Sarai doesn’t do just one thing to Hagar; rather, it seems that she treats her badly time after time. Hagar finally runs away because she decides she has taken enough of Sarai’s harsh treatment. How do we make the decision that enough is enough? There are two things to consider here (i) When to draw the line and say “no more!” and (ii) What constitutes good reasons for leaving a situation or person. Here the question is not only one of quantity, but also a matter of deciding what factors are the relevant ones in the first place. For instance, two people might both ‘draw the line’ at eating one candy bar per day – but the relevant factor to consider for one person might be health, while the relevant factor for the other might be the cost.
In verses 4-6 Sara speaks to Avram complaining of Hagar and Avram says to her “do what you want to do” – Sarai then treats her badly. Hagar then runs away. In this passage Avram seems to take no responsibility for addressing the situation – is he then partly responsible for Hagar’s leaving? Our actions can have consequences we don’t foresee, but does that absolve us from responsibility toward the outcome? The discussion plan “Consequences and Responsibility” explores the relationship between actions we take, their consequences and our responsibility toward the outcome.
If I give you permission to play ball outside the house and a ball goes through the window, who is responsible for the broken window?
You loosen the wheel on the bike of someone intending to scare them, but they ended up getting hurt. Are you responsible for them being hurt?
You help your friend with their homework. Are you responsible for their good grade?
You introduce two people and they become friends. Are you responsible for their friendship?
Your parents don’t give you permission to go to your friend’s sleepover party and your friend is angry with you. Are your parents responsible for the anger?
You know your friend is shoplifting but don’t say anything to anyone. Later, she gets caught and gets into trouble. Are you at all responsible?
Your sister stays out after curfew . Your parents ask your opinion on what to do, but you tell them to do whatever they want. They ground her for a whole month. Are you responsible for her harsh treatment?
You tell your parents that your brother has started smoking. They ask you to try to get him to stop. Are your parents living up to their responsibility?
You give a beggar a dollar. They buy a lottery ticket and win. Are you responsible for them now being wealthy?
Your friends ask to borrow some money. You think they are going to buy cigarettes. They do. If they get sick, are you responsible for their health?
When you decide to move, does it make a difference if your reason for making the move is tied to leaving behind the place you are currently in, or tied to the place you heading toward? Sometimes the place we are heading towards is also a place we once chose to leave (coming home after camp, leaving the home town where we grew up, then coming back there later in life). Sometimes that ‘return’ is from a place our ancestors left generations before (Jews going to live in Israel, second or third generation immigrants returning to their parents/grandparents’ country of birth). Is a return to place always motivated by the desire to be there or can there be other reasons to ‘return home’? Susan Babbitt, writing on American slavery notes that the decision to leave often also involves a bold step of imagination. In going to this involves the capacity to imagine one’s life differently from how it is, and perhaps to imagine yourself capable of things you have not yet done. To have both to desire change and some imagined life that you are moving toward. In going from imagination also comes into play, as it may involve playing out the consequences of staying where we currently are. Of course both might be the matter of implusive action (without much forethought) – but is that the case here? Hagar has left Avram’s house and she is ‘on the road to Shur’ – heading back toward her place of birth, Egypt. It looks like she is fleeing from one home and returning to another home. Yet she turns around and returns to the place of conflict – her home with Avram and Sarai (and that doesn’t seem to turn out too well for her!). These discussion plans explore going form and going to and the reasons we might have for making these journeys.
N.B. You might like to get students to actually do the first five questions/instructions before they talk about each one.
1. Ok – try to laugh. Can you do it? If you did, where in the body did the laughter take place?
2. Can you laugh from your belly?
3. Can you laugh with your eyes?
4. Can you laugh silently?
5. Can you laugh inwardly without showing anything outside? If so, where is the laughter happening?
6. Is there a difference between laughing inwardly and laughing silently?
7. What is a difference between laughing to yourself and laughing at yourself? Does the actual laughter feel different in each case? If so, in what way is it different?
8. Can you laugh without intending to?
9. Can you laugh without being aware you are doing it?
10. Could you be mistaken about whether you are laughing?
11. Can you hold back laughter?
12. If you suppress your laughter, have you still laughed?
19 When you besiege a city for many days to wage war against it to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them, for you may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Is the tree of the field a man, to go into the siege before you?
20 However, a tree you know is not a food tree, you may destroy and cut down, and you shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until its submission.
While the verses themselves deal specifically with cutting down trees during war, the Sages extended their meaning to cover all forms of wasteful destruction. They taught that anyone who deliberately wastes our resources, either natural or man-made, violates the law.
For over 3,000 years Jews have been concerned about the environment. Although these instructions are specifically directed to the care of fruit trees during war, the lesson gleaned from them has far-reaching implications for life on this planet. Our ancestors understood that life depends upon preserving the land. Although they didn’t use words like “ecology,” “global warming,” or “environmental crisis,” they clearly understood and respected these concepts.
How, in this age of technology, can we ensure that we don’t do more damage to our natural resources-our drinking water, our rivers, the soil, or the air?
How do you care for your environment within the school/institutions you are part of? Could you reduce wastage of resources further? If so, how?
Make a ‘Handmade Midrash’ that draws on how you understand this text in light of the distinctions you explored in your community of inquiry. Make your midrash from colored construction paper by tearing forms out of the paper and sticking them onto a background sheet of paper.
Handmade Midrash is a process of interpretation developed by Jo Milgrom. Her process has a number of stages:
Text Study
Creation of an artwork
Discussion in small groups
Reflective writing on what you can learn through looking at what you created more carefully.
Return to the text
The artwork is created through tearing paper and attaching it to a background. It is not about creating a realistic kind of picture, but capturing ideas and representing them – often through symbolic representation –the torn paper represents ideas in relation to one another. It doesn’t require you to be ‘good at art’ as you can represent ideas through abstract shapes, a blob, color, etc.
After you have created your midrash, divide into small groups to share what you have done and what it means. Here what other people see in what your midrash. Describe what was the hardest and easiest elements to do, what role color plays in your midrash, why you placed things where you did, how the parts relate to one another, etc.
After the discussion, take some time to do some reflective writing. You might like to think about some of the following prompts: Did anything surprise you in what you constructed? In what people saw in it? How did the ideas come together? How does what is happening in the picture relate to your own feelings and thoughts about the world you live in? How does it relate to your own feelings and thoughts about the Divine human connection?
