Rabbi Yaier Lehrer
ylehrer@gmail.com
412-820-7000
November 14, 2025
When Abraham dies, it is Isaac and Ishmael, his half-brother who come together to bury Abraham. They each had a major bone to pick WIth Abraham. Abraham had expelled Ishamael and his mother Hagar into the wilderness upon Sarah’s demand that he do so. Abraham had further taken Isaac to be sacrificed and actually held the knife in his hand. They each had a reason to be angry even though they knew that whatever Abraham did in those instances was ordained by God.
The sons were a few years apart in age, and as children they had played together. At the same time, while Ishmael was the older of the two, the inheritance of Abraham went to the younger son, Isaac. So when they came to bury their father, they came with a lot of emotional baggage, as if the burial of a parent is not emotional enough..
Naomi Kalish of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who wrote about this joint effort by the brothers, cites Monica McGoldrick, a Family Systems Theory therapist and educator. McGoldrick writes that “loss can strengthen survivors, inspire their creativity and bring out their strengths….Conversely it can also leave behind a destructive legacy of dysfunctional coping patterns.” We have all seen examples of both.
The Torah generally favors a path of reconciliation, and not just in times of loss. Whether it is in the aftermath Esau’s threat to kill Jacob or Joseph’s brothers conspiring to kill him and sell him into slavery. There are those who believe that Abraham’s second wife Keturah was actually Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, who Abraham had left stranded in the desert. Clearly there would have had to have been reconciliation there prior to marriage and having additional children together. And as we see with Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, reconciliation can come even after death.
And this example is not limited to families alone. If Ishmael and Isaac can come together to honor Abraham, even after he almost killed each of them, then perhaps some of our own lesser disagreements can be solved, or forgiven. Our futures as individuals and as a people require that we learn the skill and develop the emotional wherewithal to find the path to reconciliation and eventual healing. Is reconciliation always possible? Of course not. But it should always be honestly considered.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Yaier Lehrer