah), which is typically translated as “princess,” but means much more than that. In fact, שרה is the root of ישראל Yisrael, the new name given to Jacob in Genesis 32:29 after he wrestles (sarita) with a man/angel and prevails. As it turns out, the People of Israel are named after Mother Sarah! The nominal connection between Sarah and Jacob/Israel is made even more explicit in Hosea 12:4, where Jacob, having “grown to manhood… strove (sarah) with God.” Like her descendant, Sarah is presented with numerous challenges that require struggle and perseverance. She is forced to deal with the consequences of God’s commandments to Abraham which take her (and her son) from place to place. But in the end, she prevails. When Isaac marries, he brings his wife  Rebecca into Sarah’s tent and loves her, receiving comfort as he grieves his mother’s death (Genesis 24:67). The notion that Sarah represents a loving, comforting haven finds expression in a rabbinic tradition that associates Sarai/Sarah with Yiscah, the daughter of Haran (Genesis 11:29). Yiscah comes from the root ס.כ.ה, which calls to mind the sukkah, another form of shelter in the wilderness. The Babylonian Talmud includes Sarah among the seven women prophets of the Bible and highlights another potential meaning of the name Yiscah: “Rabbi Yitzḥak says that Yiscah is in fact Sarah. And why was she called Yiscah? For she saw [sachtah] by means of divine inspiration, as it is stated: ‘In all that Sarah has said to you, hearken to her voice’(shema bekolah, Genesis 21:12)” (Megillah 14a). According to this teaching, Sarah/Yiscah looks ahead, sums up a situation, and comes  to a troubling, but perhaps necessary, conclusion. While Sarah’s choice to wield power this way and expel Hagar appears harsh and inexcusably cruel, the verb used to describe this expulsion is “garesh,” the same one used in Exodus 11:1 when Pharaoh sends the children of Israel out from Egypt after the final plague. Might Sarah’s expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael thus be seen as an emancipation that allowed them to chart their own course, just like  Pharoah’s expulsion of the Israelites? The end of the Torah portion witnesses Isaac and Ishmael coming together to bury Abraham, suggesting at least some form of familial reconciliation after this difficult break. Lastly, Isaiah 51:2, the one biblical text beyond Genesis that mentions Sarah, refers to her as“ Sarah teḥolelchem” (Sarah who brought you forth or gave you your beginnings). That Sarah is invoked in the context of Isaiah’s prophecies of consolation, which connect her with the Hebrew word toḥelet (expectation or hope), presents her story as part of a nation’s founding and a source of optimism for the future.