“Who would have said to Abraham
That Sarah would suckle children!
Yet I have borne a son in his old age.” (8) The child grew up and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. (9) Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing. (10) She said to Abraham, “Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” (11) The matter distressed Abraham greatly, for it concerned a son of his. (12) But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed over the boy or your slave; whatever Sarah tells you, do as she says, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you. (13) As for the son of the slave-woman, I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed.” (14) Early next morning Abraham took some bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar. He placed them over her shoulder, together with the child, and sent her away. And she wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. (15) When the water was gone from the skin, she left the child under one of the bushes, (16) and went and sat down at a distance, a bowshot away; for she thought, “Let me not look on as the child dies.” And sitting thus afar, she burst into tears. (17) God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is. (18) Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” (19) Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water, and let the boy drink. (20) God was with the boy and he grew up; he dwelt in the wilderness and became a bowman. (21) He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, "Achti"
I am pained I did not call you
By the name your mother gave you.
I cast you aside,
Cursed you with my barrenness and rage,
Called you “stranger”/ Ha-ger,
As if it were a sin to be from another place.
They used me to steal your womb,
Claim your child,
As if I owned your body and your labor
I, whom they call “See Far Woman” / Sarah,
Could not witness my own blindness.
But you, my sister,
You beheld angels,
Made miracles in the desert,
Received divine blessings from a god,
Who stopped talking to me.
Only at the end,
When I witnessed my young son screaming under his father's knife,
Only then
Did I realize our common suffering.
And I called out, “Avraham, Avraham, hold
back your knife!”
My voice trumpeted into the silence
of my sin.
Forgive me, Achti
For the sin of neglect
For the sin of abuse
For the sin of arrogance
Forgive me, Achti,
For the sin of not knowing your name.
Mohja Kahf, “Hagar Writes a Cathartic Letter to Sarah as an Exercise Suggested by her Therapist”
Dear Sarah, life made us enemies
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
What if we both ditched the old man?
He could have visitation rights with the boys
alternate weekends and holidays.
Yeah, especially the Feast of the Sacrifice—
everybody has forgotten anyway
that it began with me abandoned in the desert
watching my baby dehydrate for days—
I dared God to let us die.
Anyway, you and I,
we’d set up house,
raise the kids,
start a catering business, maybe.
You have brains.
So do I.
We could travel.
There are places to see
besides Ur and this nowheresville desert
with its tribes of hooligans
No. Your lips always thin when you disapprove,
like the mother I can hardly remember
from before I wound up in your house.
I was barely more than a girl. You are the one
Who brought me there from Egypt.
You used to laugh back then. In those days,
You could bear to look at me.
Oh, Sarah, you need years of therapy
Can’t you admit that what he did to me was cruel?
Admit it – for just one second
It won’t make you hate him forever
just long enough to know the world won’t fall apart.
Long enough to pity him, yourself, me
Laugh, Sarah, laugh
Imagine
God, the Possibility.
Sincerely Love,
Hagar