Rosh Hashanah 5779 Tobias Divack Moss Hagar’s Disorientation A question for the parents here, or anyone who has cared for a little one. Can you remember that bittersweet moment when you hoisted the child up on your shoulder, and said to yourself, “ooph! Never again, this kid is just too old, too big for this.” No doubt that last shoulder ride occurred well before the child was sixteen, the likely age of Ishmael in the story we read today. Hagar gave birth 14 years before Sarah did. So Ishmael must have been around sixteen years old at the festival for Yitzhak’s weaning. The Torah says that Ishmael makes some playful, perhaps inappropriate, gesture to Yitzhak, which infuriates Sarah. Sarah forces Avraham to cast out Hagar and Ishmael. In a scene that hardly seems possible, the text says that Avraham sends Hagar away carrying water, bread, and big ol’ Ishmael on her shoulder. This sounds like an unbearable load. Just a verse later, Hagar tashlech et ha-yeled—tashlech like tashlich. Hagar casts off Ishmael under some small trees. Many interpreters and translators try to avoid the physical implausibility of the scene. Some say, no no no, this actually took place earlier, when Ishmael was still a toddler; others pick up on ambiguities in the Hebrew verbs and grammar, and contend that Ishmael was just walking along with Hagar. I too see the implausibility of the scene and these textual ambiguities. For me, they point to the central theme of this story from Hagar’s perspective: disorientation. Hagar’s expulsion marks an unanticipated, unfathomable moment that completely upends her station in life, her worldview, her role, her purpose. In such moments of disorientation—the death of a loved one, losing a job, learning of an illness, the breakdown of an intimate relationship—in those deeply disruptive moments we don’t see things as they truly are. Desperately, we grasp at some understanding of an unintelligible moment. In Hagar’s disorientation, she no longer sees her son as a sixteen-year-old adolescent on the brink of independence, a na’ar in the Hebrew. Rather, she reverts back to basic motherly instincts; Ishmael is just a yeled again, a little boy, perhaps even just a toddler in her eyes. In this delirium, it’s no wonder that Hagar gets lost in the desert. When their water runs out, she casts Ishmael under a tree, and sits off a ways so as not to see him die. Hagar cries to God. The way in which God remedies her disorientation is instructive. First, God orients her towards purpose: Arise, stand up that adolescent, na’ar, hold him by the hand. I will make him a great nation. Then, in the following verse, God opens Hagar’s eyes. She sees a well, one that was perhaps there all along.
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Pay attention to the order of God’s consolation. First, God provides Hagar with a vision to work towards: Ishmael himself as progenitor of a nation. Only then, after orienting Hagar towards a new purpose, does God guide her towards the physical necessity: water. Had a disoriented Hagar received the water, what good would it have done? They’d have wandered blindly a bit further and then been without water once more. When we move without purpose, what difference does it make what resources, money, skills, or connections we have? Without a vision of where we are going, our means are meaningless. Said another way, when we have purpose, it is amazing what we can achieve even with material scarcity. In Victor Frankl’s ever-relevant work, Man’s Search for Meaning, he quotes Friedrich Nietzsche about the primary importance of having a vision. The famous quote goes: He who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how. Hagar’s why had been bound to Abraham, to raising Ishmael as Abraham’s son. With this why traumatically removed, she could not function anymore. When she cries out to God, Hagar discovers her new why. Suddenly she can deal with the difficult how of the desert. Finally, she can see the well from which to draw strength and sustenance, and the true nature of her 16-year old son. During this particular year, reading this story about an adolescent’s near-death by thirst, I was reminded of the Thai soccer team that was trapped in a pitch-black cave for days on end. How did they keep their composure? How did they not fall into a disoriented panic? In various interviews, they talk about their coach’s steadiness; the way he gave the boys direction; how they all turned towards prayer and meditation; how they emerged from the whole episode with a greater sense of purpose, with a greater appreciation of the unique value of their lives. As we spend these 10 days together in prayer, our tradition does not go easy on us. We don’t bask in comforts. Rather, our tradition asks us to recall the most disorienting moments of the past year. In fact, the oft-repeated word chet linguistically derives from missing the mark or target. Our moments of chet could be called moments of disorientation, moments where we did not know where to direct ourselves, or even worse, we knew the right direction but chose otherwise. The path of teshuvah asks us to reengage with our moments of disorientation, to come together here, and like Hagar, to cry out to God about our wayward wanderings of the last year. We hope to find our highest purpose. Our communal liturgy places God as the ultimate why, but our individual task is to articulate a more personal why. As we declare God’s sovereignty, we each ask ourselves: what can I work towards that will help to manifest God’s glory/presence on earth? As we pray for a world redeemed, we each ask ourselves: what vision will enable me to act morally in the year to come?
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Just like the year that has passed, this year will have its full share of difficulty. Disruption. Disappointment. Disaster. Disorientation. May we each find our unique vision and individual purpose, a why that will guide us through those troubled times, and enable us to celebrate the sweetness and goodness of life. Shanah Tovah.
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