“See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me” Rabbi Oberstein’s Qabbalat Shabbat Sermon, 11/14/25

Rabbi Andrew Obserstein
Qabbalat Shabbat, November 14, 2025
Temple Israel of Boston / The Riverway project

In just 48 hours,
I will be on an airplane headed from Boston to Israel.

It will be my first visit since before the massacre of October 7, 2023 and the ensuing war and devastation.

Thankfully,
I won’t be going alone.

I’ll be traveling with 19 members of the Riverway Project community on the very first-ever Riverway Project trip to Israel in our nearly 25-year history.

*****

It’s really not a tourist trip.

We are not climbing Masada and we are not floating in the Dead Sea.

We’re going to volunteer –
to work with seniors,
with children,
even with animals directly affected by the violence of the past two years.

The ultimate goal is to be in relationship with the people of Israel,
to bear witness to the trauma and suffering,
and to offer our help and our hearts in whatever way we can.

******

I’ve led many trips to Israel over the years,
but I know that I’m walking into something fundamentally different this time.

The country is changed.
And, in truth, so are we –
We’re all still learning who we’ve become in the wake of these two years.

*****
So, the question I’m sitting with as I read this week’s Torah portion and prepare for this journey is this:
in the aftermath of a nightmare,
where do we begin to find healing?

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In last week’s Torah portion,
we read about the akedah,
the binding of Isaac,
the horrific episode in which Abraham brings his son to the top of Mount Moriah, ties him down and raises a knife to slaughter him before thankfully being halted by an angel of the Divine.

Isaac is last mentioned by name in Genesis 22:9,
when the text tells us that “Abraham built the altar and arranged the wood and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar,
upon the wood.”

And then we don’t hear from him again.

We don’t see him again.

He’s not even named among his father and the servants as having descended the mountain.

The absence is striking.

A son nearly sacrificed disappears from the text –
and from his own family –
for multiple chapters.

*****

That episode ends last week’s Torah portion,
and this week’s Torah portion picks up with the immediate death of Isaac’s mother,
Sarah,
following the akedah,
a juxtaposition that our tradition reads as correlation:
following the trauma of having her husband nearly murder her child,
Sarah can no longer bear this life.

And Isaac,
in the aftermath of his own nightmare,
desperately in need of healing,
is nowhere to be found.

*****

We next meet Isaac nearly three chapters later,
in Genesis 24:62,
when he finally returns from the place where he had been living following the incident:
a place called Be’er-la’chai-ro’i.

In naming that place,
the Torah recalls an earlier episode when Sarah’s handmaid,
Hagar,
is cast out into the wilderness,
pregnant with Abraham’s child,
Ishmael.

In her exile,
an angel visits her,
tells her that God has heard her suffering,
and promises well-being for her and her son.

She calls God “El Ro’i” –
“the God who sees me” –
and she names the place where she had this encounter
“Be’er-la’chai-ro’i,”
meaning,
“the well of the Living One who sees me.”

*****

Our rabbis notice this repetition:
Isaac,
after his trauma,
goes to Be’er-Lachai-Ro’i,
the same place where God’s compassion was revealed to the one who was cast out.

In a midrash from Genesis Rabbah,
the rabbis even imagine that he goes there in order to reconnect with Hagar.

Rabbi Shai Held teaches:
“Isaac –
confused,
troubled,
likely somewhat lost –
heads for the one place he knows where a very different face of God has been revealed:
Be’er-lachai-ro’i,
the place where God sees and hears those who have been cast out.

Isaac goes to Be’er-lachai-ro’i,
then,
for three intertwined reasons:
to comfort Hagar,
to be comforted by her […],
and to rediscover a face of God that has been eclipsed for him –
the God of mercy and compassion…”

*****

Our tradition goes even further.

In a breathtaking midrash,
the rabbis teach that Hagar does not remain on the margins of the family.

After Sarah’s death,
Abraham marries a woman named Keturah –
and the rabbis insist that Keturah is actually Hagar renamed and returned.

Which means Isaac doesn’t just go to Be’er-lachai-ro’i to find comfort.

He goes to bring Hagar home.

He goes to stitch a shattered family back together.

He goes to help repair what his father broke.

The Torah doesn’t tell us exactly what happened on that journey,
but the midrash imagines a moment of profound reconciliation –
as a family fractured by fear and trauma begins,
slowly,
to knit itself together again.

*****

In other words,
following a period of trauma,
Isaac needs to heal.

And he does so by bearing witness to someone else’s pain,
by coming together not exactly around shared circumstance,
but around shared feelings of betrayal and loss,
and by a shared desire to find solace after upheaval.

*****

In some ways,
I think this speaks so beautifully to the reasons we are taking this trip to Israel this weekend.

I am not equivocating or comparing the experiences of those who live in the region to those of us who have experienced the aftermath from afar.

The stories are not the same – but Torah gives us language for navigating pain without collapsing distinctions.

On this trip,
we will have the opportunity to meet with both Jews and Arabs,
to learn from them and hear their stories of the past two years,
and they will have the opportunity to meet with us and to hear our stories of the past two years.

*****

In that way,
this is the spiritual challenge of this moment.

We are all carrying pieces of a fractured story.

Part of our work –
on this trip and here at home –
is to widen our seeing:
to really see those we meet,
both those who are close to us,
and those who feel impossibly far away.

*****

Isaac walks to Be’er-lachai-ro’i,
the place where the Holy One sees those who have been cast out.

And it’s only there where he begins to heal,
where he strengthens someone else’s healing,
and –
at least according to this midrash –
he even helps fix what was once broken beyond repair.

*****

My hope is that,
in the days ahead,
whether in Israel or here in Boston,
we might walk toward our own Be’er-lachai-ro’i –
the place where we widen our hearts,
where we just begin to stitch together a sense of wholeness,
and where we choose to be seen and to see one another fully.

May our seeing bring comfort.

May it bring courage.

And may it be the first small step toward repair for our people,
and for all peoples.

Baruch Atah Adonai,
El-Roi.

Blessed are you Adonai,
the God who sees.