Reflections from Rabbi Ellis

This week is our second Parsha with Avraham and Sarah and effectively our last. Avraham and Sarah are both in next week’s Parsha, but they play minor roles as we transition to the second generation of our nation. Last week we saw Avraham doing everything he could to ensure himself a future. The theme of this week’s Parsha is the various paths that Avraham finds to that future, namely children. Our children are our connection to the future, but their future is anything but certain. This week we see three situations where the children upon whom the future depends nearly have their own future extinguished.

The first situation is at the beginning of our Parsha; G!d sends angels to judge the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. They arrive at the city near nightfall and immediately are taken in by Lot, Avraham’s nephew. After a dinner at Lot’s house the residence is surrounded by angry men who want to abuse these two new arrivals. Lot, trying to placate the mob, offers his daughters in place of the men. Lot and his daughters are saved only by the intervention of the two angels. Lot’s actions put his daughters lives in acute danger and they are saved only through the intervention of angels.

The next time we see a child put in danger is when Sarah banishes Hagar and Ishmael. In last week’s Parsha, after not being able to conceive for ten years, Sarah gives her slave, Hagar, to Avraham. She hopes that Hagar’s child would be like her own. Hagar has a son and names him Ishmael. This week, at the age of ninety, Sarah finally does have a child and names him Yitzchak. Ishmael starts to mistreat his younger brother Yitzchak and Sarah demands that Ishmael and his mother leave the house of Avraham. Avraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away with provision, but they get lost and squander their resources. Hagar, seeing that her son will die from dehydration, places him under a bush and runs away. An angel finds Hagar, shows her a well of water, she takes the water to Ishmael and revives him. Hagar’s fear and anxiety put her son’s life in acute danger, and he is saved only by the intervention of an angel.

The third time that a child’s life is put in danger is at the end of the Parsha. G!d tells Avraham to offer his son up on Mount Moriah. Avraham travels with Yitzchak for three days until they finally reach the mountain and builds an altar there. He places Yitzchak on the altar and as he is about to kill him an angel calls out to Avraham and tells him not to harm his son. Instead a goat that was caught in a nearby bush is offered on the altar. This is the third and last time that we see an angel step in and save the life of a child from the misguided actions of its parents.

The stories, actions and intentions of Lot, Hagar and Avraham are all very different. Regardless, each of them puts their children in acute danger, a situation that G!d was so aggrieved of that he had to send an angel to rectify it. This is the last time we see an angel step in to save a child from the actions of a parent. The message is clear, we have no right as parents to offer our children up on the altar of our own desire or despair. The angels stopped stepping in after they saved Yitzchak, now it is our turn. We must ensure that our ambitions don’t make victims out of our family and make ourselves the angels of our children’s lives.

Shabbat Shalom!

This week’s Dvar Torah was inspired by the months of Torah learning that I shared with Alma Naron.