Yitzchak’s Story; Yishmael’s Story

Apologies for the late posting-November was a hectic month for me. This blog post, and the next, are my divrei Torah from Chayei Sarah and Toldot. I took Vayetzei off to spend time with family.

Chayei Sarah, 5784

Once, I gave a dvar torah focusing on the end of this week’s parsha. We learn, in the second to last verse

וְאֵלֶּה שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי יִשְׁמָעֵאל מְאַת שָׁנָה וּשְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְשֶׁבַע שָׁנִים

These are the years of the life of Yishmael: One hundred years and thirty years and seven years. This mirrors the beginning of the parsha:

וַיִּהְיוּ חַיֵּי שָׂרָה מֵאָה שָׁנָה וְעֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה וְשֶׁבַע שָׁנִים שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי שָׂרָה

This was Sarah life: one hundred years and twenty years and seven years, was the years of the life of Sarah. There is a common midrash, quoted in Rashi, that Sarah’s lifespan is broken down this way to indicate her righteousness. Why then does Yishmael, not considered a righteous man by the midrash, get the same treatment? Rashi rejects out of hand that Yishmael was righteous, but Ramban, Nachmanides, embraces it.

ובמדרש רבותינו בסיפור ימי ישמעאל טעמים רבים והנכון שבהם שהיה צדיק בעל תשובה וסיפר בו כדרך הצדיקים

And in the midrash of our Rabbis, on the mater of the days of Yishmael there are many interpretations, and the correct one is that he was a righteous man, a repentant man, and is accounted here in the way of the righteous.

Only Ramban imagines Yishmael could be righteous. This is because for most Jews, Yishmael’s story ends when he is cast out by Avraham, for mocking Yitzchak, or potentially for worshipping idols. Not the strongest recommendation of the boy. But the boy becomes a man, and his story takes him in a different direction, out of the Torah, but still present. He ends up a righteous man. He buries his father with Yitzchak. His days are accounted like those of the righteous.

Yishmael has his own story. It is not our story, the story of the Israelites, of the Jews, and so the Torah does not dwell on it. But briefly, it lists his lineage, and his age, in respect for Yishmael’s story. It is not our story. But it exists.

What I said we can learn from this, when I gave this dvar Torah in a longer form, was that everyone has their own story. And we should learn to think of ourselves not as the main character of the universe, but to pay attention to the stories that others tell of themselves, to learn to listen and acknowledge those stories, even when they go against our own stories. We are not the center of the universe. We are one of many people on this planet.

The stories of Yitzchak, and the stories of Yishmael. Understandably, perhaps, I’ve been thinking about these stories recently. What has been frustrating for me, what has been terrifying for me, and maybe you as well, is how many people we’ve seen in the last several weeks refusing to listen to our stories. During the surge of antisemitism that has followed the October 7th massacre, around the world, when I read news stories of antisemitic attacks and chants, I see a profound failure of these people to listen to Jewish stories. There is no other way I can explain people tearing up the posters of hostages, screaming and fighting with Jews, attacking Jews at demonstrations. When you listen to these people, you hear them talk about Jewish lies. You hear them say that either October 7th didn’t happen, or it was only military targets, or the Israeli military killed all the Jewish civilians, or if it did happen, it was justified. When I see people protesting outside a Holocaust Museum screening footage that the terrorists themselves took of the massacre, I can only see that from a place of hate, these people are refusing to entertain the notion that there exists a story outside of the one they have told themselves. And they are so confidant in their narrative, that everything else is a Jewish trick, a psy-op, propaganda, fake news. They are a people who refuse to listen.

And here comes the hard part. It’s easy, its so easy for me to condemn these antisemites. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. I don’t often say this, but if you disagree with anything I just said about people who think its appropriate to fight Jews outside a Holocaust Museum, maybe we should talk about if this is the right shul for you. Condemning that sort of behavior is the easy part. The hard part, the hardest part, is not closing ourselves off to the stories of others.

Just two nights ago I was at the Landings, and in our conversation about Israel, a topic that came up over and over again was the difficulty of not only acknowledging that our stories are not being heard, but recognizing the stories of others. And it is difficult. And because of that difficulty, I’m calling for us to really be able to listen to the multitude of stories outside of our own, and recognize that there is no one Jewish or Palestinian or Muslim or Israeli or Arab or Middle Eastern monolith. I’m calling for us to recognize stories we will sympathize with, such as the recent decision of two Arab soccer teams in Israel to pause for a moment of silence before their game in memory of the October 7th massacre. Or how Mansour Abbas, the head of the party Ra’am and the first Arab or Palestinian leader to join a governing coalition in Israel, called for the resignation of a member of his own party for minimizing the massacre.

I’m also calling for us to recognize stories that we are less inclined to feel positive about, stories that may run counter to the stories we tell ourselves: stories from Palestinians who lost their homes, stories from Arabs or Palestinians within the Green Line ,the West Bank, or Gaza, about their lives, their families, their pasts, and their hopes for the future. I’m not saying all the stories you will hear will be 100% factually correct, or that we should agree with any or all of it. I am not calling on us to give up our own stories. I am just calling on us to recognize the stories of others.

Yitzchak and Yishmael part early in their lives. What brings them back together is grief. וַיִּקְבְּרוּ אֹתוֹ יִצְחָק וְיִשְׁמָעֵאל בָּנָיו And they buried him, [Avraham,] Yitzchak and Yishmael, his sons. His sons. Together. Their grief over losing their father had the effect that they ended up reuniting, listening to one another. We have had so much grief over this last month. I would hope, though I continue to be disappointed, that the world will listen to our grief. But in the face of all the pain and sadness, and terror and evil, we can demonstrate to the world what we do in these dark times. We can choose not to close ourselves off. We can choose to listen. I continue to hope that, one day, Yitzchak and Yishmael will both, mutually, acknowledge the other’s story.