[I was asked to deliver the “drash” (sermon) at my synagogue on October 28, 2023, three weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel that started the Israeli-Palestinian war that still rages. This essay is an adaptation of that drash.]
In Genesis 16, Abraham’s wife Sarah is bereft because she is still childless well past childbearing age. She asks Abraham to lie with her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar, so that according to the custom of the time any resulting child would be the heir to Abraham and Sarah. Later an angel of the Lord tells Hagar that she is pregnant with Abraham’s child, and that she should name him Ishmael (“God hears”). Just as God tells Abraham both earlier and later in this same Torah portion, the angel tells Hagar that her offspring “shall be too many to count.” Verse 13 says:
Vatikra shem Adonai hadover eleha ata El Ro-i, ki amra hagam halom raiti acharei ro-i.
And she (Hagar) called the Lord (YHVH) who spoke to her, “You Are El Ro-i,” by which she meant, “Have I not gone on seeing after He saw me!”
Torah commentary for verse 13 notes that when Hagar called the Lord, she used the unpronounceable name YHVH, from the Hebrew root meaning “to be,” that is “inextricably bound up with existence.” Hagar is identified as the only individual in the Bible, male or female, who gives God a name. El Ro-i literally means “God of seeing,” (the all-seeing God), “God of my seeing” (whom I have seen), and “God who sees me.” The commentary also states that “the several meanings are to be apprehended simultaneously.”
I never noticed this verse before, and I certainly never noticed this commentary. The first thing that surprised me was the note that not one of all our illustrious ancestors in the Torah ever had the honor, or the chutzpah, of giving God a name – only Hagar, who is not our ancestor. Then I really tried to absorb the multifaceted name she gave God: El Ro-i. God of all-seeing, God whom I see, and God who sees me.
One of the most basic human urges is the desire to be seen. I spent twenty years as a middle school librarian, and every year I tried as hard as I could to learn as many of my 1100 students’ names as I could, because I learned early on how much they yearned to be seen. Many times I would surprise a student I didn’t even really know by greeting him by name, and when he heard that I knew his name, his reaction would be, “Uh oh, what did I do?” “Nothing,” I would say, “I just wanted to say ‘Hi!’” Without fail, the very next day that very student would seek me out and very pointedly say, “Good morning, Ms. KAHN…” and then cock his head, testing me to see if I remembered his name. Feeling seen can be such a blessing, but feeling invisible is very painful. Sometimes it makes you wonder if you even exist.
One can only imagine and empathize with how invisible Hagar must have felt, given the role she was compelled to play in the life of our people.
So many problems and arguments and conflicts and wars in this world have at their root the reality that people do not really see each other, do not value each other, do not feel compassion for each other, do not recognize each other’s humanity. Our Torah teaches us that every person is made b’tselem Elohim, in the likeness of God, and Hagar’s name for God, El Ro-i, shows us that God also wants to be seen. We want to be seen by God, and God wants to be seen by us.
Why does God send us this message, through Hagar of all people, now, when we are caught in a nightmare we know we cannot wake up from?
One thing I love about being a convert is that every time I say my Hebrew name, or hear it said, Miryam bat Avraham v’Sarah, I am reminded of how it is exactly that I belong to this family. Like every Jewish person, I am the child of Abraham and Sarah, we are all b’nai Avraham v’Sarah.
But Hagar’s son is Ishmael ben Avraham v’Hagar. So, Hagar is our stepmother, who along with Abraham our forefather is the parent of a whole other branch of our family, the Muslim branch of our human family, whom I believe this verse in this parsha is asking us to see. It is a hard ask, when many in our Jewish family are heartbroken by the feeling that the world is not trying hard enough to understand us, to have compassion for us, or to see us.
Ishmael appears at the end of this Torah portion in Genesis 17:18, when Abraham says to God, “O that Ishmael might live by your favor!” And at the end of the portion Ishmael is thirteen years old, when he and his father Abraham and every male in the household are the first ones to embody the brit milah, the covenant of circumcision. It has been said that ritual is making the invisible, visible, and ritual circumcision is certainly an example of that. But elsewhere in our holy text we are called to circumcise our hearts, to soften them, to open them. In this context I would offer another connection to Hagar’s name for God, El Ro-i.
One of the hardest parts of the human experience is that it inevitably brings pain. There is so much pain in the world right now, it feels unbearable. It is understandable to throw up armor around our hearts to protect ourselves from pain; we all do it, all the time, and it often feels like a matter of survival. Franz Kafka said, “You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided.” One way we can decide to not hold back is to connect with other people, to try to understand other people, to create peace with other people, to allow ourselves to see their pain, and to allow them to see ours. We lose nothing by finding in our hearts enough compassion for everyone, to allow ourselves to see everyone, and to realize that God also is seeing everyone who is suffering in every conflict. And God’s heart is breaking too, for all God’s children.
So, our very broken hearts are b’tselem Elohim, in the likeness of God.