Content note: This drash will touch on topics of rape, sexual assault, and domestic abuse. Not in graphic detail but we will be discussing it in the context of the parsha. I think this is an important topic to discuss from the bima, to talk about as a community, especially given we like to pretend it doesn’t happen here. It does. But it also can be a topic that can be very triggering for some of us individually. If what you need to do for your mental health today is to not listen to my drash, I promise I won’t be offended if you leave now and come back for musaf.
Parsha Lech Lecha - Delivered 8 Mar Cheshvan 5778/October 29, 2017 at Congregation Netivot Shalom, in Berkeley, California
Okay. So, let’s start at the beginning of the parsha.
I’ve always loved Lech Lecha. If you asked me to name my favorite parsha, I’d tell you Lech Lecha, although I have many other favorite moments in the Torah as well. I identify with Avraham in the beginning of Lech Lecha intensely. G!d tells Avram “Go for yourself from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”1 This passage speaks to me deeply. As a Jew by choice, raised in a secular, interfaith family, my current, fairly observant life is literally unimaginable by my childhood self. The notion of G!d calling me to a new, unimaginable land, full of blessings, far from the familiar, feels like seeing myself reflected back in the Torah.
But “hey, I relate to Avraham” is hardly a full drash, so I sat down to read the parsha closely. I have to tell you, this parsha is wild and fully packed.
We have the only time a human names G!d, when Hagar names G!d El Roi. We have G!d telling Avraham he will father multitudes over and over and over. There’s the stuff with Sdom and Lot being kidnapped/. The birth of Ishmael. The first circumcision. This is not a lightweight parsha in the narrative impact category.
As I read through the parsha though, I kept getting stuck on one part. In our triennial cycle, we read it last year, but not today, so let’s take a look so it’s fresh in everyone’s mind.
If you want to follow along, it’s on page 72 in your chumash.
There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. If the Egyptians see you, and think ‘She is his wife,’’ they will kill me and let you live. Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you.” When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw how very beautiful the woman was. Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s palace. And because of her, it went well with Abram; he acquired sheep, oxen, asses, male and female slaves, she-asses, and camels. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram. Pharaoh sent for Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me! Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’ so that I took her as my wife? Now, here is your wife; take her and begone. And Pharaoh put men in charge of him, and they sent him off with his wife and all that he possessed.” 2 Whew. I need a breather after that. I’ve never understood this story in the Torah. I have so, so many whys. As I thought about how to talk about “lech lecha” and G!d telling Avram to go on this journey, I kept getting disturbed by these whys about the passage we just read.
Why does Avram think lying to Pharaoh is less dangerous than having a beautiful wife? Lying to royalty seems bad.
Why does Sarai go along with the whole shebang?
What’s Avram’s long term game here? Does he think he’s giving up Sarai forever? Does he hope to postpone Sarai getting married or becoming a concubine to another man? Is he foolish and short sighted? How on earth does he think this is going to end well?
Did he think that Pharaoh was going to be pleased when he found out Sarai was Avram’s wife? I’m always surprised Pharaoh is only as mad as he is, and that he doesn’t kill them both. (Maybe I have low expectations of royalty but ultimate power corrupts).
Why do they go along with it? Maybe they thought the fertility problem was Avram’s problem and this was a sneaky way around it?
There’s so much in the Torah about sexual fidelity of wives. Why is Sarai having sex with other men okay with Avram & Sarai? Was it a different culture than later in the Torah?
Why doesn’t Sarai speak?
I thought perhaps I wasn’t understanding the pshat, the plain meaning of the text, so I turned to our best friend for pshat, Rashi. Rashi wasn’t helpful. He just gave me more questions.
Rashi says that until this moment, Avram had never noticed Sarai’s beauty. Remember, they’re 75 and 65 at this point. He’s really never noticed that his wife is beautiful, in what? 30-40 years of marriage? I’m not buying it.
And then Rashi explains the line “Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you” means that Avram will get lots of gifts. So Rashi is saying that Avram asks Sarai to let him pimp her out? Really? Again, more why and what the heck questions arise.[3]
So I turned to other commentators. Nachum Sarna, the commentator for the Genesis volume of JPS’s Torah Commentary, helped me understand the cultural context further.3 He explains that the narrative of a kidnapping or near kidnapping of a hero or king’s uncommonly beautiful wife is a trope in literature contemporary to the torah, seen in Canaanite and Greek myths. Just think of the story of Helen of Troy, with which most of us are likely familiar from popular culture. Sarna suggests that this story about Avram and Sarai functions as a point of national pride in Sarai’s beauty, a reminder of the immorality of other pagan nations, and a reminder of G!d’s protection. It’s G!d who rescues Sarai from Pharaoh, not a human.
Okay, so fears about wives being kidnapped for their beauty were floating in the culture, but this doesn’t help us answer all these why questions. Sarna does, however, have one helpful insight into one why.
In the ancient Near East, if an unmarried woman did not have a father around, the right and responsibility to arrange her marriage fell to her brother. Ahhh. So maybe we have a potential answer to “What’s Avram’s end game?”. Perhaps he hoped to engage in betrothal talks for Sarai, but draw them out until Avram and Sarai leave Egypt, thus saving both of them. This is a charitable read of Avram, and frankly, many other commentators are not so charitable.
The Ramban, Rabbi Moses Ben Nachman, a 12th century Spanish rabbi, writes “our father Avraham inadvertently committed a great sin by placing his virtuous wife in a compromising situation because of his fear of being killed. He should have trusted in G!d to save him, his wife, and all he had.” Why does Avram suggest this ploy? Because he’s weak and scared and selfish, suggests the Ramban. He hurts his wife out of selfish fear and lack of trust in G!d.4
Other commentators argue that this episode shows Avram making the moral choice. The Radak, a medieval commentator from France who often responds to RAshi, says that Avram didn’t know the risk to Sarai in advance of going to Egypt, and if he did, he would not have gone. The Radak argues that Avram made the moral choice, because one must take every reasonable precaution to protect oneself against danger and not rely on miracles.5
It still feels to me like the Radak is ignoring Sarai though. Why would Sarai agree to this plan?
Turning back to Rashi, I started to get an inkling. Rashi says Avram hid Sarai in a box, but the Egyptians found her while examining their goods to take a customs tax. Maybe Sarai didn’t agree to the plans so they developed another plan to hide sarai, and that second plan didn’t work. I’m not sure it’s really the pshat, but it makes more sense in a way that answers some of my questions about Sarai.6
However, it was only when I read Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s thoughts on the matter that my understanding of this incident and my questions about it really became clear. Rabbi Ruttenberg says that in this story, Avram is setting Sarai up for sexual assault.7
Oh. All of my questions about Sarai start to make sense. They’re coming from that intuition that tells you there’s something off about a situation. Why does Sarai go along? Why is she silent? Why does she go along twice (because the whole story will repeat again next week with Abimelech).
Maybe Sarai didn’t have a choice. Maybe she lacked the safety to say no to Avram’s question. Maybe Sarai was forced to go along as her husband set himself up to profit from her rape.
It would answer a lot of questions but is a deeply uncomfortable thought.
I don’t want to think of Avraham as someone who abusively controls his wife, and sells her to be raped. He’s our patriarch, our father, the one who I relate to in this parsha. As a Jew by Choice, I’m named for him: Eliana bat Avraham avinu v’Sarah imanu.
However, I think it is exactly Avraham avinu’s role as a role model that makes it all the more important to confront that nagging discomfort that there is something off about this story. How many times has it happened that person after person has come forward with allegations of sexual violence committed b a well respected figure? I’ve lost count of how many times it has happened just in the last month!
I don’t find it hard to face the deeply flawed humanity of our biblical avot v’imahot in other contexts. For example, I can’t read the Akedah as anything other than Avraham failing G!d’s test by being willing to kill his son. Sarah seems deeply cruel when casting out Hagar. When Yosef’s brothers sell him into slavery, I hardly think they did the right thing.
So why is it harder for me to say “Parts of this story suggest that Avram abusively put his wife in a situation where she would be raped for his own material gain”? I’d much prefer the explanation that he hoped to enter fake betrothal talks for Sarai as her brother, and delay them until they could leave, thus preserving safety for both of them.
Genesis is full of stories of one deeply dysfunctional family. In many ways, the whole book is a lesson of how to be a family. Not by presenting examples of our ancestors that we should follow, but by allowing us to learn from their sins and mistakes and not repeat them.
Maybe what this text offers us is a chance to practice recognizing that people we hold in very high esteem sometimes are also in secret or not so secret, rapists, abusers, sexual assaulters, and betrayers of trust. If we want to be compassionate and pursue justice, then we need to face that fact head on. Recognition and acknowledgement, believing victims, is the first, sometimes very difficult, step in moving toward a more just world.
I don’t have any neat way to wrap up this drash. I expected to tell you that I’m leaving you with unanswered questions, but I think for myself, I’m leaving with uncomfortably answered questions. So I’ll end with this. I’m a follower of the school of thought that when torah hurts we hold it tighter. So let’s hold tight to Torah today, in both the parts we find speak to us, like being called on a journey, or being inspired by Avraham’s faith in G!d, and the parts that hurt.
Sefaria translation: https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.12.1?lang=bi. ↩
Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary. The Rabbinical Assembly, 2001. ↩
Sarna, Nachum. Genesis Commentary. The Jewish Publication Society, 1989. ↩
Ramban, Commentary to Genesis 12: 10, based on Zohar, Tazria, 52a. ↩
Radak, Commentary to Genesis 12:12-13 https://www.sefaria.org/Radak_on_Genesis.12.12.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en. ↩
Rashi, Commentary to Genesis 12:14 ↩
@TheRaDR. “Awww, I think this should be a Biblical sexual ethics thread!! 1/X 1) Abraham setting Sarah up for sexual assault by Pharoah.” Twitter, 27 Oct 2017, 5:23 a.m., https://twitter.com/theradr/status/923887902945357824. ↩