November 11th, 2017 — Shabbat Haye Sarah
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Sarah dies just after the Akeidah, the binding of Isaac. But the midrash suggests that maybe it wasn’t just grief and disbelief that killed her, but the awareness that she somehow set the stage for the terrible act to occur, through her cruel treatment of Hagar and Ishmael years before. She was not a perpetrator; she was an enabler. Among the threads linking recent bouts of gun violence and revelations of sexual violence, one is that neither would be possible without the silent complicity of otherwise well intentioned people. It’s time for us to take a good look at what we might be doing to enable the predatory and violent behavior that so pervades our culture.