Library of Sermons

In the days after the terror attacks of 9/11, my three sons were in the back of our minivan trying to make sense of what everyone around them was talking about constantly. The first question came from Ethan, then a four-year-old. He wanted to know how it could possibly have occurred that the planes had struck the twin towers by accident. He was immediately corrected by Reuven, then six - it didn’t happen by accident but deliberately. But why, he wondered, would anyone purposely send planes crashing into buildings, killing thousands of innocent people. David, then eight, responded that the attackers did so because they hated us. But why, he wondered, do they hate us.

I did my best to answer the question in real time, but I’ve spent more than twenty years wondering if I gave the correct answer. Why, indeed,would anyone target civilians, people who had no part in the decisions for which the perpetrators were seeking redress. I now think that perhaps the answer is the same for all types of evildoers. The names change, the faces change, but the motivation is constant.

The attackers of September 11th no longer saw their victims as human. They saw, in their victims, no reflection of themselves.

I want to say to those individuals that their actions stand as a rejection of an authentic, and ancient, strain of Islamic thought

that stretches back to the time of Mohammed himself. And it is communicated through the actions of our common ancestor, Abraham, whose life and teachings both faiths revere. Most important, it shows that both Judaism and Islam each saw the other as its doppelganger, its mirror image, its twin.

In our Torah reading today, Hagar and her son Ishmael are banished at Sarah’s insistence, her decision confirmed by G-d Himself. The Torah also makes clear that Abraham was troubled by this decision, following through because he was assured that someday Ishmael, today, would be father of a great nation. Here is where one of the most striking passages in the entire canon of midrash steps in. According to Pirke Rabbi Eliezer, Abraham pleaded with Sarah to be allowed to visit Ishmael. After all, he argued, Ishmael, like Isaac, is my son. Sarah allows Abraham to visit, with the provision that he not enter the tent or even descend from his camel. Think of it as having a conversation in your driveway with the car motor running.

When Abraham arrives, he inquires about Ishmael, but learns that he is not home. His wife, however, is, and her name is Aisha. Abraham decides he must test Aisha. Is she a good wife for Ishmael? To find out, he asks her to bring him water. If you think this sounds familiar, it’s because in the book of Genesis, a few chapters later, Abraham sends his senior servant to find a wife for Isaac. The servant’s test to make sure he picks the right girl? The one who agrees, when asked to provide water, not only agrees, but also waters the camels. Just to be clear, that’s a very big job. Camels drink gallons of water at a time, and have to be hydrated by drawing buckets of water from a well.

Aisha doesn’t even get to first base - she’s not giving Abraham any water at all. So he asks her to leave a coded message for Ishmael. The gist of the message - get a new wife.

Sometime later, Abraham visits again. The scenario unfolds the same way, but this time, Ishamel has a new wife. Her name - Fatimah. Fatimah, unlike Aisha, gives water to both Abraham and his camels. So Abraham leaves another coded message for Ishmael - this is the right wife. Abraham is going to have peace in his family, because just as it was crucial for Isaac to marry the right Jewish girl, Rebecca, it was also crucial for Ishmael to marry a proper Moslem girl, Fatimah.

This passage bears a striking similarity to a number of passages in traditional Islamic sources. The question in scholarship then becomes - who borrowed from whom? But here, in recent years, scholars reached a bold conclusion - Jewish and Moslem scholars drew from the same common sources. The literature which depicted both Jews and Moslems as worthy sons of Abraham found favor among both rabbis and imams.

To put it differently, at its inception, Islam saw people of other faiths in their full humanity. And this was reciprocated, at least in Jewish sources. Whatever tensions periodically existed between Judaism and Islam, the founding of the latter was a time of concord, of the knowledge and appreciation of shared humanity. The terror attacks of 9/11 would have had no place at the dawn of Islam.

Our challenge, in this chaotic world in which we find ourselves, is to return the crown to its former glory. And we cannot do this without reaching a place where Jews and Moslems see one another as allies and not antagonists, as engaged in collaboration, not conspiracy. We can’t accept as proof of progress since 9/11sponsorship of a golf tournament and the construction of opulent, modern buildings. There needs to be a genuine sea change in outlook and behavior. We must educate for peace, refusing to fall into absurd stereotypes about one another.

Against this backdrop, it is instructive to look to an overlooked incident in this mornnig’s portion, Vayera. Abraham, after his meeting with Abimelech and Phicol, decided to plant a tamarisk (eshel) in Beer-sheva.

Now what, you ask, is a tamarisk tree? It turns out that we definitively know the answer. The tamarisk is a large tree, called attal in Arabic, which grows to a significant height and has grayish green leaves. The leaves trap the moisture at night but release it during the day, producing a cooling effect.

Abraham, in other words, planted a tree that would provide respite for passers-by during the hottest part of the day, when it is vital for both people and animals to seek shelter from the sun. In fact, one could read the text as saying that Abraham planted not one tree but an entire stand of trees. This would make Abraham’s actions even more dramatic — he created a rest stop for travelers that would benefit everyone, friend and foe alike.

On the surface, Abraham had little reason to care about “the other.” After all, he had seen his wife Sarah taken both by Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and Abimelech, king of Gerar; been forced into battle to rescue Lot from captivity during a war of local chieftains; witnessed the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; and fought with Abimelech’s people over wells of water.

In short, Abraham lived in a world that was as chaotic and unsettled as our own. The primary difference between the world of four millennia ago and our own is primarily that the scale of our wars, and their scope of destruction, is exponentially greater than in the past.

Yet against this background, Abraham chose to sow seeds of peace. He no doubt took this as part of his mission that through himself and his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed. As Abraham’s descendants, we are bidden to follow his example.

In today’s world of hatred and division, one can choose to exploit hatred or one can choose to pursue peace. Ultimately, however, only the latter path can be said to enjoy the imprimatur of Jewish teaching and tradition.