(November 22, 1999) Ishmael's disinheritance is not categorical
The portion of Toldot, Genesis 25:19-28:9, is read on Shabbat, November 13

There is a famous oracle in the portion Toldot in which God says to Rebecca: "Two nations are in your womb, / Two separate peoples shall issue from your body; / One people shall be mightier than the other, / And the older shall serve the younger" (Genesis 25:23).
The two "nations" are, of course, Jacob (alias Israel) and Esau (alias Edom). Later
in the portion, coached by his mother, Jacob steals from their father, Isaac, the blessing meant for his brother: "Let peoples serve you and nations bow down to you; Be master over your brothers, and let your mother's sons bow to you" (27:29), There is nothing Esau can do to reverse the blessing bestowed on Jacob. He has good reason to bear a grudge against his brother.
Jacob and Esau, rival siblings, became important symbols of exclusivity and patrimony in Judaism and Christianity. Christians and Jews vied for identification with Jacob/Israel and for scriptural justification of their competing claims to God's promise. Even in the midrash and liturgical poetry written in Islamic lands during the Middle Ages, Esau retains his place as Israel's chief foe, Until relatively recent times, the sibling straggle that dominated Jewish life was the struggle between Jacob and Esau - the conflict between Jews and Christians.
But time reorients symbolism. In our own day, it is no longer the Jacob-Esau conflict that is dominant; another sibling rivalry has taken center stage, and other Biblical oracles seem more relevant. The more salient rivalry today traces back one Biblical generation to Isaac and Ishmael.
We will recall that, desperate for a child, Sarah gives her maidservant, Hagar, to braham. But when Hagar conceives, Sarah becomes jealous, and to avoid her mistress's wrath, Hagar escapes into the desert, where she receives an oracle from an angel of God:
"Go back to your mistress and submit to her harsh treatment ... [for] I will greatly
increase your offspring, / And they shall be too many to count. / Behold, you are
with child, / and you shall bear a son; / You shall call him Ishmael, / for the Lord
has paid heed to your suffering" (16:9-12). Later on, God reassures Abraham
himself that his son will not be abandoned: "As for Ishmael" (the ancestor of the
Arabs, according to the Targum to Genesis 37:25), "I hereby bless him ... I will
make of him a great nation. But my covenant T will maintain with Isaac, whom
Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year" (17:18-21). After Isaac's birth,
when Sarah demands the ouster of Hagar and Ishmael, God reassures Abraham
again: "Do not be distressed over the boy or your slave;... I will make a nation of
him, too, for he is your seed" (21:12-13).

How may we compare the Isaac-Ishmael rivalry with the one in Toldot?
A connection is suggested near the end of the previous Torah portion, Hayyei Sarah, when the banished Ishmael suddenly and mysteriously returns to join Isaac in burying their father (25:9). Generations of commentators were surprised by Ishmael's reappearance and interpreted it as meaning that he had repented. But what were Ishmael's sins? The midrash draws on the verse: "Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing [metzahek]" (21:9). The kindest interpretation of this word holds that, as a child, Ishmael had taunted his
brother Isaac. A harsher view holds that Sarah saw him committing idolatry. Another rabbi says that it was adultery, and yet another, murder (Bereshit Rabbah 53). Clearly perplexed by the banishment of an innocent Ishmael, the rabbis used their exegetical wisdom to divine his guilt.
But Rabbi Sa'adyah Gaon, living among Arabs in Baghdad in the 1Oth century, rejects the stringent explanations and prefers the simplest, most literal one: teased. Moreover, Sa'adyah adds, Ishmael could not have been sinful, or God would not have listened to his voice in the wilderness and saved him (21:17). He translates (into Arabic) Sarah's outburst "the son of that slave shall not share in the  inheritance with my son Isaac" (21:10) as "the son of this  aidservant shall not dwell together with my son Isaac." Sarah did not have the right to disinherit Ishmael, Sa'adyah explains. The pioneer of Judeo-Arabic culture in the Middle Ages held temperate views about the Isaac-Ishmael conflict.
As I read the text, Ishmael's disinheritance is not categorical. Even the embittered Esau understood this. At the end of Toldot, Esau watches his father send Jacob off to Paddan-Aram to find a wife from among his mother's kin, lest he marry a Canaanite woman. "So Esau went to Ishmael and took to wife, in addition to the [Canaanite] wives he had, Mahalat the daughter of Ishmael" (28:9).
As Isaac and Ishmael struggle over patrimony today, Jews should recognize Ishmael's inherent rights. Extremists on both sides of the conflict must loosen their grip on exclusivity and, transcending sibling rivalry, come together - as Isaac and Ishmael did at their father's burial - to share an ancient promise. It seems today, more than a year ago, that this prospect of sharing may be near.

Mark R. Cohen, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, is the author of "Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages."

Reprinted with Permission from the Jerusalem Report
 

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