LITMIR.BIZ

      The Book of Genesis tells us that soon after Abraham (then still called Abram) arrived in Canaan, the land to which God had sent him, famine forced him to leave the Promised Land for Egypt. But his trials and tribulations were not over. Crossing a geographical line, Abraham confronted another set of boundaries, those delineating his sovereign masculinity. According to the biblical narrative, Abraham fears that Pharaoh will kill him in order to obtain Sarai (later Sarah), his beautiful wife. He therefore instructs Sarah to declare that she is his sister, not his mate—meaning that she is unattached and available to Pharaoh.¹ Unsurprisingly, the Sages of the early centuries of the Common Era, the authors of the corpus of rabbinic writings that includes works of midrash (rabbinic exegetical reading of scripture), were troubled by this episode in the life of the Jewish people’s founder. They retold the story placing reflection, or self-reflexivity, at the center:

      [Abram and Sarai] went. As they arrived at the pillars of Egypt and stood at the Nile, Abraham saw the reflection of Sarai in the river and she was like a radiant sun. From this our Sages learned that all women compared to Sarah are like monkeys compared to human beings. [Abram] said to her: “Now I know what a beautiful woman you are” (Gen. 12:11). From here one learns that prior to that, he had not known her as a woman. He said to her: “The Egyptians are immersed in lewdness as it is written ‘whose flesh was like that of asses’ [Ezek. 23:11]. Therefore I will put you in a casket and lock it, since I am frightened for myself that the Egyptians might see you.”²

      This short narrative, from Midrash Tanḥuma, explicates Gen. 12:11, “As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarai, ‘Now I know what a beautiful woman you are.’” Since by this time they had been married for many years, Abram would certainly have noticed by this point that his wife was beautiful. The anecdote addresses this apparent quandary by adducing a reflective episode in which Abram gains a new insight, one that changes the nature of the biblical narrative. According to this midrashic tale, the pious Abram had never actually looked at his wife prior to this event and thus had not had intimate relations with her. Struck by her radiance, he “knows” her for the first time (perhaps implying that he not only sees her face but actually knows her in the biblical sense). At this very instant, he realizes that her radiant beauty may be a danger to him. If they know that Sarai is his wife, the Egyptians are likely to kill him in order to obtain Sarai for themselves. Clearly, the tale seeks not only to gloss the odd phrasing of the biblical verse (“Now I know what a beautiful woman you are”) but also to mitigate the dubiety of Abram’s decision to conceal Sarai’s relationship to him.³

      According to the midrash, that moment at the Nile was one of transformative epiphany, possibly coupled with shock. Newly enlightened, Abram was impelled to take preventive measures. But, according to this retelling, his first move was not, as the biblical narrative has it, to tell Sarai to declare herself his sister. Here, the reflective moment—Abram literally sees his wife’s reflection in the river—implies new awareness on Abram’s part, one that informs his subsequent actions. Notably, Abram does not see his own reflection—he sees Sarai’s. It is nevertheless a moment of actual reflection that transforms not only her identity (as she is perceived by her husband) but his as well. He views himself differently thereafter—as the husband of a desirable woman. Moreover, the reflective gaze recognizes desire itself. Only when Abram himself desires his wife can he realize that the Egyptians, known for their lustfulness, will desire her as well. Desire and danger become the rationale for the continuation of the midrashic narrative.

      Identity, narrative, and midrash, as this example teaches us, are inextricably connected to reflection and self-reflection. Self-reflectivity, it tells us, not only informs the identity of the figures in the tale but directs the text, motivating its chain of events. In the most basic sense, the mirroring moment is a crucial point, on which the identities of the evolving figures and the text as a whole hang.⁴ Moreover, the reflective moment is directly associated with a textual practice: Abram immediately cites scripture, and thus his scriptural source of knowledge becomes in part analogous to that of the Sage, who couches this entire tale as an exegesis of the biblical

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