I love today’s Torah portion, for it recounts truly momentous
events from the experience and wisdom of our people:
•God’s remembering, and then acting
upon, the divine promises of a son made to Sarah;
•the large celebration on the day
Isaac was weaned;
•Sarah’s summary banishing of Hagar
and Ishmael to a possible death in the wilderness;
•and their eventual restoration to
the human community.
What
baffles me about this chapter, however, is the autocratic superiority that
Sarah displays toward her hired help.
What could possibly have given her the privilege not only to get rid of
Hagar her handmaiden, but also to banish this Egyptian servant to a life of
homelessness and possible death?
To
discover the answer to this question, we’d have to review some background of the story. Like one of those television voice-over
announcers reviewing with the audience the incidents that took place before the
start of the current episode – and with no apologies to my previous profession
– “Previously…in the book of Genesis…”
We
first must look at the incident that took place in the Torah just before the
start of today’s
reading. Abraham and Sarah have just
helped cure the infertility of King Avimelech, his wife, and his maidservants,
foreshadowing the miraculous pregnancy of Sarah and the birth of Isaac.
Why
did this occur? Well, Abraham and Sarah had journeyed to the region of Gerar,
and lied to King Avimelech when informing him that Sarah was Abraham’s sister and not his wife. As penance for being caught in this lie,
Abraham beseeches God for reproductive healing for this king and his retinue.
For
Sarah to become the matriarch of our people, we realize that she has to emerge
unscathed from this and other thorny situations, and we think that maybe there
is something unique in her background that sets the stage for such
privilege. So, we return to chapter 11
to search for Sarah’s
lineage…but we find the Torah mute on this subject.
So
now we require a “deus ex machina”,
or an outside consultant. We jump ahead
in time and place to medieval France, into the study of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki,
known as Rashi, the most prolific of Torah commentators, to discover his
insights.
He
would turn to the camera – sorry, to us – and first note that, according to the
Talmud, Sarah was the daughter of Haran, Abraham’s brother. So, at first blush, we would have to call her
Abraham’s
niece, a relationship that could not, in ancient Israel, result in marriage.
But
in a seemingly xenophobic way, Rashi would indicate that since Haran – Sarah’s father – was a gentile (there
were no Jews yet, after all), technically speaking Sarah has no father for
purposes of Jewish genealogy. So Sarah
could be married to Abraham even though she was, by blood, his niece.[1]
Whew!
From
this exhausting excursion through text and time, we might come to understand
something about Sarah’s
sense of “Israelite privilege”. Sarah
was part of Abraham’s
prestigious family long before Israelite religion was in vogue; along with
Abraham she was an original monotheist!
So
she was of high status in Israelite society from a philosophical point of
view. And by virtue of her marriage to
Abraham she possessed plenty of wealth and property. In that society, she could do whatever she
wanted.
So
getting rid of a servant who did not fit into the household? Done before completing the thought! No problem!
* *
* *
As
we might imagine, there were significant responsibilities to being an
Israelite: a life of fealty to a mysterious and unseen god; the need to follow
all of this God’s
commandments; a fate of becoming a race of slaves to many of our host nations;
and a life of wandering and existence subject to the whims of others.
But
the privileges of being an Israelite were also substantial. Our ancestors had:
•A destiny guided by a respected
and superior god;
•We had entree “on
demand” to that god;
•We had wealth and property that
could be bequeathed to future generations;
•And we had the feeling of
belonging to a growing and dominant nation.
In
consideration of these privileges, and in thinking about today’s Torah portion, again it would be completely consistent with Sarah’s status to dismiss a
disrespectful and racially inferior servant – and her son – because of some
perceived slight, even though the son was an offspring of Abraham.
Maybe
she read “The Game of Thrones”; it’s
best to marginalize the bastard son and never let him forget the stigma of his
birth.
* *
* *
In
Sarah’s
era, this kind of hierarchy was commonplace.
Such behavior adheres to the customs, and probably the demands, of these
early years of civilization’s
dawning.
However,
we’d think that
attitudes would change in the subsequent almost-4,000 years when it comes to
the way we treat one another today. We’d hope that we’d have arrived to a place where
the color of one’s
skin, or the selection of one's clothes and music, would simply represent
differences in DNA and personal taste, and not be flashpoints for possible
incarceration or some kind of violent culture clash.
Making
such presumptions is a phenomenon referred to as “white privilege”, and it is
much in evidence today. White privilege
was described most interestingly, I think, by Dr. Peggy McIntosh, senior
research scientist and former associate director of the Wellesley Centers for
Women, who oversees the Gender, Race, and Inclusive Education Project.
Of
white privilege she once wrote, “I think whites are carefully taught not to
recognize white privilege…So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is
like to have white privilege. I have
come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I
can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible
weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas,
clothes, tools, and blank checks.”[2]
Another
author brings this point home more pointedly.
Jennifer Holladay, a former director of Teaching Tolerance, a
publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center, relates this incident which
expanded her thinking on this subject.
“Two
years ago”, she writes, “I was driving down Rosa Parks Boulevard, a street that
runs through an all-black and impoverished area of town, at night. I was looking for a house that I had never
been to before, so I was driving slowly, stopping and moving as I searched for
numbers on residences.
“Out
of nowhere, this large police van pulled me over, blue lights flashing and
sirens blaring, and a handful of well-armed police officers jumped out of the
van and surrounded my car.
“I
did as I was told, and got out of my car.
‘Hands above your head; move slowly!’ I
then succumbed to a quick physical pat-down, as well as a search of my
car. The officers had pulled me over –
not only because of my erratic driving – but also, because, in the words of one
officer, I was ‘a white woman driving down Rosa Parks after dark’.
They thought I was looking to buy drugs.
“When
I went to the office the next day, I relayed my story to several white
colleagues. They shared my sense of violation, of anger, of rage. These co-workers encouraged me to call our
legal department and report the incident.
I later told the story to a colleague who is black and who lives on Rosa
Parks. ‘You just never have to worry
about those things, do you, Jennifer?’ she said, and then walked off.”
In
that response – in those twelve words – her black colleague starkly revealed
this author’s
sense of privilege.[3]
Most
of us might never realize it, but it is white privilege to go shopping in any
retail establishment and not have to worry about being followed and observed.
And
it is white privilege to not have to be concerned about educating one’s children about the gang bangers
that are waiting out there to pounce on unsuspecting young black children and
teens.
And
it is white privilege to swear aloud, or dress in second hand clothes, or not
comport as society expects, without having people attribute these behaviors to
the bad morals, or the poverty, or the so-called “illiteracy” of one’s ethnic or racial group.
* * * *
Perhaps
the good news is that we have not consciously created this state. It has come about through the complex history
of our nation’s
relationship with slavery and the passive effects of living in a
majority/minority culture.
But
the problem with white privilege is that it insidiously maintains and
strengthens the racism that is prevalent in our nation.
You
might wonder why we’re
talking about racism and classism when those issues are, well, so 1980’s.
Well, the signs which tell us these matters are still of great concern
are obvious:
•the problems of violence arising
between police and African Americans;
•or that some fail to recognize the
negative effects of food deserts on minority populations, as well as other
disabilities of living in unofficially segregated communities.
These
attitudinal realities demonstrate that we have far to go to alleviate the
problems of race in our society.
* *
* *
Writing
in the early years of the Great Depression, entrepreneur-turned-historian James
Truslow Adams coined – in 1931 – the term “American dream”. It is, he writes, “that dream of a land in
which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with
opportunity for each according to ability or achievement…It is not a dream of
motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man
and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are
innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of
the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”[5]
This
is a beautiful dream, and it’s
especially poignant to me that, as originally stated, it looks beyond the
material success of those who survived the economic vagaries of the 1930’s.
Sadly,
we Americans today usually associate the term “American dream” with only
personal economic success; we seem to have neglected the optimistic social
imperatives of the original version of this dream.
* *
* *
In
his recent book “Between the World and Me”, black journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates
provides us a slightly different view of the American dream, and his
understanding of those who choose to slumber with this idealized vision in
their minds.
He
writes, “I have seen that dream all my life.
It is perfect houses with nice lawns.
It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub
Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint
but tastes like strawberry shortcake.
And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my
country over my head like a blanket. But
this has never been an option because the dream rests on our backs, the bedding
made from our bodies.”[6]
Throughout
his book, Coates offers a candid rendering of black perceptions of the
injustices emanating from “American dream” America. There are vignettes of:
•his
frightening childhood in Baltimore’s ghetto;
•his
understanding of school not as a place of academic possibilities but
rather a refuge from the dangers of the street;
•an account of
the death of a friend from Howard University at the hands of Virginia police,
who believed the victim had stolen his own car;
•and many
other confrontations with American life as a black man and parent.
It
is important for white Americans to read and digest his anger, his
disappointment, and his conclusions.
He
comes to offer few clear prescriptions for the illnesses brought on by this
so-called “American dream”. He hopes
that the reader will ‘get it’ and,
at least, think about it.
He
closes with advice: for members of the Black community in relation to the Dream
and, indirectly, for those white Americans who dream this Dream with any
regularity. He says to Black America:
“Struggle
for the memory of your ancestors.
Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for
the warmth of The Mecca [the academic world of Howard University]. Struggle for your grandmother and
grandfather, for your name. But do not
struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for
them. Pray for them, if you are so
moved. But do not pin your struggle on
their conversion. The Dreamers will have
to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream,
the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us
all. The Dream is the same habit that
endangers the planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in
prisons and ghettos.”[7]
So
be it. If we in the white community need
to struggle, then let us do so because it is the right thing to do. And let us think of it this way:
•Struggling
against white privilege: is to volunteer in places like Emerson Elementary
School and strike out against illiteracy and poverty.
•Struggling
against white privilege: is to support our African American brothers and
sisters and be able to articulate proudly with them that ‘black lives DO
matter’.
•Struggling
against white privilege: is to engage in dialogue with members of any racial or
national minority, so that we can better empathize with and understand issues
of poverty, inadequate employment, and fair compensation.
•And
struggling against white privilege: is to ensure, to the extent possible, that
our employers – or the businesses that we own – provide living wages, safe work
environments, and benefits that address the true needs of families in any stage
of life.
Look,
we cannot change the consequence of American history, or easily reverse more
than three centuries of anti-Black sentiment.
But as Jews we are still required:
- to address the question;
- to empathize with all those who face racism and poverty in our day;
- and to engage in the tasks of correcting injustice.
In
the New Year ahead, let us seek out and find opportunities for renewing an
“American dream”, a vision that now takes only a limited number of Americans
into account. For on this holy day of
the New Year, we are required to imagine a different dream, one in which we
can, unlike our matriarch Sarah, learn to treat others as we would like to be
treated.
We
can envision a world in which we resurrect the fullest possible
definition of James Adams’ dream,
where “each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature
of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they
are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”[8]
“Im
tirtzu, ein zo aggadah.” If we truly desire this, it will remain a
dream for only a bit longer before we turn it into a reality.
L’shanah Tovah.
(Sermon
Anthem – “Ain’t
Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round”)
[1] Rashi’s
comment on Genesis 20:12: "My sister, the daughter of my father": And
the daughter of one’s father is permitted to a Noahide
[for marriage], because a gentile has no father [his lineage is not traced from
his father]. And in order to justify his words, he answered him in this way.
Now if you ask: Was she not the daughter of his brother? [The answer is that]
grandchildren are considered like children (Tosefta, Yev. 8:8; Talmud Bavli,
Yev. 62b); therefore, she was (considered as) Terah’s daughter [and would, therefore, be Abraham’s sister]. And so did he say to Lot, “For we are kinsmen” [lit.
men, brothers], from Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 36.
[2]
“White Privilege: Unpacking the
Invisible Knapsack”, Peace and Freedom Magazine,
July/August, 1989, Women’s International League for Peace and
Freedom, Philadelphia, as cited at http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html
[5] The Epic of America, Little, Brown,
and Co, 1931, p.214-215.
[6] Coates, Ta-Nehisi, “Between the World and Me”,
Spiegel and Grau, New York, p. 11.
[7] Ibid., p. 151.
[8] The Epic of America, Little, Brown,
and Co, 1931, p.214-215.
