Tracking an obsession

Introducing the project, Sarah, and the Letter H

Where to begin?

Photo by Lionello DelPiccolo on Unsplash

The first line of a poem (and the last) are the most difficult to write. Likewise, the first page of a book and the first post (like this one) in a series are uniquely challenging.

Or maybe it’s just me. After all, when I pick up a book I rarely start reading from the top of the first page. I skip to the back and read the acknowledgments. I open up to the middle to get a taste of the writer’s style and to see where we’re going. Finally, I skip back to Page One to read in order, but after a few paragraphs, I inevitably backtrack.

So, today I am struggling with where to begin to introduce you to my new Substack, The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined. Here I will share some of the poems and short essays I’ve been writing as I dig—and dream—into the story of the biblical matriarch Sarah’s life.

The digging refers to the research I’ve been conducting for several years: Reading and re-reading Genesis, scouring biblical commentary, feminist theology, blogs, and articles about Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar.

The dreaming refers to the necessity of activating my imagination to fill in the prodigious blank spaces in the narrative, especially those pertaining to Sarah’s life.

What most people know about Sarah from the Bible amounts to a handful of facts:

• Sarah was Abraham’s wife.

• Sarah was barren until giving birth at age 90.

• Sarah was Isaac’s mother.

Or, as I put it in ths clerihew (a clerihew is a light biographical poem in 4 lines):

For most of us, that’s all we retain about Sarah (basically her marital and reproductive status). But Genesis provides just enough additional breadcrumbs to lead the curious reader into much more complex territory.

I am just such a curious reader. And given my aversion to beginnings, I’m tempted to jump right into the middle of it all with you. But instead, I’ll take a moment here to orient you. Let’s start with the title:

The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined.

What’s the story behind the Title?

Now that you know my issues with beginnings, it shouldn’t surprise you that the title of this project refers to the end of Sarah’s story. In Genesis, there is one Torah portion that bears Sarah’s name. It is The Life of Sarah or Chaiyeh Sarah in Hebrew. (Genesis 23:1-16)

But, in what seemed a sad irony to me at first, despite being called The Life of Sarah, this portion tells the story of Sarah’s death. Disappointing—but not entirely unexpected in a world where women’s stories all too often are untold or relegated to the margins. Then again, when I contemplated Sarah’s death, I had a better understanding of the significance of her life. So I took the title of this biblical chapter as the title of my project, which subverts expectations and re-centers Sarah’s experience.

Hopefully, after you’ve immersed yourself in the poems and reflections in the weekly posts that follow, you too will see Sarah’s story with added nuance and complexity.

And why ‘H’?

The letter H has a leading role in Sarah’s story. When we first meet our protagonists in Genesis they are named Sarai and Abram. Later in the story, when God chooses them to be the first monotheists and the leaders of a radical new faith, he adds an H (hei in Hebrew) to each of their names.

This moment of re-naming is like a hinge in the story: A metaphorical door is opened as Sarah and Abraham leave their homeland, which was ruled by dozens of gods and goddesses, to follow one God and a promise of divine one-ness.

The story of Sarah and Abraham receiving new names at their moment of calling, and the fact that their names are similarly altered by the insertion of an H, sparked my imagination. Read on for a taste of why that intrigued me.

---

A Curious Obsession

There are some 79,976 words and 304,805 letters in the Torah (the 5 books of the Hebrew Bible). Of those, I’ve become, you might say, obsessed with one of those words and one of those letters. Sarah is the word. And H (ה hei in Hebrew) is the letter.

In Jewish mysticism letters and numbers possess specific values and meanings. The letter hei, for example, is the 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and coincidentally—or synchronisticly perhaps, Sarah’s name appears 55 times in Genesis (as compared to Abraham’s, which appears 131 times. (Add it up: 1+3+1=5).

Also, there are 50 chapters in Genesis,  one of which bears Sarah’s name. That chapter, Chaiyei Sarah, or The Life of Sarah, happens to be the 5th Torah portion of the yearly cycle in which one section is read aloud in synagogues each week.

I became, okay, I’ll say it: obsessed with Sarah almost by accident. I was first drawn to Abraham’s story of sacrificing his son on a mountain while I was trying to make sense of an inexplicable loss of my own. I returned to Abraham on the mountain and the knife’s edge between losing and reclaiming his son again and again as I grappled with my own faith at a time of deep grieving. And Sarah, well, she was off-stage for that dramatic moment. So it took me years to come around to wondering about her role in all of this.

And when (finally) I did dig into Sarah’s story, I realized her tale had been sacrificed in the shadow of Abraham’s.

And then I became curious about the letter H, which is tacked onto her and her husband’s names when God alerts Sarah and Abraham to their role as First Couple to future generations. H is an addition, yes. But in Sarah’s case, something was lost as well—in this case, the letter I. The poet in me could not help but assign significance to this fact.

This matter of divine editing is just one intriguing twist in a story filled with twists and hairpin turns (not least of which is that Sarah is well past childbearing age when she’s told she’ll be the mother of nations—and then she gives birth at age 90).

As a writing teacher, I instruct my students to follow their obsessions. After all, obsession is a kind of hyper-focused curiosity, and it is what drives us to dig deeper into the loamy soil of our individual and collective lives. Obsession is fueled by caring — sometimes to an unhealthy degree. Obsession is irrational, to — but let’s face it, rationality only takes us so far.

If you find obsessions intriguing, follow along as I present poems and musings from my journey with you here in The Life of H, a weekly newsletter.

‘The Life of H’ is a FREE newsletter. To offer a little extra love and to support this project, consider a paid subscription! PLUS, if you purchase a paid subscription now, you’ll get 20% off:

I’m so pleased to be taking this poetic journey with you! Thank you for your curiosity, your interest, and your support.

Tzivia Gover is the author of seven nonfiction books. Her poems appear in dozens of anthologies, journals, and periodicals.

www.thirdhousemoon.com