Hayei Sarah Dvar Torah for Shabbat Across Ramah
This drash was delivered by IfNotNow member and Ramah alumna Eliana Fishman at the Shabbat Across Ramah in New York City on Friday night, November 10th. As Ramah alumni who are part of IfNotNow’s #YouNeverToldMe campaign, we believe that teaching torah is one way to help Ramah leadership see the urgency of the situation, both this past Shabbat, and everyday in Israel-Palestine. By sharing this dvar torah in the Ramah community, we were able to model the education about the Israeli occupation that we want to see from each and every camp.
To learn more about the situation in Hebron on Shabbat Hayei Sarah, visit hayeisarah.org. To learn more about the #YouNeverToldMe campaign, visit younevertoldme.org.
Parashat Hayei Sarah opens with the death of Sarah. In order to bury Sarah, the text says “ויבא אברהם” Abraham has to come from somewhere else, in order to bury Sarah. Not at all surprisingly, various commentators want to know where is Abraham coming from?
Vayikra Rabbah responds with a very famous Midrash. According to this midrash, Sarah died as a direct result of the Akedah, and Abraham went directly from the binding of Isaac to bury Sarah. What happened? Sarah found out about the Akedah from Isaac. Isaac gets home first, and Sarah asks “an hayyiti brei” — where were you my son? Isaac responds נְטָלַנִּי אָבִי וְהֶעֱלַנִי הָרִים וְהוֹרִידַנִּי גְבָעוֹת
Well Dad took me, up the mountains, and down into valleys, and then he built a altar, and he arranged the trees, and he took out the knife to kill me…and if the angel hadn’t called out from heaven, I’d already be dead.
Upon hearing this story Sarah lets out six cries, to parallel the cries of the shofar, and drops dead in horror.
What is Abraham doing while this is going on? According to this midrash, Abraham is worrying about his sacrifice that he just brought. Oh, maybe the sacrifice that I brought had a blemish. As his wife is dying, Abraham is stressing about whether or not the sacrifice that he brought instead of slaughtering his only son, is in any way imperfect. The midrash continues, in what I can only read with a voice full of sarcasm, a heavenly voice descends and quotes a verse from Ecclesiastes which says “Go, eat your bread with joy”. Instead of dealing with the family trauma that you have just caused, go eat your bread with joy. Instead of thinking about how your wife, who is far less powerful than Abraham, might react to this trauma, לֵךְ אֱכֹל בְּשִׂמְחָה לַחְמֶךָ, go eat your bread with joy.
I read this midrash as a heavy-handed critique of people who obsess about the letter of their observance, while completely ignoring the human beings whose lives they are impacting. For me this evokes Drumpf telling Myeishia Johnson that her husband who had just died fighting for this country “knew what he signed up for”. It’s a response of someone with no awareness, no sensitivity, no thought that your actions impact others’ lives.
The next part of my dvar torah is going to be a bit hard to hear, but please, bear with me. After Sarah’s death, the Torah describes the sale of Mearat Hamachpelah, what Jews call the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. I was in Hebron, this past spring, so let me describe what it looks like on a “normal day”. Hebron is a Palestinian city of 200,000 Palestinians, 800 Israeli settlers, and over 1000 Israeli soldiers guarding those 800 settlers — more than one soldier per settler. The Israeli settlers live in compounds above the old city of Hebron, including above the Casbah, the marketplace. To this day, people from the Israeli settlements, continue to throw trash, along with bags of raw sewage and acid into the main market strip onto Palestinian city of Hebron, which is directly underneath this Israeli settlement. Why bags of raw sewage and acid? Mesh wire covers the Palestinian market places, so that the Palestinians underneath avoid getting hit with the furniture that the Israeli settlers throw. How did settlers respond to the wire? By throwing plastic bags filled with urine, raw sewage and acid. The plastic bags rip on the mesh wire, dropping dangerous, disgusting debris on Palestinian civilians.
In Hebron, there are streets where settlers and internationals can traverse by car, but Palestinians can only traverse by foot, or are banned from entirely. Shuhada Street, which used to be a bustling Palestinian market, is now a ghost town. Every few feet in H2, there are checkpoints. During my Breaking the Silence tour of Hebron, my tour group was barred from walking through a checkpoint, while a right-wing tour group sailed through.
So that’s what Hebron looks like 51 weeks a year, but this weekend is particularly atrocious. In honor of Parashat Hayei Sarah, the Hebron Fund brings in thousands and thousands of right wing Jews, both from Israel, and from the diaspora, to “celebrate” Parashat Hayei Sarah. Violence against Palestinians increases, “straw widow operations”, where the Israeli military seizes Palestinian homes and evicts of residents increases. The entire city is kept to a curfew for two or three days, and are not permitted to leave their streets, or even their homes.. This in a city of 200,000 people — the largest city in Palestine.
לֵךְ אֱכֹל בְּשִׂמְחָה לַחְמֶךָ Go, eat your bread with joy. That is the attitude of the thousands of Jews who descend on Hebron this weekend every year. They prioritize their reading of this parasha over the actual human beings whose lives they are ruining.
Since I’m talking to a group of largely Ramah alumni, I’m curious. By a show of hands alone, did any of learn about what modern-day Hebron looks like, or feels like at Ramah? [Note: no one in the room raised their hand] Many of you may know that there is an ongoing campaign by Ramah alumni and members of the Jewish community asking our institutions — Ramah included — to address the Israeli occupation in their programming.
In Sefer Tehillim, the book of Psalms, the text says עֵ֭ת לַעֲשׂ֣וֹת לַיהוָ֑ה הֵ֝פֵ֗רוּ תּוֹרָתֶֽךָ — When others have corrupted your Torah, it is the time to act for God. At this moment there are thousands of Jews gathering in Hebron corrupting our Torah, and actively oppressing other human beings. עֵ֭ת לַעֲשׂ֣וֹת לַיהוָ֑ה — we want Ramah to lead the way in providing an honest Israel education that reflects the reality of Palestinian life under occupation. We want a camping movement that believes that all human beings, including Palestinians and Israelis, deserve freedom and dignity. I urge all of you to ask Ramah for an open forum, where all of us — not just donors or board members — can have a voice in deciding what Ramah teaches the next generation about the Occupation.
