Parashat Vayera: Learning to See the Other

In the beginning of Parashat Vayera, Abraham interrupts his reflections, and some comentarist say even a moment of connection with the Lord, to welcome three strangers who appear in the heat of the day.

It’s a brief yet decisive moment: the encounter with the ineffable —with God, for the believer— is revealed in the encounter with another human being, in our ability to see the other even amid our own pain and worries.

Our sages teach that God appeared to Abraham while he was still recovering from his circumcision —in the midst of physical pain. Yet even in his frailty, he rises and runs toward the visitors. Vayera offers a central lesson: even in confusion, even in suffering, we cannot stop seeing the other.

Abraham teaches that spirituality is not escape. The divine is not found outside of life but within it —in the way we look at others, in how we treat those who cross our path, and in how we resist the temptation to close our hearts.

Later in the parasha, Isaac is born to his elderly parents. He is circumcised, and Sarah, both embarrassed and astonished, names him Yitzhak —“he will laugh”— because she senses how others will laugh at her.

But in that household, Isaac is not the only child. There is Ishmael, the son born to Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant, whom Sarah herself had given to Abraham years earlier when she could not conceive. What had once seemed an act of selflessness now becomes unbearable. The presence of Hagar and Ishmael in Sarah’s home becomes intolerable. And so we witness one of the most painful scenes in Torah: Sarah demands that Abraham send them away into the desert. And Abraham, in silence, obeys —giving them bread and water, and letting them go.

Let us pause and look through Sarah’s eyes:

Abraham, the man chosen to begin a new chapter in humanity’s story, is promised descendants as numerous as the stars. His wife Sarai —who had left everything behind to follow that divine call— cannot bear a child. In her mind, she is the one preventing the fulfillment of God’s promise. Out of shame and desperation, she gives her servant to her husband, saying:

“Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I will be built up through her.” (Genesis 16:2)

That Hebrew word ebanéh —“be built up”— can also mean “perhaps I can rebuild myself, restore my dignity, through her.” But Sarai cannot live with what follows. Her generosity collapses under the weight of her own pain.

She watches her husband’s child growing in another woman’s womb —a woman who did not share her journey, her sacrifices, or her covenant— and she cannot bear it. When Hagar grows proud, Sarai demands that Abraham act, and he responds coldly:

“Your maidservant is in your hands; do with her as you please.” (Genesis 16:6)

He leaves her alone with her anger, her jealousy, and her sorrow.

The classic commentaries elevate Sarah, justifying her, defending “our own.” Bereshit Rabbah says that Hagar was Pharaoh’s daughter, that Pharaoh himself had said, “Better for my daughter to be a maidservant in this house than a mistress elsewhere.” Other midrashim claim that Abraham needed two women: one for beauty and one for childbirth. Sarah, among noble women, called Hagar “the unfortunate one.”

We may understand the reasoning —but we cannot feel at peace with it.

Because what happens next is brutal. Sarah, consumed by bitterness, casts Hagar and her son into the wilderness. Yet God hears their cries. And it is Hagar —not Sarah— who becomes the first woman in Torah to receive a direct divine revelation after Eve.

This story, however, leaves behind deep fractures: between father and son, between brothers, between women —Sarah and Hagar— who never meet again. Their separation echoes through generations.

A midrash in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer imagines that years later, Abraham returned to see Ishmael. Though he swore to Sarah he would not dismount his camel, he longed only to look upon his son. He never met him, but Ishmael’s home, the midrash says, was filled with blessing after that visit.

And when Sarah dies, Abraham remarries a woman named Keturah, whom our sages identify as Hagar —for her fragrance was as sweet as the ketoret, the sacred incense. In this way, time heals what human weakness once broke. Abraham returns to the woman he sent away —the mother of his first son.

Yet only one reconciliation never takes place: Sarah and Hagar never meet again, neither in Torah nor in any later midrash. Their silence remains.

And perhaps that silence speaks to us today. These two women were caught in a system that turned their bodies into battlegrounds of honor and shame. A man without sons was a disgrace; a barren woman was the cause of that disgrace. A servant could not refuse; a mistress could not bear to be replaced. Both trapped in roles they did not choose.

There is a modern midrash —a poem by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, the first woman ordained in the Renewal movement— that reimagines Sarah speaking to Hagar. She calls her Achti, “my sister” in Arabic:

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.

Achti,

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,”

Could not witness my own blindness.

But you, my sister,

You beheld angels,

Found miracles in the desert,

Received blessings from a God

Who stopped speaking to me.

Only when I saw my son

Bound beneath his father’s knife,

Only then did I understand

Our shared suffering.

And I cried out,

“Abraham, Abraham, hold back your knife!”

My voice broke 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 not knowing your name.

This modern midrash gives voice to Sarah’s teshuvah —her repentance— imagined in the moment she finally grasps Hagar’s pain, perhaps when she sees Abraham lifting a knife over their son.

Even if that scene never happened, Torah hints that after the binding of Isaac, something broke between Abraham and Sarah. They no longer shared a tent. Distance entered their lives.

How much healing might have been possible if these two women could have seen each other fully —if they could have spoken, not as rivals, but as sisters bound by pain and circumstance.

Maybe that is our task today —our own covenant of Abraham in modern times: to sustain our humanity in dehumanizing times.

To seek justice without losing compassion.

To defend life without extinguishing tenderness.

To keep seeing faces —to keep recognizing the humanity of those around us, even when fear tells us to look away, and try to be emphatic and inclusive.

We are the children of one who opened his tent in the wilderness, trusting that the stranger might bring blessing —but we are also human enough to know how easily fear and resentment can close that tent again.

Perhaps, in the heat of the day, amid our own exhaustion and uncertainty, a gentle breeze still passes by —reminding us that the Divine still lingers at the doorway of our tents, waiting to be seen in the face of the other.

Ken Yehi Ratzon — May it be so.

Rabbi Gustavo Geier