Hagar and Ishmael

"So, for Hagar, motherhood will be a coerced experience involving the violation of her body over which she, as a slave, has no control."
"Is Hagar's naming action a strike against patriarchal power at its highest level, since the ultimate head of this ancient Hebrew family was its patriarchal God? Was Hagar's naming of God an act of defiance and resistance as well as an expression of awe?"
"Hagar and African-American women (with their children) meet God there in the midst of trouble and what appears to be impending death and destruction"

Hadith 4:583
The first lady to use a girdle was the mother of Ishmael. She used a girdle so that she might hide her tracks from Sarah. Abraham brought her and her son Ishmael while she was suckling him, to a place near the Ka'ba under a tree on the spot of Zam-zam, at the highest place in the mosque. During those days there was nobody in Mecca, nor was there any water So he made them sit over there and placed near them a leather bag containing some dates, and a small water-skin containing some water, and set out homeward. Ishmael's mother followed him saying, "O Abraham! Where are you going, leaving us in this valley where there is no person whose company we may enjoy, nor is there anything (to enjoy)?" She repeated that to him many times, but he did not look back at her Then she asked him, "Has Allah ordered you to do so?" He said, "Yes."

Rabbi Elyse Goldstein suggests that the name Hagar, which is written without vowels in the Torah, can be read in two different ways, by playing with the Hebrew vowels. We can read it “Ha-ger” which means “the stranger.” Or we can read it “Hey-gar” which means “G-d dwells within.” Rabbi Goldstein writes, “What a difference. Depending on how we read a situation, we can find God in the face of the stranger.” When we can find God in the stranger then we are more likely to act more compassionately, generously, and ethically.

CW: trauma

• Why does Sarah abuse Hagar when her plan to have a child through Hagar is seemingly a success?
• What makes Sarah so angry?
• Why does Hagar run away and then return to Sarah?
• How can we understand the roles of Abraham and the community in the story?

How do these conversations or answers shift when we use a trauma-informed lens?

SARAH

Infertility as a gradual traumatic realization

• the social pressures of viewing biological parenthood as necessary
• in a moment where childbirth is apart of survival, infertitlity could of felt like an abnormality in the body
• and the "expectation" of motherhood from a wife (for abram)

• how will sarah be the father of a great nation if Sarah is infertile?
  • the unfulfilled divine promise
• "Through Sarah, we see that trauma affects the way an individual feels about herself and the world."
• " Like Sarah, victims of trauma come to view God as against them. And then many victims reenact their trauma by traumatizing those around them. This is not surprising. Irritability, anger, and violence are normal responses to trauma, as victims fight to remain in control, and this is precisely the response we see in Sarah’s subsequent victimization of Hagar."

Sarai as a woman with a heart hardened by her own pain and with eyes blinded by her own privilege
HAGAR

• trauma clusters
• identity already disrupted from displacement and slavery, and then involuntary surrogacy (lack of consent, age gap, status gap...)
• cycle of oppression/victimhood
• valued by angel, using "hagar" instead of "servant"

"The atavistic wound to Hagar and Sarah allows patriarchy domination and control on the bodies and lives of these women. Sarah and Hagar–how their lives intertwine in accordance with the wishes of male authority, the way which their identities, potential and agencies are put in trail against each other to meet a man’s need–is the depiction of the universal and original performance of women in the history of patriarchal domination over us"
"The paradigm of enmity in the relationship of Sarah and Hagar is instilled as a constant in the relationships between women. The alienation imposed by patriarchy through enmity not only separates women from their own identity as individuals, but separates us from our spiritual and divine dimensions. This separation also becomes a distance from other women veiled by an ignorance of what we share in common as gender and also in the specific, regarding our life stories. This enmity is not always a feeling of antipathy, but is always evident in the inability to be empathetic. It affects our potential to know ourselves and recognize ourselves in other women."