Another packed week! Vayera brings us three angels (they have always fascinated me, and one day I mean to write about them!), Sarah conceiving a child in her old age, the destruction of Sodom including some unfortunate repercussions for Lot’s wife and Lot himself, another abduction of Sarah, not to mention the sacrifice of Isaac. Where to even begin? I’d like to tackle the banishment of Ishmael. In Leah Hagar Cohen’s literary novel To & Fro the reader meets two different stories, each that can be related back to this episode.
Let me just say that while the Torah is the coolest book ever, To & Fro comes in as a close second. The book has two covers, and you can start reading from the front or back cover and that will determine which story you read fist. They have overlaping elements but are independent. In one story we have Ani, chasing a man on a horse and trying to reconcile her past which has overtones of the Ishmael and Hagar story. Ani is straight out of a Kafka parable and those allusions are felt heavily, yet Ani creates a story all her own – including some interesting commentary on Jewish learning. Meanwhile, the second story takes place in regular old Manhattan and follows the coming of age of Annamae. Which is a different type of journey, but no less daunting.
There is no hard and fast moral lesson in To & Fro. Instead the text asks us to remember that there are always two sides to every story, and that we need to listen to each other. Sometimes nobody is right and nobody is wrong and everybody is right and everybody is wrong all at the same time. Learning how to hold that complex thought in ones head is part of growing up. Both stories are about loneliness, searching, and kindness even in the face of that which we do not understand. It makes a perfect companion for the Parsha this week.