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| Painting out our experience of the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar at Explora-Torah's program "At Each Other's Throats; In Each Other's Arms" with Elizabeth Yaari |
A Moving Midrash
by Deborah Globus (c)2014
Isaac and Ishmael at their father’s grave. In Abraham’s place is an overturned
chair. Thus the stage is set in the
bibliodrama Elizabeth is leading.
These two (half) brothers have not seen each other in no one
knows how many years. What do they say
to one another? You – Isaac, what do you
say? You – Ishmael, what do you say?
We answer, in character, each of us imagining how it
went.
One of us suggests, “I’ve missed you brother; let us make
peace”
Another imagines, “What are your intentions?”
Still another sees it this way, “This is my land. Be gone!”
But I know this scene.
I have been here before. And
suddenly I am no longer at “the grave” but in a hospital room, years
earlier. In the bed is my brother, 39
years old and steadily poisoning himself with alcohol. Within a year he would be dead.
There’s another person in the room, in the corner, seated by
my brother’s head. I hardly notice,
overcome as I am by the tragedy that is my brother’s life, his emotional pain
and failing organs, the induced coma.
The figure in the corner speaks to me and slowly comes into
view. It’s my sister, absent from my
life these last five years. Her choice,
not mine. She is changed, no longer the
teenager she was when she left the family.
Her face, like I imagine mine, is warped with grief, reminders of the
hurts we all carry.
I don’t actually recognize her. I wonder how this nurse knows my name. Why she is staring at me? Expectantly.
Waiting.
Waiting for my response.
Waiting for recognition. Like
Ishmael across his father’s grave, waiting, possibly hoping, for recognition
from the baby brother he left behind so many years ago.
At last I see her for who she is and years of longing and
pain come rushing into a room already too full with sorrow. I stutter, say hello, flounder for what comes
next. She quietly steps out of the room,
leaving me to my visit with our brother who cannot even know I’m there.
The recognition came, but not quickly enough. And in that hesitation – and the flustered
awkwardness that followed – was a hurt so deep that it became a chasm, across
which we still haven’t reached.
I know how the meeting of the brothers went.
We end our bibliodrama once again in front of an overturned
chair and two more behind it, upright, turned slightly towards one
another. One is labeled Isaac and the
other Ishmael. The brothers, a chasm
apart, offer a blessing to one another only they have no voices to speak. We, the participants, are asked to write
their words.
And echoing through the ages, from one set of broken
siblings to another, comes this benediction to my lips:
May we
find our way past these times of misunderstanding and find our way to peace.
