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Most of what we know about Abraham, patriarch of our patriarchs, is contained in a few chapters of Genesis. But, as author Rabbi Seymour Panitz tries to show, Abraham, in addition to being the first Jew, was a real, flesh-and-blood man. A fascinating book, making the patriarchs come alive tries to make Abram (Abraham) - and his wife/sister Sarai (Sarah), his two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, and Abraham's father, brother, and various grandparents - come alive through a series of letters, reports, journal entries and other cleverly contrived "documents." The author tries to answer questions that have baffled our sages throughout the ages: Why did Abraham pretend to be Sara's brother, instead of her husband, while they were in Egypt? How could our patriarch have kicked his firstborn son and the boy's mother out of his house? How could he have even contemplated sacrificing his beloved son, Isaac? The answers provide varying degrees of satisfaction. In the introduction, Panitz explains how he tried to answer those questions. "To ask 'What could have happened to Abraham?' begs the question. I, for my part, have come to feel that the real question is, 'What was really going on? What lies below the surface? In other words: Find the context.'" But Panitz doesn't deal only with those questions but in day-to-day problems as well. One problem that must have plagued the couple was the inability to have a child. So, one of the documents in the book is a medical report from the "Gezer Healing Center." The center tells Abraham that it cannot determine why his wife cannot conceive. However, one possible explanation offered is "the extremely unsettling conditions with which your household has had to contend throughout your married years," a reference, in a sedentary age, to the moves that Abraham made from his native Ur to Canaan and then to the couple's temporary move to Egypt. Obviously, her barrenness must have bothered Sara, who writes in her journal: "The fault [for their lack of children] may be mine. … It pains me … to realize that others in his situation would have long since taken a second or third wife. He too would have done so, were it not for the pledge that he made to me at the time of our betrothal to the effect that I would be his only wife." Sara relents to the extent of agreeing to "Hagar's New Status" in a memorandum of Understanding. It states that Sara approves of sexual relations between her husband and her handmaiden, Hagar, for the purpose of procreation. However, the latter agrees not to change her handmaiden status and that relations between the two will end once a male heir is born. The relationship between Abraham and Ishmael is portrayed in an intriguing way. The father loved his firstborn son, and, although acceding to Sara's demands to evict him and his mother, nevertheless continued to help him and keep track of his progress through the family business, "Four Rivers Trading Company." Other documents include report cards for Ishmael ("superior" in mathematical reasoning but only "satisfactory" in right and wrong) and a Progress Report on Isaac ("a flair" for agriculture, an obsession on burnt offerings to God and lack of interest in other subjects) from the "Tekoa Educational Center", and various memos from the family business, including one announcing that Abram and Sarai were changing their names to Abraham and Sarah, respectively. Those changes come, we are told, "in connection with the continuous process of fine-turning the overriding concern of Abraham to grow in the knowledge of the Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and to disseminate knowledge of him in these lands and ultimately far and wide." Fittingly, that theme of Abraham talking to people about God - proselytizing if you will - is found in many of the book's documents. It is a compelling vision of the father of our fathers. Aaron Leibel |
| Abraham
and Sons is a modern midrash written in the form of an
imaginary correspondence between various members of Abraham's family.
It attempts to grapple with the questions of why Abraham abandoned Hagar
and Ishmael, and how he could even have considered the idea of sacrificing
Isaac. Panitz believes that an appreciation of the cultural context in
which these events took place will lead to an understanding of Abraham's
behavior. One particularly interesting family conflict was that, in Abraham's
era the idea of One God has not been accepted and Abraham's own father
- Terah - earned his living by carving and selling idols. Abraham
and Sons is very accessible to the reader, and should appeal
to every age group.
Leslie Cohen |
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