This week has seen the return of Col. Asaf Hamami, 40, Capt. Omer Neutra, 21, and Staff Sgt. Oz Daniel, 19, to be buried at home with their families.
The return of children to their parents has not happened for everyone. Young people dying is particularly difficult to bear – and we know it, as we have watched countless deaths in Gaza, as well as in Israel. I always remind myself of Rachel Goldberg saying almost two years ago, If you are not crying for the death of babies on both sides then your moral compass is askew. I have officiated at many funerals where parents are burying their children and it is unbearable each time. As so it should be.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayera, describes Abraham seemingly agreeing to the slaughter of his son, Isaac, at his own hands and the probable, indeed assured, death of his older son, Ishmael, when he’s sent into the wilderness with his mother and only one skin of water. Despite the gentle language, the stories are brutal and we must make sense of them every year as we read this passage (and again on Rosh Hashanah).
Neither of the boys dies but surely both are traumatised from the near death experience. Perhaps Torah is teaching one clear lesson: never stop being outraged and shocked by these deaths. Abraham is inexplicably silent in the face of both plans, although he is distressed:
The matter distressed Abraham greatly on account of his son. (21:11)
Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, finds his impending death from thirst so unbearable she has to sit a bow’s shot off once she has given him all the water she has.
“Let me not look on as the child dies.” She sat at a further distance and burst out crying.” (21:16)
It’s fascinating that we never see Abraham again with his children, these two sons. Nothing matters more than our capacity to be moved by violence and untimely deaths – surely it’s’ what makes us human. Torah manages, in its tenacity and understated emotion, to hit hard and to offer the most intense of commentaries on familial life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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