The Engendered Shema: Sarah-Echoes in the Name of Israel

Judaism, Summer, 2000 by Elizabeth Wyner Mark

RACHEL ADLER HAS PROPOSED THE "ENGENDERING" OF Judaism, a process that both reveals and repairs the "dis/remembering" of women in Jewish religious traditions. [1] Women's full inclusion in Jewish liturgy, she argues, necessitates supplying "missing ancestral memories" and "missing language about the people Israel." [2] One might well begin with the shema, Judaism's central liturgical declaration of the unity of God. It is framed as a call to "Israel," and a close look at the Torah's explanation of the meaning of the name Israel reveals unacknowledged matriarchal resonances in its biblical presentation.

Across the ages, the call of "Hear O Israel" has addressed generations of Jews by the name given to the patriarch Jacob during his nighttime struggle with a mysterious (male) being (Genesis 32:29). Certainly Jewish women as well as Jewish men have felt included in the concept of the people of Israel and therefore in the stirring call of the shema. Our own cultural experience of fathers' names as family names facilitates the understanding of "Israel" as gender-inclusive. However, surely a more powerful message of gender-inclusion would radiate from the name Israel were we to recognize, and find meaningful, the Torah's linguistic linkage between the name of the people and the name of the first matriarch.

As a psychotherapist I encounter the phenomenon of resistance to the expansion of narrative on a daily, indeed hourly, basis. In the clinical setting life stories become infinitely more complex over the course of numerous retellings as attention is focused on elements only hinted at in the initial presentation. Often these elements appear at first to be discordant in some way with the simpler narrative, or at least are experienced that way by the narrator. As the recipient of these narratives I witness at close range the threat that a more complicated rendering of experience poses to a person's established construction of reality, and how "dis/remembering" may be used to defend against the loss of a familiar but incomplete narrative. [3]

Israel-Sarah: The Link

Twice in the Book of Genesis a divinely-ordained change of name marks a radical shift in the dramatic scope of the narrative. First, as the saga narrows from the history of the world to the history of a single family, Abram and Sarai are renamed Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 17:5;15). Two generations later, as the story of the family becomes the story of a nation, grandson Jacob wrestles an enigmatic Other and receives the name yisrael, a name later ratified directly by God. At this second name-changing event the Torah explains the new name m a way that recalls the first name-changing event: You will be known as Israel, states Jacob's divine wrestling partner, because you "sarita" with God and humans (Genesis 32:29).

The key word in that naming statement the one that might remind us of Mother Sarah--sarita--is a semantic mystery. According to Nahum Sama, its "true explanation escapes us." [4] The most familiar translation of sarita, "you have striven," is derived solely from the narrative context Nevertheless, this contextual interpretation has made "struggle" the primary definition of the verb in modem Hebrew. It inspired Everett Fox, in a Torah translation remarkably faithful to the original text to choose "God-Fighter" as the English equivalent of the name Israel. [5] But when sarita is understood as a term symbolizing combat, it is difficult to hear in its phonetic similarity to the names Sarai and Sarah anything but coincidence. Sarah, after all, is generally understood as "princess," and combativeness is not an attribute customarily ascribed to princesses.

However, there is an alternative tradition found as early as the Aramaic translation of Targum Onkelos that associates the verb sarita with the noun san (feminine form: sarah), variously defined as great one, officer, ruler, high official-and prince. [6] Following this tradition, the Talmud interprets the sarita naming statement to mean that Jacob became a san over the angel. [7] Rashi comments that the name Israelis in "the language of san and nagid" (another noun connoting leader or ruler), [8] and some English translations render the sarita phrase as "as a prince you have power with God." [9]

In addition, the yearly cycle of synagogue readings provides a reminder that the verb appearing in the naming statement as sarita can take the exact form of Sarah's name: sarah The public reading of Jacob's naming as Israel in Asbkenazic tradition is linked to a haftarah reading from the prophet Hosea that describes the renaming encounter with the words "[Jacob] sarah with God" (Hosea 12:4). A translation following the san tradition renders this sarah-statement as "he had power with God." [10]

So the mystery word, sarita, seems loaded with reverberations of the name of the first matriarch. As noted, Jewish sources as central as the Talmud and Rashi associate it with the noun sar-in its feminine form sarah-and the synagogue service provides an annual reminder that sarah also is a third-person form of the santa-verb. Yet across centuries of conversation about the name Israel this linguistic resonance has failed to attract attention. Given the centrality of the name, its acknowledged ambiguity, and the traditional and continuing Jewish interest in the word-play of biblical texts, the silence around this verbal link between the two great divine name changes is remarkable. Exceptionally, Nahum Sarna did take passing note of it in a textual footnote to Genesis 17: 15, where he suggests that Sarai's new name may be "an oblique reference to Sarah as the progenitriz of the future Israel." [11] However, Sarna's comment has not stimulated further discussion of the name Israel as a reference to Sarah the matr iarch.