Lior's Art on Sarah and Hagar

Hey kvutzee,

This is my finished (for now) piece on Sarai (Sarah) and Hagar!  Basically it's from Breishit 16 and 17.  In 16 Sarai realizes she's not gonna get pregnant, and tells Abraham to get her slave Hagar pregnant instead.  He does, and once Hagar is pregnant she begins to despise Sarai and disrespect her.  Sarai blames Abraham, so he tells her he can do whatever she wants with her slave—so Sarai mistreats (beats?) Hagar.  Hagar runs away, but is stopped by an angel of the lord and is told the son she is pregnant with will be Ishmael and will be very important.  

In 17, the only important part for my piece is that Abraham makes the covenant with God.  He tells Abraham that Sarai will be called Sarah, and will become pregnant even though she's so old!  The kid will be Isaac, and his people will keep the covenant.

Ok, now on to my interpretation.  Part of it is just a drawing of the story, I drew as I read.  Sarai is in red and has a barren womb.  Hagar in purple bows down to her, with a full, bright womb, and further to the right (and towards the back) you can see her as she runs away.  Between the two women are black marks of hate and a black line to divide.  Over the little Hagar in the back, where she ran away, is the light descending from her interaction with God.  In the lower left corner like two linked rings is the covenant between Abraham and God, also in black.

After I read, I felt the story was so incomplete.  Many beautiful things happen here:  Hagar sees the value in her child through her meeting with an angel, Abraham makes a covenant with God that is central to Judaism.  But in the meantime, there's a whole lot of woman on woman hate and violence.  Sarai has Hagar as her slave, her lower.  Hagar doesn't respect Sarai based on her infertility, an insult to her womanhood and value stemming from something she has no control over.  In response, Sarai is violent towards Hagar.  

And here's the worst part:  there's no resolution.  All this division within women, violence and hurt, is given no time to be fixed.  And so we see the descendants of that violence today.  The children of Sarah and Hagar (essentially Jews and Muslims, respectively) still fight one another, and others.  Women of different classes and races and religions and more are divided and cause harm to one another!  It pained me to read about the beginning of violence between women, who needed to unite, and to be left with no conclusion.

So in the bottom right corner, in the circle of yellow light of Godly interactions, two women (with red and purple) stand together.  Their wombs intersecting form another covenant of sorts, one that demonstrates solidarity between all the women of the world.  Until we fight for unity in the face of oppression, this division has not been resolved.  Until we women unite, we cannot all be fertile—in every sense of the word.

Laila Tov,

Lioroosh