Weekly Newsletter

Parshat Vayera
Week of November 7, 2025
16 Cheshvan 5786
Wishing you and your family 
Shabbat Shalom!

Friday, November 7, 2025  •  16 Cheshvan 5786

• Candle lighting at 4:28pm 

• Shacharit services in shul will begin promptly at 9:30am
• StantonKIDS will offer play, davening, parsha, songs, and movement from 10:30am-12:00pm. This week StantonKIDS is sponsored by Rivky and David Friedman in celebration of Nina's upcoming birthday. Happy birthday!
• Services will be followed by Kiddush at 12:00pm. Everyone is welcome!
  Kiddush is sponsored by The House. If you want to sponsor Kiddush, please email info@stantonstshul.com
• Havdalah at 5:27pm

An Evening in Yiddishland - TONIGHT!

Join the Stanton Street Shul and Sixth Street Community Synagogue in celebrating the book launch of As the Story Goes: Funny, Strange, and Serious Stories of Yiddishland’s Jews, translated and edited by beloved friends and members, Dr. Jonathan Boyarin and Jonah Sampson Boyarin. Please register here to attend. 

Weekly Class: Megillat Esther with Rabbi Birkeland!

Join Rabbi Birkeland for a new series delving into the rich story, history, and theology of Megillat Esther. Together, we’ll explore how this timeless text speaks to of courage, identity, and Divine presence hidden in plain sight. 

The class is Wednesday evenings from 7:00-8:00pm via Zoom, and you can join here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88084709743

All are welcome - no prior background needed, just curiosity and a love of learning!

Dear friends,

This week we read Parshas Vayera which contains two of the most well known episodes in the Book of Genesis. Our parsha starts with a visit to Avraham by God, followed by three angels. The angels foretell that within a year, Avraham and Sarah will have a child. God then tells Avraham that the “outcry against Sodom and Gemora is great” and that those cities must be destroyed. Avraham argues to save the cities for the sake of the righteous who might live there but when it becomes clear that not even 10 righteous people can be found, God sends the angels to save Lot and his family and destroys the cities.

At the end of our parsha we read about Akeidas Yitzchak, the Binding of Isaac. Avraham is commanded to take his son Isaac, whom God had long promised and who was to be the heir to Avraham and Sarah’s line and mission, and to bring him as a sacrifice to God on Mount Moriah. Avraham complies but at the last minute an angel of God stops him, at which point Avraham finds a ram in the bushes to sacrifice in place of Yitzchak. We are told that this is Avraham’s final test and the lessons drawn from it, as well as the merit incurred by Avraham, have played a central role in Jewish, thought, identity, and survival ever since. 

I want to focus on an event that occurs just before the Akeidah, however. Soon after Yitzchak is weaned, Sarah sees Yishmael, Avraham and Hagar’s son, playing with/mocking Yitzchak. The Hebrew word m’tzachek is ambiguous but whatever Yishmael was doing, it upsets Sarah enough for her to tell Avraham to banish Yishmael and Hagar. Avraham is hesitant but God promises that Yishmael will also give birth to a great nation and tells Avraham to do as Sarah said. Hagar and Yishmael wander in the desert around Be’er Sheva and when their water runs out, Hagar sets Yishmael down under a bush. She sits herself down at a distance so that she won’t have to watch him die. They both start crying. God hears their cries and sends an angel. The angel assures Hagar that God has heard Yishmael’s cries and that God will make of him a great nation. God then shows them a spring of water, they drink from it, and they settle in the desert of Paran.

I was struck, this year, by the many parallels between this story and Akeidas Yitzchak. Both stories involve a command from God to Avraham that threatens the potential loss of a son. Both stories feature a last minute intercession from an angel that saves the respective son. In the Akeidah, Avraham finds a ram in the bushes after the angel intercedes; in the story of Hagar and Yishmael, Hagar is shown a spring of water. At the end of the Akeidah, Avraham names the place HaShem Yireh, God will see. This parallels a similar story in last week’s parsha where Hagar encounters God after running away to the desert. She refers to God as El Ra’i, the God who sees me, and the place gets named Be’er L’Chai Ro’i, the well of the Living One who Sees me. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks discusses a number of these parallels and says that really they serve to highlight the differences between the stories. The difference he hones in on is the role of emotion. The Akeidah is largely devoid of emotion. God commands, Avraham obeys. Little is spoken between God and Avraham; little is spoken between Avraham and Yitzchak. We are told almost nothing about what they are feeling. In the story of Hagar and Yishmael, however, both figures are crying. The text is explicit that Hagar sits at a distance because she cannot watch her child die. Rabbi Sacks says that the narrative is actively tugging at our sympathies in  a way that it does not in the Akeidah. He then says something difficult and profound:

“There is a moral reason for this complexity, and it is fundamental. Violence between groups begins in the in-group/out-group dichotomy. I identify with my side and am suspicious of the other side. In situations of stress, sympathy for the other side can come to seem like a kind of betrayal. It is this that the Yishmael story is coming to challenge” (The Koren Shalem Humash pg. 134).

Rabbi Sacks goes on to explain that we automatically identify with the trials and sorrows of Yitzchak and Sarah, the first Jewish child and Jewish mother. For that reason, the text has no need to pull so directly at our heartstrings. When it comes to these others, however, the text has to guarantee that we will also empathize with their plight thus setting a moral precedent, precisely, at the beginning of the Jewish story.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Birkeland   

StantonKIDS Shabbat Programming 5786



Join us 10:30am-12:00pm for free play, davening, parsha, songs, movement, a hands on activity, and delicious kiddush! Here is our schedule for the rest of the 5786 school year: 

November 8, November 22
December 6, December 20
January 17, January 24
February 7, February 28
March 14, March 28
April 18, April 25
May 9, May 16
June 6, June 13

Women's Tefillah Group Programming Schedule

Come Daven With Us in 5786!




Parshat Chayei Sarah - November 15
Parshat Shemot & Slater Schwartzberg’s Bat Mitzvah - January 10 
Parshat B'shalach - January 31
Megillat Esther Reading - March 2
Parshat Emor - May 2 
Parshat Nasso - May 30 
Parshat Korach - June 20

If you would like to layn, lead services, or give a d'var Torah with us, or if you have questions, please be in touch!
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Misheberachs (we wish a full recovery to):

ONLINE ARCHIVES

If you missed services this past Shabbos, or arrived too late to hear the drasha, you can go to our archives and read a copy! 
Click here for an archive of shiurim
Click here for an archive of drashot
Click here to go to our YouTube Channel for an archive of all of our ZOOM classes