Rosh Hashanna 5765 Day 1:
On Hagar – “Vayera”

By Dr. Evlyn Gould
September 16, 2004

Today we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, and Rosh Hashanah celebrates the birthday of humanity. Unlike Pesach, which celebrates the birthday of the Jewish nation, of the Jews in their particularity, Rosh Hashanah invites reflection on the idea of the universal: the universal single G-d—be it a G-d of many names and faces—and the universal, singular category of the human, be that also with multiple names and faces. This category of the human is the category we speak of when we speak of human rights, or of humanism and its presumption that humans have certain shared, universal traits, that humanity is one. It is no surprise, then, that the parashah that we read and reread on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, "Vayera," is a story, precisely, of these shared universal human traits, but a story that also teaches us to see that we can only know what we share as humans universally by paying attention to the things that make us different.

In this parashah, we encounter Hagar, who is both Ha-ger, the stranger, and also Hey-gar, the Egyptian princess, daughter of Pharaoh who was given to Abraham unwillingly to become his concubine. Unlike Sarah, Hagar is a "stranger in a strange land," but like Sarah, she too is a mother who will birth a nation. So Hagar is a single person with two faces, and through her we hear of the origins of both the Jewish nation and the Islamic nation: the family of Abraham, Sarah, and Yitzchak, on one hand, and that of Ibrahim, Heygar, and Ishmael on the other. Even if she enters our tradition as Sarah's rival, Hagar is clearly also her equal, and a constant reminder that a stranger looks that way only from the outside. Moreover, because we all have outsides and insides, we are all in some ways strangers, and potentially even to our selves.

But let's review the story of Hagar before continuing.

Abraham, known for his great hospitality, has just welcomed strangers who promise that Sarah, despite that she is "withered" and infertile at 86, will be with child. (I thought I was an older Mom!) Sarah gives birth to Yitzchak, the laughing one, and with him the bloodline of the nation Israel. Hagar, the enslaved Egyptian princess with whom Abraham had already fathered another son, Ishmael, and another great nation, is then cast out at the will of Sarah. While the Torah goes on to consider the story of Abraham and Isaac, in the Kor'an, it is written that Abraham as Ibrahim returns with Hagar to Egypt, founding on the way Bekka, later called Mecca—that is, the original Beit ha Mikdash of Islam which all Muslims are called on to visit at least once in their lives. So from the one father come two bloodlines woven together, apparently in division for the rest of their days. Their only hope for reconciliation can be in or through the "higher" category of their humanity, in the in-dwelling godliness they all share.

This hoped-for reconciliation of the two bloodlines—for which we are still, unfortunately, waiting—may explain the curious reversals that Rabbi Yitzhak signaled to me, that link these two bloodlines born of a single father. Just as Hagar is sent into slavery in Canaan to give birth to a son who will grow up among strangers, before becoming a prophet in his land, our Moses will be sent into Mitzraim, into Egypt, before emerging as a leader of the Jews (who knows something about being a "stranger in a strange land"). Similarly, when Hagar and her son Ishmael are cast out into the desert and can no longer continue for want of water, Hashem opens the eyes of Hagar and she finds water to quench their thirst. This is not unlike the story of the Hebrews in the desert, who will also get water in the nick of time. In both instances, water appears in the desert as a sign that G-d accompanies the travelers. These are truly mayim hayim, waters of life, so Hashem clearly wants the dual—and often dueling—bloodlines to persist, if only so that we continually keep before our eyes the realities of difference and sameness in our material world.

Paying attention to these reversed similarities in the traditions of these two Abrahamic bloodlines helps us grasp one of the great lessons of monotheism: that the "other," "the stranger," or the neighbor is a foundational presence in our traditions; it is at the core of the very notion of human responsibility. As the French Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, suggests, a single, monotheistic G-d is far removed from the workings of our everyday lives and this far removal forces us to attend to the details of moral and ethical relations with other humans, right here, right now.

We are indeed challenged every day to make on-the-spot decisions about our ethical behaviors toward "others." For as soon as one face turns to another to speak, but even before speech, the question of our ethical responsibility arises. Veahavata lereyecha camocha -- to love our neighbors as ourselves -- is a mitzvah we are asked to fulfill daily. It is as if we are asked to reflect upon our likeness to our neighbors because we can only know ourselves (know our own humanity) by gazing into their faces. Veahavata lereyecha camocha ani Adonai. As soon as there are two, two faces, two bloodlines, there emerges the one: the sanctity of myself as the sanctity of the other. But that’s not all, for amazingly, the face is, our faces are, both that which binds us together in oneness as human beings and that which creates our diversity. Like G-d, we are both one AND multifaceted—or multi-faced.

From this idea that our sense of ethical responsibility arises in the simple encounter of two human faces, I’d like to move on to consider briefly how we ensure this ethical stance toward others in modern societies, and I'd like to use the example of France today. Why France, you may ask? For those of you who don’t know me, you may not know that I am a professor of French literature at the UO. You are even less likely to know that I learned to speak French—not just speak it, but truly create a new identity in it (as the French say, "me mettant dans la peau d’un autre," putting myself in the skin of an other), because I was looking to escape from a difficult anti-Semitic setting in which I grew up. I was tired of being a stranger in a strange land, so I became a stranger in an even stranger land. By this, I mean that I thought I could escape by taking on a new persona in another language, but as I now frequently say to my students, inhabiting a new persona in another language always leads us more directly into our own interior and makes us more deeply aware of the distinctions we maintain between our own outside and inside identities. This may be why I am so attracted to the story of Hagar and her two faces.

But it is also important to remember that France was the first nation in Europe to accord citizenship to the Jews, not as a community, but as individuals. As you know, France’s Enlightenment created a political context that resulted in the French Revolution, the founding of the concept of popular sovereignty — "power to the people" — and the idea of human rights. This was one of the great flowerings of the wisdom of our Torah in the modern world. So it is no coincidence that Jews also won their human rights at this time. It is also no coincidence that this period witnessed a great flourishing of the Jewish community in art, music, literature, in the development of the educational programs of the Alliance Française (many still functioning today), the establishment of the Eclaireurs Israelites universelles (a kind of Jewish boy and girl scouts—do-gooders), and the conception of the first Zionist congresses. (Though these were not convened in France, these congresses were conceived there by Hertzl, Bernard Lazare, and others.)

Perhaps most important in the context of the story of Hagar, France today has become the site of one of our world’s most pressing tensions: the increasingly heated conflict between what we might call the “cultural Catholicism” of the secular Western world and the Muslim population. Let me remind you here that part of the work of teshuvah is to ask ourselves to develop compassion, to extend "kindness to strangers" beyond our own comfort zones. Recently, this conflict has erupted over the issue of Muslim girls wearing their veils to school. The French are fearful of veils because they were used to hide terrorist bombs during the Algerian war. These girls also faced some discrimination in their schools. This year, 2004, a decision was taken to ban religious signs and symbols of any kind in public schools. There will be no skullcaps, no veils, no crosses worn outwardly in school. This is truly legislation from the top-down and it is being contested rather dramatically as we speak. While the legislation is designed to provide as much protection as possible to French citizens as individuals, it disallows all claims for group rights. Remember, France was able to offer citizenship to the Jews because it had conceived of universal human rights for all, regardless of people's personal affiliations, ethnicities, or religions; it guaranteed human rights and still does because it is a secular state. But secularism can only guarantee the rights of individuals, not groups.

Is it the right decision for the French secular state?

Well, in France, with the largest growing Jewish community in the world today, as well as an equally growing and even larger Muslim population, the country is straining under the weight of groups clamoring for their rights as groups. We certainly live in a time of group thinking and we’re more focused on diversity than on how we are alike. In France, the choice has been to shore up the secular state, but it is not certain how long it will resist. Meanwhile, in the midst of this conflict we see the ugly face of anti-Semitism. Why? The cynical answer may be Machiavellian, that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and that the disparate French groupings can only find unity in their shared hatred. We've certainly seen this in the past. But for Levinas, whenever there is a Jewish question, there is also a metaphysical question.

That is, because anti-Semitism is, in its essence, the hatred of another human other, it shows us that the whole of humanity is in crisis. Now, Jewish thinking sounds new, says Levinas, and its old "Oriental wisdom" has much to teach our children. For as Rabbi Naftali Tsvi Horowitz of Ropshitz once wrote: "When [people] continually keep this idea before [them] that G-d is in the face of every other human being, [they] will not easily be inclined to go astray." (EX 20:17). And ultimately, Judaism's unique way of honoring the particular values of the Jewish community within a celebration of the universality of human rights may be a model for resolving the world’s tensions and for living together in peace on our one single planet.

Let us pray for the peace of this planet so we may continue to benefit from the many diverse faces that inhabit it. Amen.

L'Shanna Tova!