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In another action packed parasha for our ancient ancestors, Vayera (Genesis 18:1 – 22:24) opens with Abraham and Sarah livng in Canaan. Abraham has one child, Ishmael, by Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant. God has just told Abraham that he will have a son in his and Sarah’s old age. His response was to laugh. This is now echoed by Sarah’s laughter when she overhears three ‘messengers/angels’ to whom Abraham has offered hospitality, assure Abraham that he and Sarah will have a son.

These messengers are busy characters as they next move on to Sodom and Gomorrah in the area where the Dead Sea is today. Lot, Abraham and Sarah’s nephew is living there amongst people’s that, we are told, are all evil. Abraham, famously challenges God’s decree to destroy the cities when there is the possibility that there might be any righteous people there. Lot’s family are given the opportunity to flee. The story probably combines a natural event and gives it a supernatural twist replete with symbols and folklore to teach of the effects ofr moral depravity.

There is a repeat of the last parasha’s ‘sister’ scene and then Isaac is – almost anticlimactically – introduced to the world. Almost immediately, we are told of the difficulties in the relationships between Isaac and Ishmael, Sarah and Hagar and the harsh resolution of the matter, with Hagar and Ishmael being banished.

After a brief section dealing with the relationship between Abraham and Abimelech, the parasha concludes with the Akedah – the binding of Isaac.

commentary

This past weekend was one of anniversaries that seemed to be rather poignant. It was the first anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat. It was the tenth yahrtzeit of the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. It was also, Remembrance Sunday that marks the deaths of all our war-dead of the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries.

I was struck by the BBC now defining Remembrance Sunday that marks the deaths of all our war-dead of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries who fought for peace and freedom. I am not sure whether one needed such clarification in the past but such are the shifting sands of moral thought over time concerning conflict that the BBC now think it necessary to clarify who we are remembering.

Concerning, Arafat’s death, the BBC in its first bulletin of the day to mark the event mystified me. The feature said that it would focus on the situation one year on. It began with a widow of one of Arafat’s generals who mourns everyday at Arafat’s grave, it showed he security wall and that was the tone of doom and gloom. The only Israeli featured was a human rights lawyer and the five words chosen from one sentence of an interview backed-up the reporter’s case. Forgive me if I am wrong but is that the situation one year on? Those same reporters predicted that right now after disengagement from Gaza, there would be civil war in Israel, anarchy in Gaza and economic meltdown for both Israelis and Palestinians. Now, I know that a final solution is still many years away but all of the aforementioned has not occurred and there is even a ceasefire that seems to be holding with Hamas. Why does the BBC not want there to be anything positive in the region?

At the rally that attracted tens of thousands to Rabin Square, an echo of that ten years before it, former US President Clinton praised Rabin’s “ability to move from a soldier to a peacemaker.” It seems that in so many conflicts this is a vital component of any successful conclusion. It may hurt those who mourn those who have been killed in conflicts and wars but ultimately soldiers must be turned into peacemakers for there to be progress. If Hamas moves from being a terrorist organisation to properly fighting elections in a truly democratic process, Israelis and our opinion must move on for there to be a lasting peace for all. Individual pain must sometimes be set aside for the good of a collective. This week’s parasha contains many elements that are difficult to understand given a literal take through our eyes. Sometimes we can side only with our ancestors and see that their acts were justified. Sometimes we might say that given the same situation now, they were wrong. Whatever, we have to live with the consequences and just do our utmost to see that we are not barricades in processes that can bring peace to us all.

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