MOCKERY
MANIFESTED: PARSHAT VAYEIRA
Shira
Smiles shiur – November 6, 2011/Cheshvan 9, 5772
Dedicated
in Loving Memory of Mrs.
Miriam Hochstein Z'L
She and her Husband supported
and nurtured 18 institutions including Aish Hatorah,
Neveh
Yerusalyem, Ohr Somayach and the Yeshiva of the Hafetz Hyim
in America and
Yeshiva Kerem BeYavneh! Her larger-then-life life of 98 plus years
inspires us
all.
Summary
by Channie Koplowitz Stein
What is the quality of
laughter? This is the question that
lies at the crux of one of Avraham‘s major trials in this
week’s Parsha. Sarah
hears Ishmael, Avraham‘s son and her surrogate son
“laughing”, and she insists
Avraham send the mother Hagar and the son out of their household.
Avraham
hesitates. After all, Ishmael is his son. He loves him with a
father’s love,
and Avraham is the quintessential man of chessed. Yet when Hashem
validates
Sarah’s judgment and commands Avraham to listen to
Sarah’s voice, Avraham rises
early in the morning, suppresses his own innate compassion, and rushes
to do
Hashem’s bidding. The ability to suspend personal judgment,
explains Rav
Menachem Freeman in Shaarei
Derech, and submit to the will
and judgment
of a higher Authority is the definition of passing a spiritual trial.
When one
is faced with challenges, one must “let go and let
God,” for God tailor made
this trial for you to push through, for you to become stronger and
reach
higher.
At this point, had
Ishmael done anything terrible to spur
Sarah to this judgment? Not really; there was merely laughter.
According to
most commentators, it was the quality of this laughter that made Sarah
wary.
Laughter that lightens a situation and that brings joy into a household
is
quite positive. But mocking, scoffing laughter is destructive.
According to
Rabbi Belsky in Einei Yisroel,
Sarah was more attuned to these nuances
than was Avraham Avinu, for her laughter at the news that she was to
bear a son
bore a slight tinge of this disbelief. However, in her case, although
Hashem
reprimanded her for the laughter, she knew it would not affect her fear
of
Heaven. (Rabbi Belsky’s interpretation of lo
tzochakti, ki yerayah,
“I
have not mocked, for my fear of Heaven would not be
affected.”)
But now Sarah was more
able to recognize the mocking laughter
which contains the seeds of irreverence, of throwing off the yoke of
Heaven,
than Avraham was. This is the quality she recognized in
Ishmael’s laughter, for
this mocking was the first step in throwing off the yoke of Heaven and
slowly
sliding into transgressing the three cardinal sins of idolatry, sexual
immorality, and murder. Better to remove it from the house than to let
it grow
and infect her own son, Yitzchak, who was destined to be the conduit of
Abraham’s legacy.
Didn’t Avraham
Avinu also see that Ishmael was headed down
the wrong path? What were the differences in the approaches of Avraham
and
Sarah? According to the Ktav
Sofer, Avraham was aware of
Ishmael’s
defficiencies, but he was debating whether he should keep
Ishmael home
where his own influence might succeed in bringing about a change, or
whether he
needed to protect Yitzchak from Ishmael’s influence. Sarah
understood that it
is easier to throw off the yoke of Heaven than to do teshuvah, Rav
Sternbach
notes. Further, as Rav Bick points out in Chayei
Moshe, she understood
that when someone has the background of a fine Jewish home and then
nevertheless begins mocking, the scoffer seldom does teshuvah.
Therefore, she
insisted on protecting Yitzchak. Nevertheless, Avraham was not ready to
abandon
his son. As Rabbi Gamliel in Tiv
Torah points out, Avraham waited
for
Hashem’s judgment and actual command before banishing Ishmael
from the
household. But Avraham never abandoned his son. Avraham visited him,
and
eventually, Ishmael did teshuvah, albeit well after Yitzchak was fully
grown.
Rabbi Nissel, in Rigshei
Lev, discusses the
paradigmatic roles of Avraham and Sarah as male and female. The
relationship
between husband and wife, he posits, is the relationship between heaven
and
earth from the time of creation. Heaven is by definition separated from
the
earth and from the practical. Yet it rains down ideas and bounty from
those
heights. The earth, by definition, receives the rain, filters out the
impurities, absorbs it and uses it to create and grow new life.
Analogously,
the male rushes forward with many esoteric ideas and spirituality, but
the
woman must ground him so that these lofty ideas can be translated into
practical use to raise things up.
In a similar vein, Rabbi
Goldwicht, one of the founders of Yeshivat
Kerem BeYavneh, in his sefer
Asufat Maarachot cites our sages
and
adds the following. Man is Iish
and woman is Ishah.
When a man and a woman join together in holiness, when they keep God
within the
relationship, the Heavenly Presence resides with them. However, if they
remove
God, the Yud
(i) from Iish
and the Heh
from Ishah,
(that together form the holy name of God, Yud
and Heh)what
remains is the letters for a fire which will consume them, esh,
(the
I-Sh
with different vocalizations). Therefore, to do God’s work,
man
and woman must work together.
Avraham was extremely
spiritual, but he needed the practical
wisdom of Sarah to enable that spirituality to pass on to future
generations,
He needed her binah yesairah,
the additional insight and understanding
Hashem bequeathed to woman upon her creation. Sarah understood,
continues Rabbi
Nissel, that she must nurture the spirituality of Avraham, but to do so
would
require putting on brakes, pruning back the spiritual garden of her
home so
that what grows remains healthy. Sarah understood that
Ishmael’s mockery was
introducing the seeds of weeds into this beautiful garden. These weeds
needed
to be removed before they would overtake the garden itself.
Hashem’s stated
purpose in informing Avraham of the impending
destruction of Sodom was that he should “command his children
and his household
after him that they keep the way of Hashem.” Sarah, says the Siach
Yitzchak,
was enabling Avraham to actualize Hashem’s prophecy through
her advice to
banish Ishmael, to ensure that Yitzchak and future generations would
keep
Hashem’s ways even after their father’s death.
Avraham’s trial
here was extremely difficult. We all have
negative influences that can invade our homes and God forbid, take them
over.
Thank God it is generally not a wayward son. When that is the case,
like
Avraham we must seek the advice of a higher authority on how to
proceed. We,
especially women as the protectors of the hearth, must be extremely
vigilant.
But we have other negative influences that may invade our homes. We
must be
willing to banish these influences from our homes, whether it is
prurient media
reflective of immoral and depraved elements in our culture, or people
exerting
undue negative influence on us or on our children. Above all, we must
be
careful of our speech lest we speak mockingly and disparagingly of
others,
especially in front of our children. Who knows what damage we may do
not only
to those we are disparaging, but especially to our children who may no
longer
view other people or institutions with the respect they deserve. Who
knows how
their behavior will be affected by our thoughtless but mocking remarks
about
our brethren or about particular observances. Mockery has no place in a
Jewish
home. It’s only purpose is to destroy. A Jewish home must be
filled with
respect between husband and wife, and for God’s children and
all of God’s
Torah.
May Hashem grant us the
wisdom to recognize the negative
influences in our homes, give us the strength to banish them, and help
us
nurture and grow our families so that they continue to build on the
legacy of
Avraham Avinu.