A brief anecdote from an eloquent review essay about Frederick Douglass caught my eye this week. In 1877, Douglass sought out Thomas Auld, who was dying, to forgive him. Auld had been Douglass’s owner decades prior, and it was from Auld’s bondage that Douglass famously escaped in 1838. “Frederick,” Auld said, “I always knew you were too smart to be a slave, and had I been in your place, I should have done as you did.” “I did not run away from you,” Douglass replied. “I ran away from slavery.” Thirty years prior, just ten years after his escape, Douglass wrote an open letter to Auld that included these lines: “I entertain no malice toward you personally. . . . There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. . . . I am your fellow-man, but not your slave.”
Relationships are complicated! They have layers and levels and steps, and sometimes combine emotions and connections that at first glance seem to be mutually exclusive and even contradictory. Thomas Auld ‘owned’ and oppressed Frederick Douglass. And also, he admired and loved him. Douglass, in turn, was oppressed and enslaved by Auld, and also harbored warmth and great affection for him. The one doesn’t justify or temper the other; the realities simply (or not so simply) exist side by side.
The Torah’s description of the triangle consisting of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar, has a similar quality. Three individuals, connected to one another in a complex web, and also straining, at least in moments of crisis, to separate from one another. Sarai ‘gives’ Hagar, her handmaid, to Abram inviting her husband to ‘consort with my maid.’ Hagar’s pregnancy shifts the dynamic: ‘when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was lowered in her esteem.’ Sarai suggests that Abram is to blame: ‘the wrong done me is your fault!,’ she says to him, demanding that ‘the Lord decide between you and me!’ And then her harsh treatment of her handmaid prompts Hagar to run away. A divine angel coaxes Hagar back urging her to submit to Sarai’s harsh treatment and assuring her that “I will greatly increase your offspring, and they shall be too many to count.” Hagar returns and bears a son to Abram whose name is Ishmael. Pretty complicated.
‘This whole story’, opines Rabbi David Kimhi (Radak; 13th century, Provence) ‘was written in the Torah to teach people good qualities and to distance them from bad qualities.’ I’d add that the whole story teaches us that intimate relationships operate on multiple levels all at the same time. True in the age of the matriarchs and patriarchs, true in 19th century America, true today. Sorting out our connections with one another is tricky business. Radak implores us to keep focused on musar and hasidut by which he means morality and goodness. Frederick Douglass seems to have managed it; Sarai and Hagar perhaps less so. And we? That, I suggest, is the question.
Shabbat Shalom.
