Lech Lecha: Brothers

This year, I cannot ignore the events occurring in the land promised to Abraham and his descendants.

The current war is between  nations that came to a territory some considered promised to them by the Gd that appears in the parsha.

וַיֵּרָ֤א יְ

אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם וַיֹּ֕אמֶר לְזַ֨רְעֲךָ֔ אֶתֵּ֖ן אֶת־הָאָ֣רֶץ הַזֹּ֑את

 

And the Lord appeared to Avram, and said, To thy seed will I give this land:

 

The story plays out that Abraham has two possible heirs. In this week’s parsha, Hagar bears a son to Abraham: Ishmael.  In our version of the story, Ishmael is cruelly banished (next week’s parsha) and Sarah’s son, Isaac, becomes the (sole?) heir of this Promised Land.  Is the current battle playing out this competition? This story is one of the roots.

 

 The stories of Abraham begin the definition of the Hebrews as a special and separate people.  Gd tells Abraham:

לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃

Now the Lord said to Avram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, to the land that I will show thee:

 

Abraham, and all of his descendants, are told to go to a new land. They invade an inhabited district. From the perspective of a citizen in a prosperous land, this is a crime. This is, at least, illegal immigration - and possibly an attack. The state has an obligation to defend against such an action. Build a wall.

The(illegal) immigrants’ perspective is desperation. I am most familiar, viscerally, with the odyssey of my parents’ generation. They were disenfranchised by the land of their birth, the land that their ancestors had inhabited for generations.  They were left to persecution by their enemies, both foreign and domestic. There is no doubt about the life and death stakes, since their kin were decimated by murders that were justified purely based on their affiliation with Abraham and Sarah. To die, trying to escape, was the nobler alternative. Can these people be blamed for creating a state to protect them and their seed from a continuation of this effort at extermination?  In the land some say was promised to their ancestors?

When Gd told Abram to go forth, Gd was establishing Abraham and his offspring, as foreign invaders. This status has never left the Jew, in all the lands of the dispersion. To some, this alien status follows the Jew into Israel, into Tel Aviv. It comes from the Bible.

The characters in these Bible stories: Abraham, Sarah, Lot, Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac- are so distant that I question the significance of an actual biological relationship.  It is the affiliation with them that characterizes a person or group. To the outsider, it is a combination of declarations and actions.

When Hamas massacred 1,400 persons in Israel – noncombatants, children and the elderly – they declared their allegiance to the heritage of the Nazis. They became a threat to the seed of Jacob.

When António Guterres said that Hamas’ crime had not been done “in a vacuum,” he was right in a sense that the Jews understand. The massacre was done in a context that would allow its justification. Guterres’ comment demonstrated the antisemitism that fills the space.

In our world, every space has been conquered, often many times by several tribes. The invader label, the immigrant designation is a populist convenience.

When Abraham dies, Ishmael and Isaac bury their common father together. Half brothers can get along  together. It is in the Bible.