Sarah and Avraham are a couple with no children for a long time. I look at the text and it seems to me that Sarah was neglected by Avraham, that he was too busy to attend to her, out in the world trying to save Sodom, fighting wars, interacting with important local leaders and speaking to God about lofty matters. We don’t ever see him treating her with love or kindness, only noticing her beauty when he asks her to pretend to be his sister, never playing with her and making her happy as Yitzhak does with his wife (Genesis 26:8). In fact, with Yitzhak we hear that he prays for his barren wife, aware of her struggle right from the start, and indeed, immediately after he prays, she becomes pregnant (25:21), as if that’s all it takes, a little noticing and caring enough to ask. Meanwhile, years into Sarah’s barrenness, Avraham prays for other people’s wives to give birth (20:17), but never for his own. Avraham seems to be focused primarily outward, not inward, leaving Sarah abandoned and untended.
And so as the parsha begins, it is not surprising that we find Avraham literally sitting outside his home looking out to the world for strangers he can invite in and feed and tend to, while his wife sits inside alone and uncared for.
“Where Is Sarah Your Wife?”
Those angel guests who come along that day, they ask Avraham a pointed question about this situation: Ayeh Sarah ishtekha? Where is Sarah your wife? Hineh ba’ohel, he answers. She’s here in the tent. She’s inside and I’m out here helping you, just as it should be, he thinks. Avraham doesn’t seem to understand what the angels are getting at. Where is Sarah your wife, they say, where is this person deeply connected to you – why aren’t you tending to her? This “where” question they ask is like an arrow pointing to her, trying to show him where to turn – look at her, not us, it says – notice her, think about her, see her, love her.
The Torah’s “Where” Questions
Ayeh questions in the Torah generally carry some judgment like this, some insinuation of not seeing who or what matters. Ayeka, “where are you,” God asks in the garden of Eden after the first humans eat of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:9), and then, after Cain kills his brother, God says ey Hevel akhikha, “where is hevel your brother” (Genesis 4:9). Much later, when the daughters of Yitro come home and tell how the stranger Moshe helped them at the well, Yitro says – ve’ayo? “And where is he [now]” (Exodus 2:20)? Why did you just leave him there? Why didn’t you attend to him?
And so here what the angels are saying with their ayeh question is: Why didn’t you attend to your wife? Why have you been so busy running around outside, helping the world, and not turning inward to her once in a while, noticing her, giving her your attention and love?
We Focus Outward, Too
I am not here to bash Avraham. We all do this. We are so focused on looking outward much of the time that we forget to look inside the tent, inside ourselves to our Sarah, to our inner selves whom we, too, have abandoned and neglected.
Maybe spending a moment feeling into that, feeling yourself as Avraham sitting outside the house on the lookout for strangers to help while meanwhile inside you someone is lonely and uncared for. As if you have a crying baby in your house – your inner body house – and you go off to bring soup to the neighbors.
Sensing that outward focus – scanning, assessing, caretaking, helping, reaching, grasping, offering, wondering what they are thinking about you – always your eyes turned towards what is going on outside, what might be needed next, like Avraham the host attending to his guests so carefully. Please, sir, have a seat and I’ll get you some food and wash your feet. What else might you need, sir? Please, na, please, be comfortable. So polite and considerate and kind. That’s all good. But meanwhile, you turn to the inner you and shout, like Avraham to Sarah that day – mahari, lushi ve’asi ugot – hurry up and make the cakes (Genesis 18:6)!
Feeling that contrast in your body, the generous way you treat others and the harsh impatient internal voice directed towards the inner Sarah, the one who sits in the innermost place inside you, sensing her hurt and feeling of being denigrated, dismissed, unimportant compared to these guests.
This is self abandonment, ignoring our own needs and only attending to what is demanded on the outside, sending ourselves the message that something on the outside matters more than we do, more than our precious internal Sarah does. That thing that matters more might be hosting or work or writing or family or caretaking or religious obligation. Anything can play that role, making us feel unvalued, secondary. Anything that takes us away from our center, from honoring the one who sits in that tent, in that inner sanctuary inside. Sometimes you can feel it in a somatic way, as if you have left your own body’s center and are outside of your body reaching out to all the others in the room. It’s a form of not driving in your own lane, leaving your tent, your center, your Sarah, turning away from yourself.
The Extreme of Abandonment: Lot
Our parsha demonstrates what this turning away looks like if taken to the extreme through the story of Lot. When the angelic visitors come to Lot’s home, the people of Sodom stand outside demanding that he send the visitors out to be sexually abused. Lot says – no, no, I’ll send out my two virgin daughters instead, just please don’t touch my guests (Genesis 19:8). What kind of hospitality is that, to sacrifice your own children for the sake of your guests. And yet on some level I think we are often engaged in some version of that with our inner and maybe outer children, sacrificing them for the sake of something outside of them, offering them on the altar of social convention or work success or getting along with people, as if all of that matters more than them.
Our Experience of Self Abandonment
I invite you to feel into the sense of self abandonment of those moments, the feeling of turning away from yourself, leaving yourself in a corner because you are less important, you and your needs don’t matter. Can you feel that in your belly? That ache of hurt, that little one peaking out from the shadows, crying, thumb in her mouth, saying – what about me? Am I nothing? In that scene with the angels, Sarah stood in the tent doorway peering out at Avraham and his guests, listening to the visitor whose back was to her as if she didn’t exist (18:10), not belonging, not invited to the party, a second class citizen in her own home. Touching that ache in you. What about me? it says. Don’t I matter, too?
God Attends to Sarah
As always,I believe it is only really divine energy that can help us here. And Sarah is given precisely that. VaHashem pakad et Sarah (Genesis 21:1). God takes notice of Sarah. Pakad has the connotation of seeing, a fullness of attention, a bringing to mind, a noticing, a centering. It is the answer to – where is Sarah? Where is Sarah? She is in the center of God’s mind, in God’s sight, the apple of God’s eye.
The letter kuf in the middle of the Hebrew word פקד reminds me with its tail pointing downward of a spotlight coming down from heaven towards Sarah, focusing on her, zooming in, highlighting her as important. There is also a rhythm in the verse that gives one a sense of centering; the verse has two phrases and in each one Sarah stands directly in the middle –
וַֽה’ פָּקַ֥ד אֶת־שָׂרָ֖ה כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר אָמָ֑ר
וַיַּ֧עַשׂ ה’ לְשָׂרָ֖ה כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר דִּבֵּֽר
There are two words and five syllables on either side of “to Sarah” in each phrase, giving it the rhythm of da-da-da-da-da to Sarah da-da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da-da to Sarah da-da-da-da-da. Sarah stands in the middle, centered and important and highlighted, God wrapping Godself and God’s light all around her, making her the center of attention.
You At The Center
Taking some time to experience your own version of this divine centering. Imagine yourself in God’s spotlight, as if there is this warm light, like sunlight, shining on you, directed specifically and intentionally towards you, centering you as valuable and important. You matter to God. You are the center of God’s attention. Letting that warm healing light seep into all your cells and bones and pores, into all your wounds and aches and sorrows, into the barrenness and the loneliness, into all the places that hold abandonment and denigration and belittlement and not mattering. Letting all that hurt be fully seen and witnessed in this divine light, feeling the light like a laser beam that heals up wounds, sewing up the jagged edges with the light-infused thread of divine attention. Letting yourself bask in the love and attention like a warm bath with healing oils. God centers you. For this moment, let yourself feel that you are the center of the universe. I know we are taught not to feel this, not to be “self centered,” but to me, it feels sacred and healing and true that somehow we are each in fact the center of God’s universe, that we matter that much. Not like Sarah, standing on the outside, and others have their back to her. No, we are at the center of the room, God’s room, God’s ohel, God’s sanctuary. We are always there, centered in God’s attention, no matter what happens in the world and inside ourselves, still always centered in God’s sight.
Not Just God
VaHashem pakad et Sarah. The rabbis say that the word VaHashem, “and God,” indicates that God here is working not on God’s own, but together with the divine court (see Hizkuni and Ba’al HaTurim). That’s what the “and” means; it’s more than just God. And so it is for us. It isn’t just this out of body experience of a divine spotlight but the whole universe joining in to let us know we belong, as if the flowers perk up and blossom just for us and the butterfly appears at our window to flutter a good morning meant just for me, and the birds sing out to you – we’re so happy you are here, come join us in singing, you are a part of things. Walk tall, like you have a right to be here. Bishvili nivra ha’olam. For me the world was created. Every particle of the earth reaches out to hold you and embrace you, to caress you and love you, like a baby born into the lap of the earth, celebrated and wrapped in the colorful receiving blanket of this life you are given. Vayizrach lo hashemesh. “The sun shone for him (Genesis 32:32),” for Yaakov, and the sun shines for you, it rises each morning for each one of us. You belong, you are wanted, the world calls out to us. Take your full centered place among us.
A Tikkun, A Repair
Maybe we can take some of this divine centering energy and go back to reinhabit Avraham sitting outside, with his back to his home, and offer him and Sarah an intergenerational tikkun, a repair, a healing. Sitting as Avraham, turned away from the inner tent of ourselves, we can slowly and intentionally turn around to face the tent, moving towards our own dear Sarah with love – lekha dodi likrat kallah – opening to her, centering her, embracing her, coming home to each other and to ourselves, integrating and unifying the lost and abandoned parts of ourselves, our ancestors and of God Godself.
Ayeh Sarah ishtekha? Where is Sarah your wife? Right here, at the center, at the center of God’s sight and of your own.
Photo by shu lei at Pexels
