I’d like to put our focus on Sarah. On Sarah and on her secondariness. Yes, secondary. She is portrayed as secondary in our story to her famous path breaking husband Avraham who stands squarely at the center of the text. Indeed, as the parsha opens, we meet Avraham at center stage, sitting in the opening of their tent, Sarah hidden from view, neither seen nor heard.
Where is Sarah?
When Avraham then invites in some angel guests, they note precisely this absence of Sarah’s, asking: ayeh Sarah ishtekha – and where is Sarah your wife? (Genesis 18:9; note that the question of ayeh, “where,” has a history of implied judgment, see God’s earlier questions, “where are you” to Adam and “where is Abel your brother” to Cain). Where is Sarah your wife? It’s a good question, one that has been resounding through the ages – indeed, where are the women? Why can’t we hear or see them? Where did they go? They seem to have been erased, disappeared, hidden.
The Undercurrent of Dissent
The people in our text live in a patriarchal society and so it is natural that they carry those societal norms. What I find remarkable is that the Torah itself has an undercurrent of dissent against those norms, a subtle critique spoken through the mouthpiece of God and of God’s angelic messengers. We get an inkling of this dissent in that question of the angels – ayeh – where is she. Where are the women? You’re missing someone. Pay attention to who’s missing. We saw this alternative perspective, too, in last week’s parsha, where the most disempowered, least important member of Avraham’s household, the Egyptian maidservant Hagar, is attended to by God’s angels. Unlike the wider culture, in the alternative lens of God’s eyes, she is important and central, never secondary.
A few other examples: Avraham endangers his wife every time they enter a foreign country, asking her to put his safety first by pretending he is her brother. It is as if he is the only one that matters. There is no concern for her protection while she is taken off to be raped by the local dictator, as long as he is safe and financially rewarded. Here, too, it is God who intervenes and saves her. Avraham – who has strong military prowess – was willing to go to battle for his nephew, a man, but for his wife, it is God who must do the saving. In a world where women’s lives seem cheap, God still holds them dear. That is the undercurrent of divine dissent. We see this also with the daughters of Lot in Sodom. Lot offers them up to be raped by the throngs of people outside his door trying to attack his guests. No, no, the guests are important, he says – they are men after all – but these girls, here, take them, they don’t matter. Do with them what you wish. It is the angel guests themselves who prevent this from happening. Again, in the divine reckoning, these girls do matter. We all do.
So running through these texts, it is God who offers this subtle criticism of social norms and it is God who remembers the disempowered and redeems them. But before we turn to divine redemption, which, as always, is where we are headed, perhaps we should take some time to bring to mind the suffering of feeling secondary. Because I believe we all, male and female alike, have this experience.
Feeling Secondary
To enter into that experience of secondariness, I want to go back to last week’s parsha, to the moment when Avraham complains to God that he does not have a child, that his chief butler will be his heir: hen li lo natata zara, Avraham says, but behold li, to me you did not give any seed (Genesis 15:3). God responds by promising him that he will indeed have children from his own loins and takes him out to look at the stars. But here is the thing: Avraham does not advocate for Sarah. He says li , “to me” you didn’t give a child, not to us, to me and to Sarah. Indeed later, when Hagar gives birth to Yishmael, Avraham seems perfectly satisfied – he has his child now, after all – and it is only God who insists that it is important that a child be born through Sarah (Genesis 17:18-19). Rashi suggests that when Sarah is angry at Avraham about Hagar, that is what she is angry about: Why didn’t you pray for me, she is saying. Why did you only pray for yourself to have a child? What about me? (Rashi on Genesis 16:5)
What About Me?
Perhaps that is a good place for us to enter emotionally. I invite you to feel into the experience of: What about me? That feeling of being overlooked, unimportant, secondary, not taken into account, not mattering. Why didn’t you think about me? Why doesn’t anyone see me? Am I nothing? Do I not matter? Why do the guests at the door matter more than me? Why do you argue with God for the Sodomites and not for me, your wife? Why do you muster armies to save your nephew and not me? Or from our own experience perhaps, why in this three way conversation are you only looking at that other person and ignoring me? Don’t you see me? Do I not exist? Do I not have a voice? And why do you announce all the other events at shul and always forget mine? Does my contribution not matter? Am I not also important, a person, too? Perhaps bringing to mind a scenario where you felt overlooked and unimportant and remembering what that felt like, how it hurt to the core, almost as if you were being erased, something fundamental stripped away from you, disappearing into the ground. Letting yourself just touch that hurt place.
Behind The Door
When the angels came to inform Avraham and Sarah that Sarah would have a child in a year’s time, Sarah was standing behind the door, listening. I want you to picture that. Something important is being discussed that concerns you, your body, your life, and you are not in the conversation, not even in the room. You are behind the door, a non entity, eavesdropping like a child, uninvited. Letting yourself sense that powerlessness, that secondariness, that sense of being pushed out to the periphery, not honored, not seen and cherished and celebrated, put behind a curtain, an onlooker. How are we to tend to this suffering?
Centered In God’s Attention
Enter God onto the scene. Later in the parsha, we hear: VeHashem pakad et Sarah ka’asher amar. And God took note of Sarah as God had promised (Genesis 21:1). God is paying attention to Sarah, turning a laser focus onto her, centering her in the divine sight. Whereas she has been sidelined everywhere else, here, in God’s mind, she becomes the center of attention. Even the placement of Sarah’s name in the verse implies this centering, as the word Sarah appears right in the middle of the phrase veHashem pakad et Sarah ka’asher amar (in terms of syllables, it’s five on each side, making it the exact middle). God took note of Sarah as God had said (4 words and 4 syllables on each side in the English). The next phrase in the verse has a similar rhythm (also 5 syllables on each side in the Hebrew) with Sarah again in the center. She has moved from being on the outside looking in to standing in the middle of the stage.
I wonder if you can offer some of that centering divine attention to the part of you that sometimes feels sidelined and secondary. Maybe imagining yourself outside a door looking in, feeling excluded and unimportant, curling up on the floor in a little ball, making yourself small and invisible. And then suddenly you feel something new, surprising – the warm glow of God’s light shining upon you. It’s not that you’ve gone inside to where the action is. God meets you right there, on the outside, in this feeling of unimportance. Sensing the light upon you in a gentle non threatening way, a soft warm light that wraps you up in care, that lets you know you are the center of God’s kind attention, how much you matter to God, more than you can ever imagine.
Let your not mattering part pick her head up slowly from her collapse on the floor, uncurling and peering up at the light, curious, hesitant at first, what is this lovely unfamiliar substance that makes me feel so good, so whole, so important, so beloved and cherished. Yes, you matter, the light says, a catch in God’s voice as if it is painful to convey just how much you matter. I created you. You are my beloved child. Humans can say or do as they will, but in God’s eyes, this will always be true: you matter.
You Count
The word pakad can also mean “count,” as in a census. And in a way that is what is happening here. God is counting you, reminding you that you count, that you are a whole person like all the others, not more than but also not less than. A separate essential whole. Maybe imagining millions of people around the globe, each with their own divine spotlight on them, each one a whole world unto themselves, God smiling at each with equal attention. And each of us with our own tafkid, also from the root pakad, our own irreplaceable divine “appointment” (or assignment) on earth. Irreplaceable. No one else can be as we are, can do exactly as we do. Not secondary, but primary, essential.
Becoming Who God Intended Us To Be
God took note of Sarah as God had promised, ka’asher amar. Or perhaps: as God had originally intended. When we feel God’s centering attention, we move closer to that version of ourselves that God had originally intended for us, ka’asher amar, rising up into our potential, becoming the person God created us to be, living into the dream God dreamed for us long ago at the start, moving into our destiny. That was what was happening for Sarah, becoming pregnant with Yitzhak; she was moving into her destiny as a matriarch of our people.
Maybe sensing your little one who was curled up before outside the door, sensing how she has been slowly standing up as she takes in the glow of that divine centering light, slowly standing up to your full height, rising up with growing strength into your potential, into your destiny, claiming who you are with pride, as you are, warts and all, still imperfect, but claiming it all, sensing how God’s unwavering light makes you feel confident as you stride forward, opening the door and joining the group inside, asserting your right to be there, claiming your space as a full equal alongside the others, knowing inside with a profound sparkling clarity that you matter in God’s eyes always, carrying that with you wherever you go as a touchstone to return to and keep you steady and unashamed.
Photo by Min An at Pexels
