Vayera

All Class of 2026 Senior Sermons

We can get bogged down in “if only” and “I told you so,” tripping ourselves in regret and blame. Too much looking back, we can’t move forward. Too little, we fail to learn from history and experience. Blame is rarely productive or compassionate. It can be an understandable defensive strategy to help us make sense of difficult or painful reality. If someone else is at fault, it puts distance between those terrible events and our own responsibility, as well as the possibility that we could suffer a similar fate. Sometimes there is clear culpability, and it is important to be honest. Often the real story is unknown. 

Classical midrash and commentaries look for culpability to understand the puzzling verse describing the fate of Lot’s unnamed wife.

וַתַּבֵּט אִשְׁתּוֹ מֵאַחֲרָיו וַתְּהִי נְצִיב מֶלַח׃

Lot’s wife looked back, and she thereupon turned into a pillar of salt. (Gen 19:26)

If the warning not to look back (19:17) was intended to spare Lot and his fleeing household the consequences of witnessing the destruction wrought on Sodom and��Gomorra��(see��Ramban��on 19:17)��or betray any regret about leaving their material belongings or their neighbors, Lot’s wife’s backward look was some kind of violation.��Bereishit��Rabba��51 imagines that this unusual punishment was poetic retribution for an imagined sin in Sodom, where she tried to avoid welcoming the angels into their home by asking the neighbors for salt to borrow, thereby informing them of the angels’ arrival.��

Many contemporary writers are puzzled by this theatrical punishment for such a natural impulse. How do we not look back? There is a fascinating body of poetry primarily by women poets whose imaginations were captured by the enigma of Lot’s wife. 

The American Israeli poet  who was certainly aware of the rabbinic commentaries, offered a counter narrative in her poem, His Wife:

But it was right that she��
looked back. Not to be
curious, some lumpy��
reaching of the mind��
that turns all shapes to pillars.��
But to be only who she was��
apart from them, the place��
exploding, and herself��
defined. Seeing them melt��
to slag heaps and the flames��
slide into their mouths.��
Testing her owl lips then,��
the coolness, till��
she could taste the salt.��

In ) Ruti Timor approaches the story with similar  empathy, basing her reading on a midrash from Pirkei Derabbi Eliezer 25 which imagines Lot’s wife (to whom midrash assigns a name, Idit or Irit) overcome with compassion for her married daughters who she fears are remaining in Sodom:

 He said to her: Quiet, woman! Do as I say! She was silent. And the angels took them out of the city, and Lot did not say to his wife a word of what they said. He walked sure-footed, and she lagged behind him. Her heart was heavy upon her, she looked back and saw her city, her family, and her property going up in flames. And his wife looked behind, and became a pillar of salt (Gen 19:26). Tear after tear dripped from her eyes, and the tears grew fuller and fuller, stronger and stronger, until they became a pillar of salt. She stumbled and fell, and stirred no more. And Lot did not look back. Our Sages of Blessed Memory said, with salt she sinned and with salt was she punished. And I say, she sinned not, but was punished all the same.

It takes tremendous spiritual work to greet others with compassion or empathy rather than blame. It is harder to see the world in its moral complexity, and to act accordingly.  

Dr. Gila Vachman, from Machon Schechter, brought to mind another midrash from Bereishit Rabba  on a passage later in the parsha when Hagar fears that Ishmael is dying of thirst in the desert. 

:אמר רבי יהודה ברבי סימון
,קפצו מלאכי השרת לקטרג
?!אמרו לפניו: רבונו של עולם, אדם שהוא עתיד להמית את בניך בצמא, את מעלה לו הבאר
?אמר להם: עכשיו מה הוא, צדיק או רשע
.אמרו לו: צדיק
.אמר להם: איני דן את האדם אלא בשעתו
(בראשית רבה נג, יד)

Rabbi Shimon said, ‘The ministering angels leapt to condemn [Ishmael]. They said, Creator of the universe, a person who is destined to kill your children by thirst, will You produce a spring for him?’ The Holy One said to them: ‘What is he right now, righteous or wicked?’ They said to him: ‘He is righteous.’ God said to them: ‘I judge a person only at his present time. “ (Genesis Rabba 53:25).

Here, the midrash reframes judgment as compassion, echoing the lesson implicit in Lot’s wife’s story: to see others as they are now, not as we imagine their past or future to be. May we rise beyond our instincts to blame and condemn, to try to greet one another, even those we do not understand, with compassion. May we learn from the past and from the complexity of the human experience, to move forward with empathy towards justice. 

The publication and distribution of the��91�첥 Torah Commentary��are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (��”l) Hassenfeld.

Vayera

All Class of 2025 Senior Sermons

Vayera

All Class of 2025 Senior Sermons

Let us run a thought experiment by asking our question to three scribes from divergent times and places in Jewish history. Scribe #1 lives in Jerusalem during the Biblical period. According to Scribe #1, the alef of חטא is indispensable, meaning Genesis 20:6 originally had an alef. A sloppy scribe must have omitted the letter by accident, and that error would be copied over and over for millennia. Interestingly, the Samaritan version of the Torah has מחטאה “from sin” with an alef. Perhaps this is because the Samaritan Torah branched off from the Jewish Torah at an early point in time before the alef of מֵחֲטוֹ was lost.

Scribe #2 lives at Qumran in the Judaean Desert during the 1st century BCE, which is after the close of the Biblical period. The scribes at Qumran, who wrote many of the Dead Sea Scrolls, viewed the alef of חטא as preferable but not necessary. For example, the Great Isaiah Scroll (1:4) has חוטה with the letter heh instead of חֹטֵא with the letter alef. In other Dead Sea Scrolls one finds חט “sin” instead of חטא, חטתו “his sin offering” instead of חטאתו, and חוטי “sinners of” instead of חוטאי (11Q19 57:10; 1QS 3:8; 1QpHab 10:2). According to Scribe #2, there are two ways to write the Hebrew root חטא, one with an alef and one without. The missing alef of מֵחֲטוֹ is unusual but it is not technically an error.

Scribe #3 lives in Toledo, Spain, in the 1200s CE. He has written many Tanakhs, one of which can be found at . By this time, the Masoretes have transformed the Jewish Tanakh, adding approximately two million lines, dots, and marks for vowels and cantillation. Masoretic Tanakhs also contain notes about the frequency and spelling of unusual words. The scribe of the famous Leningrad Codex, for example, wrote the following note about the word מֵחֲטוֹ in Genesis 20:6:

גׄ חד כתׄ טא וחד כתׄ טו וחד כתׄ טוא
[The word appears] 3 times, one written with טא, one written with טו, and one written with טוא (1 Sam 12:23; Gen 20:6; Ps 39:2).

For Scribe #3, the so-called “missing alef” of מֵחֲטוֹ is the exact opposite of a spelling mistake. It is how the Tanakh is meant to be written. If a Torah scroll were to contain the word מֵחֲטוֹא with an alef in Genesis 20:6, it would have to be set aside from use until it was corrected by a qualified scribe.

So, is it possible to spell-check the Tanakh? Scribe #1 says yes, and מֵחֲטוֹא with an alef is the correct form. Scribe #3 also says yes, but מֵחֲטוֹ without an alef is the correct form. Scribe #2 says no, allowing for both forms to coexist. Thus, it appears that one’s approach to difficult words such as מֵחֲטוֹ depends upon one’s viewpoint. The crux of the issue is whether one is searching for the “original” text as Scribe #1, the Masoretic text as Scribe #3, or something in between as Scribe #2. This is significant to contemporary readers because there might not be a single “correct” answer for a difficult word such as מֵחֲטוֹ. The Tanakh has been passed down from scribe to scribe for millennia, which makes all of these issues much trickier. Instead, we should appreciate that different methods will most likely lead to different results.

Want to learn more about Biblical Hebrew with David Moster? Enrollment is open for our Spring semester Biblical Hebrew classes. ��Learn More>>

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

Parshat Vayera
Download Source Sheet

All the Class of 2024 Senior Sermons

In Parashat Vayera we encounter Sarah and Hagar, two mothers who are more accustomed to scarcity than abundance and become trapped in their own fears for their beloved sons. After years of longing, Sarah receives the blessing of a son, of Isaac. She experiences a moment of pure joy.  

וַתֹּאמֶר שָׂרָה צְחֹק עָשָׂה לִי אֱלֹהִים כׇּל־הַשֹּׁמֵעַ יִצְחַק־לִי׃ 

Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”

(Gen. 21:6)

But when we are accustomed to feeling empty, lonely, less than, it can be hard to stay in that place of joy. And so when Sarah becomes concerned about the behavior of Ishmael, the son of Hagar, towards her own son, Isaac, she reacts with seemingly unrelenting fury.  

וַתֹּאמֶר לְאַבְרָהָם גָּרֵשׁ הָאָמָה הַזֹּאת וְאֶת־בְּנָהּ כִּי לֹא יִירַשׁ בֶּן־הָאָמָה הַזֹּאת עִם־בְּנִי עִם־יִצְחָק׃ 

She said to Abraham, “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” 

(Gen. 21:10)

Her words are dehumanizing. Painful. I would rather imagine that Sarah and Hagar had built a relationship through their years of being in the same family, parenting side by side. But so often our fear of inadequacy turns us inward. If we doubt whether we are worthy of love, we may close ourselves off from others. Our fear that we and those we love will not have enough can make us regard others as competitors for the same scarce resources. We forget that generosity and connection are available to us. Instead of turning towards connection and generosity, which can lead to abundance, we turn away from them.   

Abraham, while distressed about doing so, sends Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness with only some bread and a skin of water. Rejected by Sarah, betrayed by Abraham, when the water is gone Hagar quickly descends into despair.  

וַיִּכְלוּ הַמַּיִם מִן־הַחֵמֶת וַתַּשְׁלֵךְ אֶת־הַיֶּלֶד תַּחַת אַחַד הַשִּׂיחִם׃ וַתֵּלֶךְ וַתֵּשֶׁב לָהּ מִנֶּגֶד הַרְחֵק כִּמְטַחֲוֵי קֶשֶׁת כִּי אָמְרָה אַל־אֶרְאֶה בְּמוֹת הַיָּלֶד וַתֵּשֶׁב מִנֶּגֶד וַתִּשָּׂא אֶת־קֹלָהּ וַתֵּבְךְּ׃ 

When the water was gone from the skin, she left the child under one of the bushes, and went and sat down at a distance, a bowshot away; for she thought, “Let me not look on as the child dies.” And sitting thus afar, she wept.

(Gen. 21:16) 

Hagar cannot bear to see her son suffer, and so she moves away from him. The rabbis do not want to believe that Hagar is abandoning her child in this moment. Radak, Rabbi David Kimchi, explains the unusual measure of a bowshot to explain that while Hagar went some distance away, she remained close enough that she could still see Ishmael. She is so consumed by her fear and grief that she moves away from him. Yet, she is motivated by love and so she stays close enough to still see him. We don’t know if Ishmael can see his mother. We don’t know if he knows she is still there. In her own grief and isolation, Hagar moves away from her one connection, and inadvertently deprives him of her presence. So now they are both alone, thirsty, and afraid.  

Hagar weeps. Ishmael must have wept too, and perhaps while she could still see him, she was too far to hear his cries, because the text continues:  

וַיִּשְׁמַע אֱלֹקים אֶת־קוֹל הַנַּעַר וַיִּקְרָא מַלְאַךְ אֱלֹקים  אֶל־הָגָר מִן־הַשָּׁמַיִם וַיֹּאמֶר לָהּ מַה־לָּךְ הָגָר אַל־תִּירְאִי כִּי־שָׁמַע אֱלֹהִים אֶל־קוֹל הַנַּעַר בַּאֲשֶׁר הוּא־שָׁם׃ 

God heard the cry of the boy, and a messenger of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is.”

(Gen. 21:17) 

Midrash Rabbah teaches that from this we learn:  

יָפָה תְּפִלַּת הַחוֹלֶה לְעַצְמוֹ יוֹתֵר מִכֹּל 

The prayer of a suffering person on their own behalf is more beautiful, more desired, than the prayers of others. 

Rashi explains that if a person is in a position to pray on her own behalf those prayers will reach the One of Blessing first. Yet the midrash is saying even more than this. According to this reading, God responds to Ishmael’s cry for help first, and only then to Hagar’s tears of despair. God wants us to hope. We must reach towards the Divine to express our desire to survive and our hope that a different future is possible.  Seeking that connection can open us to receive blessing. 

Hagar must confront her despair and break through her isolation to reconnect with her child in order to reclaim her will to survive. Abraham Joshua Heschel understood deeply the delicate line between fear and despair. In a 1963 speech titled “Religion and Race,” he acknowledged that despair is seductive, because the evils of the world are tremendous. In the face of the greatest acts of human depravity, of brutal racism and injustice we may feel “that the most practical thing we can do is ‘to weep’ and to despair.” But, he argues, succumbing to despair is an abdication of our most fundamental human responsibilities, and a betrayal of God.   “The greatest heresy is despair, despair of humanity’s power for goodness, humanity’s power for love.” 

קוּמִי שְׂאִי אֶת־הַנַּעַר וְהַחֲזִיקִי אֶת־יָדֵךְ בּוֹ כִּי־לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל אֲשִׂימֶנּוּ׃ וַיִּפְקַח אֱלֹקים אֶת־עֵינֶיהָ וַתֵּרֶא בְּאֵר מָיִם וַתֵּלֶךְ וַתְּמַלֵּא אֶת־הַחֵמֶת מַיִם וַתַּשְׁקְ אֶת־הַנָּעַר׃ 

Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him. Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and let the boy drink.

(Gen. 21: 18-19) 

First Hagar must rise out of her isolation and despair and go back to Ishmael to hold him. Then God opens her eyes, and she is able to see the well of water. Perhaps it had been there the whole time, but she was so focused on looking away from Ishmael that she couldn’t see it. When she remembers the power of love and connection, the possibility of good, her eyes are unclouded and she can find the water.  

May each of us seek out connection to defeat the isolation and despair that clouds our vision, so that we may remember our potential to choose hope, and with that, our potential to help build a different future.  

Based on a d’var Torah delivered at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City on Rosh Hashanah 5784/2023.��

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). &�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

Download Sources

With Dr. Aaron Koller 

In the Torah readings for Rosh Hashanah, we read about the dissolution of Abraham’s family. First Ishmael is banished and nearly dies in the desert; Hagar leaves the household where she has lived for decades; and finally God commands Abraham to sacrifice his remaining son, Isaac. How do these stories come together, and how do they contribute to the ‘biography’ of the first patriarch? We see how these linked narratives develop some of the themes of Genesis—and why they are appropriate for the New Year. 

ABOUT THE SERIES

The Torah of the New Year

Join 91�첥 faculty for a close reading of several of the biblical texts that we read during the fall holiday season. Discover new insights into these readings and reflect on what meanings they hold for us today.