Today Jews around the world retell the story in parshahVayera. In addition to discussing this story, I wanted to share a Rosh Hashanah narrative that is both unique to my family and universal to the Jewish people.
My guess is that if you asked most modern Jews to identify the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah, an overwhelming majority would discuss the parasha for tomorrow, the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. Far fewer would identify the difficult reading for today.
In parshah Vayera, Sarah gives birth to Isaac in old age. With Isaac’s birth, the continuation of the covenant with Abraham through the generations is assured.
But there’s a problem. At Sarah’s urging, Abraham had fathered another son, Ishmael, with Hagar. Sarah now comes to view Ishmael as a threat to Isaac’s inheritance of the covenant, so she directs Abraham to banish his son and his son’s mother into the desert. Abraham is reluctant to thrust so cruel a fate upon Ishmael, his flesh and blood, and Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, but he puts aside his reservations when God tells Abraham to listen to his wife.
Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael off into the desert. They wander to Be’er Sheva, which means seven wells, but there is no water to be found. Despondent, Hagar abandons her son Ishmael under a bush and sits far away from him because she can’t bear to watch him die.
By now you might be wondering: "why are we spending so much time reading about Hagar and Ishmael on Rosh Hashanah? Shouldn’t we be getting back to the main narrative about Abraham, Sarah and Isaac? Let’s get back to our story."
Not so fast. The narrative stays with Hagar and Ishmael. God’s hears Ishmael’s cries, and dispatches His angel to check out the situation. Hagar despairs, but God tells her to get it together, letting her know that He has plans for Ishmael too and will make him a great nation. Once Hagar overcomes her despair, she can see the well before her, and mother and son survive. Not only that, the story says that God stays with Ishmael while he grows to manhood and becomes a hunter.
That’s it. The story doesn’t pick up with Isaac until the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah, when the chosen son, Isaac, has his own brush with death.
Now let me tell you another story which makes Rosh Hashanah bittersweet in my father’s family. In 1941, my great-grandparents, Mordecai and Sarah Leah Nosanchuk, and several of their children, including their youngest son, Mikhoel, still were living in White Russia, in what is now the country of Belarus. Mikhoel’s older brother, Beryl, my grandfather, had left for Canada in 1930. Mikhoel stayed behind to run the family business,a mill– before it was stripped from him by the communists–and to be near my great-grandparents.
Where I can, I will tell the story through the eyes of Mikhoel, who wrote a recently discovered handwritten memoir that has been translated from Yiddish within the last few weeks. This is the first time his memoir have ever been shared publicly and in English.
Mikhoel lived in Rubel, the poor village he loved, with a small Jewish population that had been decimated during the pogroms and depleted when villagers like my Grandfather left Rubel in search of a better life. My great-grandparents lived in Stolin, a larger town just a few miles away. Stolin and Rubel are located less than 20 miles away from Pinsk, very near the border of what is now Belarus, and the Ukraine.
By the spring of 1941, the Germans had launched their invasion of the Soviet Union, and they controlled this area of Byelorussia. In cooperation with the many local collaborators, the roving German killing squads, the Einsatzgruppen, murdered Jews in many towns in the region, and Stolin became the destination of thousands of refugees.
On a spring day, collaborators rounded up the Jewish men still living in the Rubel and in the space of a rainy afternoon, 53 men were murdered in Rubel. But Mikhoel evaded death, because he had left the village that morning to go fishing in the countryside. He soon learned what had happened and for the next few days, hid from the police on a wooded island outside of the town. As he describes it, "I lived like a wild animal with sharp ears and sharp eyes. I went deeper and deeper into the darkness."
While Mikhoel was hiding, a peasant by the name of Avdey Siroshik, who had once hid my grandfather during a pogrom, found Mikhoel, who describes the encounter in his memoir:
Without speaking, I approached him. When [Avdey] saw me he took me in his arms and began to cry. "Come to me my son, don’t be afraid," he said. "I won’t let them touch a single hair. An angel from heaven sent you to me. Come with me....I don’t want anyone to see you."
Mikhoel remained with Avdey for a few days, and after learning that the people in Stolin were still alive, he headed there to join his parents, his brother Moishl and sister Genia in Stolin. Stolin had become a refuge. As Mikhoel writes: "[t]he doors of Stolin were never closed....The house was packed. Even though mother had many problems of her own her door was open to every hungry person."
This was the world my family lived as the High Holidays approached in 1941. Mikhoel writes:
Rosh Hashanah was approaching and we were becoming more and more frightened. Usually at this time of year, we worried about having a good cantor, new clothes, or about cooking and baking....In the evening we went to synagogue one at a time. We were afraid to light large fires so we just lit a few candles at the Bimah. Yakov recited the prayers in a quiet voice. Like thieves we snuck to and from synagogue....Where was the holiday meal....[I]n this bitter time, even the men began to weep. Instead of shouting at the women to stop crying we cried with them.
Mikhoel then describes how things only got worse:
In the morning we went to synagogue. Behind closed windows we prayed like corpses wrapped in prayer shawls, weeping quietly. Everything was as if dead. Everybody cried through the Rosh Hashanah prayers. Our Moishl cried hard for the suffering and troubles that had befallen us. He didn’t know this was to be his last day alive.
While we were in the synagogue we noticed a lot of movement in the street. A few cars full of Germans drove by. They were wearing brown uniforms and red armbands. Everyone was petrified. We hadn’t yet finished praying, when they began running around in anger. They were carrying rifles. We looked out of the windows and it seemed they were running around like mad men preparing something....
....I went to [Moishl’s house]....Suddenly we heard footsteps on the bridge. The militia had arrived and began banging on the door. Frumke yelled "save the children!" But it was too late. Another militia was standing at the back door. Both entered the house with rifles....They shouted: "leave!" Not knowing to whom they were speaking I stood up. "Not you, sit down!" They dragged Moishl out....Around twelve o’clock in the Stolin jail two of the fifty [Jewish men who had been rounded up] died. One was Moishl," whose last words on Rosh Hashanah, were "Woe is me."
And things continued to get even worse. On Passover, the festival of freedom, the Jews of Stolin heard that a ghetto was being built. By Shavuot, which begins the harvest, the ghetto was completed and the Jews were forced to move–starving–into squalid, overcrowded quarters.
In the fall of 1942, the High Holidays again were approaching, but as Mikhoel describes, the gates were closing fast on the Jews in Stolin:
Soon the news came that everyone will be shot. How could that be? Small children, the elderly? This can’t be right! It can’t be true. The dark day arrived. The eve of Rosh Hashanah 1942, 7,000 Jewish souls were killed. The graves were ready. They stripped everyone naked and lined them up in rows. Then with machine guns, they shot them all.
I will never forget the last night in the ghetto. I was with my parents until three o’clock in the morning. We said good-bye, we kissed and cried....Father recited Kaddish. Mother washed, and put on the nicest dress she had, preparing herself for death. They sent me out of the house.
My great-grandmother, Sarah Leah, said to Mikhoel, "Get out of the house! You’ll survive. I promise you–you’ll survive! I’ll watch over you."
So Mikhoel left. He writes:
At that moment I could not believe the words spoken by my parents. It is hard to describe....To say goodbye–to kiss your beautiful mother and father and family for the last time, knowing that in hours we would all be dead...They wanted so much for me to remain alive.
On Rosh Hashanah, Mikhoel was hiding in a shallow hidden cellar with his friend Vella, and they held each other tight while they listened in anguish to the cries of their people being slaughtered by the thousands. More than once, he wanted to leave to join his parents, but his friend implored him to remain hidden and survive.
Mikhoel and the few survivors continued to hide, even while the S.S. searched for them repeatedly above the floorboards over the cellar. Mikhoel soon realized that he could not stay in hiding forever in the ghetto. He writes:
....What have I got to lose?....In the Jewish religion, the number 18 is represented by the letters for the word "Chai"–life. So I said, [on the 18th day] I am going whatever is going to happen to me. I told them: "If you hear a shot, then you know it’s me. But one thing I can tell you, this [yellow] star is off my back!" I ripped the star off my clothing and decided to crawl out of my hiding place and go out in the darkness like a wild animal. I felt I was walking on dead bodies....Where should I go?....At that moment I met a living person. I immediately approached him thinking another unlucky soul was walking around searching for a way out. I was shocked when in front of me stood a large Gentile, who had been the biggest thief in Stolin! I became cold with fear. The thief showed me the way out of the ghetto.
Mikhoel escaped from the ghetto and returns to Avdey and the island where he had successfully hid when the men of Rubel were killed. With a note of irony, he writes:
This is when my ‘golden days’ began. I felt like I was the only man in the world, wandering and hiding....I finally arrived in [the country] to my good friend, Avdey. He helped me and sent me with great care and protection to the partisans.
Mikhoel fought with the partisans through the end of the war and survived. He then marched into Berlin with the allies when the Nazis surrendered and eventually made his way to Canada to join my Grandfather. My Grandfather died on my second birthday, and from then on, Uncle Michael, as I called him, was like a grandfather to me. He was generous, kind, loving, and humble–a key person in my life until he died of cancer in 1984.
What can we learn from these two stories–one a biblical story of cruelty, despair, and compassion, and the other one, a modern story of an unimaginable atrocity and the miraculous survival of one man? Why tell these two stories today, on Rosh Hashanah, which is known as the day of memory, the birthday of the world, the day on which God created human beings in his own image–a day on which we embark on our own journey of repentance, reflection, and resolution?
The story of Ishmael calls on us to step outside of ourselves as Jews and read about the suffering of the other. At least on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Isaac is riding high. He’s the Chosen, while Ishmael is the outcast. Yet God visits his compassion on the outcast, empowering Hagar to save her son from a certain death.
In addition, the parasha reminds us–as if we needed reminding–of how precarious and uncertain life really is. One moment, Ishmael is Abraham’s only son, the next moment, Abraham expels him. One of my favorite images in our tradition is the verse by Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, "kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od." The whole world is a very narrow bridge. And as we try to navigate across that bridge, we find ourselves struggling to keep our footing. We teeter between being the insider and the outsider, between the protected and the outcast, between being Isaac and becoming Ishmael.
The story of my family–indeed the story of the Jewish people–is one in which we have too often been pushed forcibly over the edge of life’s narrow bridge. Certainly, when Michael hid in the forest and was saved by Avdey, he had more in common at that moment with Ishmael than with Isaac. When Michael and other members of my family had to whisper their Rosh Hashanah prayers in the dark after sneaking to the Great Synagogue of Stolin in stealth, they were outcasts.
In contrast, on this Rosh Hashanah, I can experience the holiday as an opportunity for self-absorption of the best kind–a time to reflect on our relationships, our priorities, our responsibilities, our shortfallings, and our sins. I know that after services today, I will be able to spend the remainder of the Holiday with family and friends, eating well, being comfortable and going to sleep in my own bed.
Vayera and my family story wrest me from my complacency and remind me that without warning, any one of us may suddenly find ourselves dangling on the edge of life’s narrow bridge. And it is this recognition and understanding that can help us to navigate through the difficult spiritual demands of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. For it is much easier to repent and to forgive others when we recall that we have been and again may become the other.
By retelling stories of how compassion helped outcasts overcome incredible adversity, we can become more empathic, more forgiving, and more understanding in our own lives. These stories remind us of our obligation to reach out to the powerless in our own lives, much like God came to the aid of Hagar, and Avdey twice rescued Michael, because we never know when our lives might be turned inside out.
Recognizing we may go from being among the protected to becoming an outcast should caution us against labeling or dismissing those who are outside our community. Today, I’d like to acknowledge one such person who is here today. Professor Katharina von Kellenbach is a professor of religious studies at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, a couple of hours from here. The fact that she lives so close to me is amazing when I tell you how our ancestral paths crossed in Byelorussia. Katharina’s uncle, Alfred Ebner, was the top Nazi official in the Pinsk region of Byelorussia responsible for overseeing the murder of the 20,000 Jews in the region, including the 53 Jews murdered in Rubel and the 7,000 Jews murdered in Stolin. Katharina has spent much of her adult life learning about this dark past–first struggling to get her family even to admit the truth of her Uncle’s murderous past, and now researching and writing about what her uncle did, how he and others managed to escape being convicted of war crimes in German courts–never acknowledging or giving voice to the suffering of the victims. That is why she has been learning all that she can about her uncle’s many victims so that their stories can be retold.
I had thought it would be more difficult to suggest to you that we are all Isaac and that we are all Ishmael. However, the tragic events of September 11 have underscored the point all too well. Along with the rest of America, on September 11–the same date on which the Stolin ghetto was liquidated in 1942–I watched in shock and fear as hatred and evil caused senseless, incomprehensible violence in New York City and Washington. As I scurried up Connecticut Avenue at noon on Tuesday, part of a surging exodus of professionals evacuated from downtown, I could not help but think that this isn’t the first time that a Nosanchuk has lived in fear on September 11. I certainly felt that my security had been shaken and that along with all Americans, I have felt life’s narrow bridge tremble beneath my feet.
Today, we once again mourn the incomprehensible loss of life caused by hatred and evil and find ourselves as Americans vulnerable to domestic attacks by terrorists because of who we are. These fears have forced me to cancel a trip that I was set to begin tomorrow evening. I was to fly with family members to Belarus to attend a memorial service on the gravesite in Stolin and dedicate a new memorial in Rubel that incorporates a millstone from the Nosanchuk mill. I would have seen the Rubel that Michael loved and which he painted in great detail from memory during the last decades of his life. I also was to meet the great-granddaughters of Avdey Siroshik and visit my great-grandparents’ home in Stolin, which is now the mayor’s residence. Unfortunately, I no longer have to fly overseas to stand on the site of an unfathomable tragedy.
At a time when we all share feelings of grief, despair, and anger caused by senseless deaths and violence, we find the God of Vayera in the countless acts of courage and compassion that we have all heard about over the course of the last week–two men carrying a wounded woman down more than 65 flights of stairs to safety, the hours-long lines at blood banks and volunteer centers, the candlelight vigils, and the demonstrations of solidarity with the U.S. in Berlin, Moscow, and even Tehran.
Ishmael and Hagar, and my Uncle Michael, survived because of the compassion of others and a recognition of their individual worth despite their being outcasts. Retelling their stories can prevent us from condemning others–be they German or Muslim, or different in some other way–simply because of their race or ethnicity alone. What the Nazis did to my family and what Islamic extremists have done to thousands of Americans is unfathomable and unforgivable, but the compassionate God of Vayera shows us what we can do to repair the world.
In closing, I want to read a poem the Israeli poet Dan Pagis that builds a bridge between the Bible and the Holocaust. The poem recalls another set of estranged brothers from the Book of Genesis– Cain and Abel. Its unfinished quality is fitting, because today, I have so many more questions than answers. And while God’s compassion ensured that Michael would be able to retell my family’s story, I now feel more strongly than ever that my story–and our story–have no ending.
Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freightcar
Here in this carload
I am Eve
With my son Abel
If you see my older boy
Cain son of Adam
Tell him that I
Shanah Tovah Tikatevu