#vayera

Vayera: Angel Food

Welcoming Guests

Upon God’s command, Abraham circumcises himself at age 99. While he is recovering from this procedure, God appears to him as he is sitting at the entrance of his tent during the heat of the day. During this private moment alone with God, Abraham looks up and sees three figures standing near him. These “men” are actually angels, but Abraham doesn’t know this, seeing only strangers in need of hospitality. Abraham immediately runs to greet the newcomers and provide them with a lavish meal. He leaves a private meeting with the Holy One Himself to take care of people he’s never seen before! And does so while in physical pain! The actions of our Patriarchs provide a model for our own behavior. If Abraham is willing to go to such lengths to make total strangers feel comfortable in his home, how much more welcoming should we be to people we actually know!

(reposted from Twitter)

I had a dream once about Lilith offering Eve a seed that blossomed into a flower when she took it, then a fruit when she smelled it. When she ate the fruit, the rivers of Eden overflowed and knocked down the walls around the garden, and the desert outside bloomed.

The seed from the fruit Eve ate floated on one of the rivers and blossomed into a flower, and floated down until Sarah, sitting beside the river, pulled it out of the water, the day she learned she would have a child. 

It wasn't until years later that I consciously made the connection between Sarah's edna (pleasure, enjoyment) and Eden (they have the same root in Hebrew).

I always wondered why I had such a positive feeling about leaving Eden, until I realized that Adam and Eve were themselves seeds, and eventually you take the tree out of the starter pot and put it in the real earth.

For me, the mental image I have of Eve eating the fruit is always sort of like the climactic scene in Moana where the island of Te Fiti comes back. Sweeping music, and the entire world blooms.

He waited to shoot this meme and thus was unable to stop Lot’s daughters from ensuring that Mashiach ben Davidwould come.

Re-reading Vayera is always a challenge, and one that prompted me to write midrash on the spiritual toll of loss, especially those who lose a child or a creature who essentially was their child. The pictures above are the last two pictures I have of my kitten Howl before he passed to heart failure at 11 months old. Going through Parashat Vayera I thought of him, and of every parent grieving the loss of a child or pregnancy. Who sees the angel sent down from Hashem halting Abraham to stop his sacrifice of his child, Issac, and send a ram instead in his place. After finding out that Hashem would be blessing them with a child in their old age, Abraham and Sarah laughed with disbelief and joy. They finally were going to have a child after a lifetime of grief over the impossibility. Yet their blessing turns sour when Hashem tests Abraham's faith by telling him to now kill and sacrifice the very child they never thought they'd have; it's an incredibly tense and devastating chapter to read.

I.

I will never have children, but I do have animals who mean the world to me. Reading about the angel coming down to spare Abraham the most devastating blow, it's hard not to wonder where our angel was when deep in grief. Where was the angel when I adopted two beautiful kitten siblings - both six months old, only to come home one day several months later to find Howl in respiratory distress. Where was the angel when I took him to the emergency vet and found out he was in heart failure and would likely only have months at most to live? These sweet young kittens were all I had ever wanted after leaving home, after a lifetime of pain and searching for comfort and love. I had found that love with these precious animals, and no sooner than that blessing came into my life, it was taken away. Howl passed five months after I brought him home, never making it to his first birthday.

II.

The death of my first boyfriend at the age of 15 was such a shock that it took over a decade for me to finally move past being numb and begin to process it. In my processing and doula studies, I began to think more about his parents. How I had known him for only a couple of years and felt such immense grief over the loss of someone who had such a profound impact on me. How this grief must be present with his parents every single day; losing a child does not make you less of a parent. It's something you will always be no matter where the spirit resides. There's something so bitter to me in reading Vayera, where the beauty of the parent-child relationship is manipulated into a test of faith. Where people who cannot have children are magically blessed if they happen to find very randomly given and taken favor with Hashem. The vast majority of us are not favored the way the matriarchs and patriarchs were; the vast majority of us will not have an angel intervening when it comes to the hardest goodbyes we have to face. To me, there is no peace that comes with losing a life so young and precious, nothing will ever ease the unfairness of the loss. Even if we are so lucky to have met these souls for however short of time we did, even if we can appreciate that they are no longer in human pain, there's nothing that comes close to easing the pain of the loss. A loss that under better circumstances, should not have happened. To watch the divine play with the human emotion of love and grief in such a callous manner feels like a gut punch over and over again.

(Two cities burn, a son is born. Father casts out a child and binds with a blade. I do not speak of these things. I speak of a woman.)

Lot's wife burns in the desert sun Just reward for a backwards glance She ran from her city, daughters abandoned By salt she sinned and by salt will she die.

Did you hear about her daughter? Daughter Paltit, bound in flames For giving bread was Paltit dead Her mother saw and poured salt on the street.

Two daughters, forsaken in marriage Two daughters cast to the crowd Lot's wife saw behind the door She turned around with dread in her heart.