At Sarah’s insistence, Abraham marries Hagar. Soon after, Hagar becomes pregnant and Sarah becomes enraged. Here, the Torah uses the word vatea’nechah, which is commonly translated “and she (Sarah) oppressed her (Hagar)” (Genesis 16:6).
Rabbi Aryeh Levin, the late tzaddik of Jerusalem, insists that vatea’nechah cannot literally mean that Sarah oppressed Hagar. Sarah actually treated Hagar no differently from the way she’d treated her up to that time. However, now that Hagar had become pregnant and perceived herself as Abraham’s true wife, the simplest request Sarah made of Hagar was considered by Hagar to be oppressive.
Nachmanides (Ramban) disagrees. For him, vatea’nechah literally means oppression. So outrageous was Sarah’s conduct that her children, until the end of time, would always suffer the consequences of this wrong. In Nachmanides’s words, “Our mother Sarah sinned…as a result, Hagar’s descendants would persecute the children of Abraham and Sarah.”
But what is it that Sarah did wrong? After all, Sarah had unselfishly invited Hagar into her home. Soon after, Hagar denigrated Sarah. Didn’t Sarah have the right to retaliate?
Radak points out that Sarah afflicts Hagar by actually striking her. It is here that Sarah stepped beyond the line. Whatever the family dispute, physically striking the other person is unacceptable. This is an important message, especially in contemporary times when physical abuse is one of the great horrors challenging family life.
For Nechama Leibowitz, Sarah had made a different mistake. By inviting Hagar in, she doomed herself to failure by “daring to scale unusual heights of selflessness.”
“When undertaking a mission,” says Nechama, one must ask whether one can “maintain those same high standards to the bitter end. Otherwise, one is likely to descend from the pinnacle of selflessness into much deeper depths…” It is laudable to reach beyond ourselves, but to tread where we have no chance to succeed is self-destructive.
Sarah’s wrong is compounded when we consider the following: While in Egypt with Abraham, Sarah was afflicted by Pharaoh, the master of the land. She barely escaped (Genesis 12). Instead of learning from her oppressor never to oppress others, she did the opposite, persecuting Hagar, causing her to flee. Having herself been victimized, Sarah should have been more sensitive. Hence, whatever her rationale, her retaliation was inappropriate. The message is clear. Victims of oppression should reject rather than incorporate their oppressor’s ways. Love the stranger, the Torah exhorts over and over, “For you too were strangers in Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).
In most faiths, leaders or prophets are perfect. They can do no wrong and any criticism of their actions is considered sacrilegious. While there is a string strain within Judaism that defends biblical figures as perfect, there is, at the same time, an opposite approach in Jewish thought, one that maintains that our greatest biblical personalities, while holy and righteous, were also human and made mistakes. They were real people, not God.
This position makes the biblical narrative much more believable. Moshe, our great leader, sins by hitting the rock instead of speaking to it. The great King David gives into temptation and sins. It is precisely because these holy, inspirational leaders, including Sarah herself, were so human that we are able to look to them and say that maybe, just maybe, we, with all our flaws and faults, can strive to be great leaders too.
