Families are hard work.
We might imagine that as a holy book, the Torah’s families would look like a stained-glass window: serene, harmonious, everyone in their proper place. Instead, what we get is something far closer to real life: jealousy, fear, distance, mistakes that cannot be undone, and, under all of that, a stubborn love that refuses to disappear.
Last week’s parashah, Vayera, and this week’s, Chayei Sarah, sit right in the middle of that tension.
First, we see the pain of rivalry. Sarah looks at Hagar and Ishmael and is afraid. Afraid of sharing Itzchak’s inheritance. Afraid of her own son being pushed aside. She demands that Avraham send them away, and Avraham, torn and distressed, does it. The text is honest about how much this hurts him. God has to reassure Avraham that Ishmael will also become a nation before he can bring himself to act.
Then, as if that were not enough, God demands something even more unthinkable: “Take your son, your only one, the one you love, Itzchak…”. A midrash refuses to let us pretend Avraham loved only one child, imagining a heartbreaking dialogue with God.
When God says, “Take your son,” Avraham replies, “I have two sons.” When God clarifies, “Your only one,” Avraham objects, “Each is the only one of their mother.” When God presses, “The one you love,” Avraham insists, “I love them both,” forcing God to finally say the name: “Itzchak.” [1]
It is a heartbreaking scene. Avraham is being asked to choose, yet he insists, as many parents would, that his heart does not divide so neatly.
After so much brokenness, we come to this week’s parashah, Chayei Sarah, and we begin to see how, under all the scars, the love has not vanished.
The text tells us that just before Itzchak meets Rivkah, he is “coming from Be’er-lachai-ro’i”, the very well where Hagar encountered God. Why was he there? A stunning midrash suggests that Itzchak himself went to bring Hagar back to Avraham, so that his father would not be alone and she could become his wife again as Keturah. [2] The son who almost died on the mountain walks back into the story of the woman and child who were almost left to die in the desert, trying to mend that fracture.
Another midrash does the same work of repair in the other direction, telling that Avraham cannot simply erase Ishmael from his heart. After sending him away, Avraham travels into the wilderness to visit his eldest son, more than once, despite Sarah’s objections. He asks questions about Ishmael’s home, his marriage, and the way he is living. The relationship is damaged, limited, supervised, but it is not gone. Ishmael learns, in a very concrete way, that his father still cares enough to turn up at his tent. [3]
This undercurrent of love finally surfaces in the plain text. Avraham’s story closes with a grave, and the Torah reports, “His sons, Isaac and Ishmael, buried him”. For one moment, they stand side by side. The Torah leaves the rest of their conversation to our imagination.
One day, people will stand over our graves as well, and they will carry memories of us that we no longer have access to. Some will remember our mistakes. Some will remember the ways we tried, clumsily or courageously, to love.
We cannot rewrite the past chapters of our family story, but we can still shape the ones that are being written now. This Shabbat, perhaps the invitation of Chayei Sarah is to ask: when those who know me best remember me, what do I hope will rise to the surface? And what is one act of love, in the middle of all the complications, that I can choose this week that moves my story a little closer to the kind of blessing I hope to leave behind?
Shabbat Shalom!
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