Abraham, the Dreamer: An Erotic and Sacred Love Story

By Rolf Gompertz

Abraham and Sarah set off to serve a new God in a new land, with an unspeakable family secret in their heart and a marriage in serious trouble. In time, the childless Sarah offers Hagar, her slave, to Abraham. Hagar not only gives him a son, Ishmael, but also offers Abraham a passionate, fulfilling love that he had never known with Sarah. When Sarah, unexpectedly, gives birth to Isaac, she drives Hagar and Ishmael away, arousing a deep-seated murderous rage in Abraham that threatens the life of Isaac, all in the name of the new God.

The author sheds new light on the biblical story, exploring what it was like to come out of a polytheistic society and serve a single, new and invisible God. Sarah is portrayed as a high priestess in service to Inanna, the goddess of love and war. When called on, Sarah performs the erotic Sacred Marriage Rite as part of her religious duties, in Ur, Egypt and Canaan. Only through deep, personal sorrow does she come to shift her allegiance to Abraham's new God.

The book finally addresses a critical, central human question: How can we ever know the will of God with any certainty?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 6, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462080892

Rolf Gompertz

Rolf Gompertz is the author of eight books, including Abraham, The Dreamer?An Erotic and Sacred Love Story and A Jewish Novel About Jesus. A refugee from Nazi Germany, Gompertz earned a B.A. and M.A. from UCLA; worked for NBC 30 years; and has taught at UCLA Extension since 1974. He and his wife, Carol, live in North Hollywood, CA. They have three married children and four grandchildren.

Book preview

Abraham,

The Dreamer

An Erotic and Sacred

Love Story

Rolf Gompertz

Authors Choice Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

Abraham, The Dreamer

An Erotic and Sacred Love Story

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Rolf Gompertz

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without

the permission in writing from the publisher.

Authors Choice Press

an imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse.com, Inc.

5220 S 16th, Ste. 200

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

Cover photo by Menachem

ISBN: 0-595-17697-6

ISBN: 978-1-4620-8089-2(ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

What Others Say

About This Book

Acknowledgments

1

Birth

2

Lech Lecha

3

My Brother, My Husband

4

El Elyon

5

The Sacred Marriage (I)

6

A Talk With God

7

A Child-Sacrifice For Moloch

8

Egypt

9

Another Sacred Marriage (II)

10

Abram And Hagar

11

Kidnapped

12

A Touchy Problem, A Sensible Solution

13

The Lovers

14

Flight

15

Sarai

16

Sign OfThe Covenant

17

Theophany At Mamr The Birth OfIsaac

18

The Parting

19

The Binding OfIsaac

20

Showdown

Epilogue

More About This Book

About the Author

Bibliography

Other books by Rolf Gompertz

My Jewish Brother Jesus, a biblical novel

"Sparks of Spirit: How to Find Love & Meaning

in Your Life 24 Hours a Day"

The Messiah of Midtown Park

A Celebration of Life

Publicity Advice & How-To Handbook

Publicity Writing for Television & Film

M

Call me Menachem.

Let me tell you a story.

Come with me,

Come back with me

Four-thousand years,

Give or take a hundred

Or two hundred years,

Because nobody knows

The date any more,exactly.

Let’s visit with

Father Abraham and Mother Sarah.

You say you know the story,

That everybody knows the story?

No you don’t,

Not really,

Not unless you

Know how to read between the lines,

Not unless you look beneath the surface.

That’s hard to do now,

Very hard to do,

Because it all happened so long ago.

How do I know?

Why do I know?

Let’s just say:

It was an angel,

It is always an angel…

What Others Say

"Rolf Gompertz has written a powerful, modern midrash on the life of Abraham, giving it a contemporary ring that makes the Biblical characters come alive and become very human. It has been meticulously researched and bears the mark of a master storyteller."

Rabbi Moshe J. Rothblum

Adat Ari El, North Hollywood, CA

"Oh! Wow to the tenth power, Wow to infinity! You were born to write Abraham, the Dreamer! It is a wonderful gift that shows the story from the most human and the most authentic cultural dimension. The psychological astuteness of the distance between Sarai and Abram resulting from their unresolved grief over that first lost child—then finding sweet resolution and reconciliation at the end, in addition to motivating the horrifying (Mt.) Moriah scene—(is) simply stunningly brilliant and plausible, in every way. Thank you for that! Rolf Gompertz, you are an angel of DAVAR (words). Thank you for being open to the courage to create this tender work. Blessings over your new, lovely, powerful and important book. I bet this one becomes a movie!"

Rev. Alla Renée Bozarth, Ph.D.

Episcopal priest, author-poet, therapist, Sandy, Oregon

Author of The Book ofBliss and At the Foot ofthe Mountain

"Anyone who wishes to become more familiar with our Biblical ancestors, so as to identify with them and to learn from them and the essential messages of their lives, will be well advised to read the dynamic ABRAHAM, THE DREAMER, which bridges the gap between ancient times and this contemporary moment in which we find ourselves, and explores the profound relationship that links God and humanity in every generation."

Allen I. Freehling, Ph.D., D.D.

Senior Rabbi, University Synagogue Los Angeles, California

I liked the book very much. I felt as though it gave me the chance to enter the world of the patriarchs and see it as it was day to day, with the challenges of idolatry. It gave me a very clear view into Avraham and Sarah and brought me back to the reality that just because Avraham ‘signed on’ for the relationship with the one G-d didn’t mean that Sarah was at all moved by that idea. Sarah as cultic leader was an intriguing and troubling idea.

Rabbi Leslie Alexander Jewish Community Chaplain of the Silicon Valley, California

It has been said that ‘history is a lie agreed upon.’ I applaud Rolf Gompertz for breaking tradition and shining the light on Bible stories and leading characters that cry out for modern and truthful interpretation. Finally someone has put the goddess back into the Bible, and honored the woman in all her power. Finally, we can read his-story as her-story too, and face all the deep dilemmas of life, as if they were our own. Thank you, Rolf.

Audrey Hope

Host of TV talk show, REEL WOMEN’

"What an incredible midrash on the lives of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.

You, the author, certainly fleshed them out into real human beings that everyone who has ever been in love or in a love triangle can relate to, among other things. It was for me the perfect reading for this Rosh Hashanah reading of the akedah (the Binding ofIsaac)! I enjoyed it, and I particularly enjoyed watching where you were going with the story."

Merryl Weber

Restorative Bodyworks Therapist

North Hollywood, California

"Abraham, The Dreamer challenged my preconceptions of the akedah, awakened my sensitivities to the amazingly complex and all too human relations between members of Judaism’s ‘first family,’ and painted a picture of the historical, political, and sociological time and place in which this family lived."

Carol Felixson

Environmental education administrator

Los Angeles, California

About This Book

1.And it came to pass after these things, that

God did prove Abraham, and said to him:

‘Abraham’; and he said: ‘Here am I.’ 2. And

He said: ‘Take now your son, your only son,

whom you love, even Isaac, and go to the

land of Moriah; and offer him there for a

burnt-offering on one of the mountains

which I will tell you of.’—Genesis 17

These are the most disturbing, the most terrifying words in the Bible.

What would you do? What would I do?

Would you do God’s will? How would you know that it is God’s will? How can you be sure? Let’s say God wouldn’t stop you at the last moment, as He stopped Abraham. What would that make you then: A man or woman of faith—or a murderer?

Could you serve a God who asks such a thing? Could you pray to such a God? Could you worship such a God? What kind of God would ask such a thing? A just God? A loving God?

I believe that what led up to Abraham’s crisis of faith was a love triangle. That is how I have approached this story. There were two significant women in Abraham’s life: Sarah, his wife, and Hagar, her handmaid. When Sarah remained childless, she gave Hagar to Abraham for a wife, so there would be an heir.

After all, God had promised to make Abraham the father of nations, whose seed would be as numerous as the sands of the earth and the stars in the heavens. But not only Abraham, the patriarch, but Sarah, the matriarch, needed an heir.

When you really think of it, the story of Abraham, from beginning to end, is about the connection between sex and religion, between erotic love and sacred love, between human love and divine love, in a most primal way. This book, too, is about these connections. The story is about birth and continuity.

The story of Abraham is also about one of the most difficult questions we face as human beings: How can we ever know the will of God? Can we be sure that it is the will of God? And, if we cannot be sure, what, if anything, can we do about it? In short, How do we serve God?

That is the ultimate question which I address in this book, as it climaxes with the akedah, the Binding of Isaac, that terrifying scene where Abraham is about to sacrifice his beloved son, which Abraham perceived as an act of faith in God. But was it really an act of faith and should Abraham have done it?

I have a different slant on the story of Abraham. I do not approach Abraham in the conventional way. Still, my version is in the time-honored tradition of midrash, of Jewish story-telling. It has a basis, in fact, in scholarly and rabbinic thought.

Finally, as a responsible individual and writer, I wish to point out that there is a lot of explicit sex in this book. This is done for serious reasons, not for prurient or commercial reasons.

Sex is a powerful, basic force in human life. It is the creative force in the universe. It is life. There is and has always been a powerful, basic connection between sex and religion, since religion concerns itself with the Creator and the Creation.

So why be explicit? So we can feel the power of the creative force, the love force, as it manifests itself in human beings. To speak of love in the abstract leaves us cold and unmoved. We are spiritual beings, but we live in bodies and we experience life viscerally through our bodies.

That is why I am being so graphic in this book—to help us see and experience the incredible connection between the erotic and the sacred, not only intellectually but emotionally.

These are the primary and essential points I wish to make before you launch into the book. For a more detailed discussion, please see the end of the book, under the heading,

MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK.

Now, let us meet Abraham, the Dreamer, and proceed with this erotic and sacred love story.

Rolf Gompertz

North Hollywood, CA

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to all the authors listed in the bibliography for their scholarship and perspectives. I have singled out some for special mention in my comments about my book. However, all have helped me to see the issues and fill out the picture.

I began my thinking and research with three biblical sources. I have paraphrased or quoted some verses briefly. These sources are The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, Second Edition, Dr. J.H. Hertz, London: Soncino Press, 1937. The Holy Scriptures: According to the Masoretic Text. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Jewish Publication Society, 1917, 1955, 1965. The Complete Bible: An American Translation, the Old Testament translated by J.M. Powis Smith and a group of scholars; the New Testament translated by Edgar J. Goodspeed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1939, thirteenth impression, 1949.

I wish to express my special appreciation to the libraries of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Public Library, where I had access to the many valuable books listed in the bibliography, which provided me with the information and insights that I needed.

I appreciate the enlightening telephone conversation I had with Thomas P. Ball, Jr., M.D., of the Department of Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center, in San Antonio, Texas, regarding eunuchs and castration.

To all who read this book while it was still in manuscript form my deep thanks for your thoughtful comments, valuable quotes and generosity of spirit.

Finally, I am grateful to iUniverse and its partners for creating new publishing models for authors, so that our books have a better chance to see the light of day and find their audiences. To those who have worked with me on my book in particular, my heartfelt thanks for your special skills, creative talents, constant caring and friendly, patient guidance.

1

Birth

It was apparent from her moans and the activity around her that the baby was ready to come out any moment. It was about time, as far as all were concerned. She had been in labor close to twelve hours and she was exhausted. Still she was fortunate. She knew that the first baby often takes longer. She was strong and there had been no complications. She had had enough and wanted it over with.

Ahhhhh! she yelled out, in spite of all her efforts to stay in control. Ahhhh! Ahhhh!

Push! the midwife encouraged her, even as she wiped the sweat off her face, Push! You’re doing fine. Hold on, hang on, just a little bit longer! Push! Push!

The pregnant woman squatted on the two stones, in typical fashion.

The second midwife was in place in front of her, ready to receive the child the moment it emerged. As the first one supported her back, two others held her arms and two her legs.

Judging from the room alone, the woman giving birth was upper class. This was not one of the reed dwellings of the slaves and the lower working class. The room, with its brick walls, was spacious and well furnished, connecting most likely to other rooms, surrounding a courtyard in the manner of fashionable suburban homes in the city of Haran.

Only the two men in the room seemed out of place. Had they been involved in the birthing process, one might have concluded easily that they were either physicians or priests. Men, customarily, were not allowed in the room, not even the father, until the baby was born. But then, these were not truly men, any more. They were eunuchs. Judging from their dress, they were religious functionaries of some kind. One, Anot, was a giant of a man; the other, Enkut, was of average size. They were young, handsome, well proportioned. The reason for their presence was not immediately apparent. For the moment, they stood by, saying or doing nothing, blending quietly into the scenery, furtively alert.

Aaaahhh, aaahhh, the woman screamed now.

It’s coming, it’s coming, exclaimed the awaiting midwife.

You’re doing fine! Push, push! whispered the one in back.

A moment more, and the head emerged, then the whole body, as the midwife guided it out skillfully. No sooner had the lungs cleared than the baby gave a loud, healthy cry!

It’s a boy! one of the midwives declared jubilantly, forgetting herself for the moment. She stifled herself quickly, remembering the special circumstances and realizing what lay ahead. Two of the midwives helped the exhausted mother to her bed and made her comfortable. The others busied themselves with the baby, cleaning it up, making sure that the afterbirth and umbilical cord stayed with the child, as they wrapped the baby in swaddling cloths. Ordinarily they would have tied off the umbilical cord and cut it. But they knew that this was not an ordinary situation. Once wrapped securely, they handed the baby to its mother.

The door flew open and a man rushed to the bedside.

Oh, Sarai, he declared. I heard it cry!

He bent down and kissed his wife.

How are you?

Fine, Abram, just tired.

Oh, what a beautiful baby! he said, beaming. What is it?

It’s a boy, Sarai replied guardedly.

He’s beautiful, Abram beamed, he’s beautiful—just like you!

Sarai made no comment.

Isn’t he beautiful!Abram said, overcome with emotion, addressing the midwives. Isn’t he beautiful?

They smiled and nodded in agreement. Then, reading Sarai’s imperious face, they stopped smiling and busied themselves with their cleanup.

May I hold him? Abram asked his wife.

I don’t think you should, she said.

Just for a moment, Abram asked. I’ll be careful!

No, she said, It’s not a good idea!

I want to hold him, once, just for a little while! Abram pleaded.

The two men, who had stood in the shadows, had been watching closely. At a barely perceptible sign from Sarai they moved in closer.

Abram, she said, you know what must be done.

Abram pretended not to hear. He reached out a finger to the child, whose little fingers wrapped around his.

Look, Sarai, look! He’s holding me! He knows me! Look how strong he is!

Don’t get attached, she said coolly.

It’s a baby, he said, our baby!

Don’t think about it! she said.

How can you say that? Abram declared.

You know the situation, Sarai said evenly, unemotionally. There is nothing we can do about it. You knew that when you married me!

My head knew it, said Abram. But now my heart says ‘No!’ I want the child. Don’t you want the child, too, Sarai? What does your heart say?

It does not matter what my heart says.

Have a heart, Sarai! Have a heart.

It only matters what Inanna says. I am here to serve her. Have you forgotten who I am?

He had not forgotten. He knew, as everyone knew, that she was the high priestess of Inanna, the great goddess of love, and war.

You are the high priestess of the goddess Inanna, Abram acknowledged. But you are also a woman, Sarai! And now you are a mother.

Inanna does not allow that! Sarai said matter-of-factly.

Then damn Inanna! Abram shouted, shaking as he cursed the Queen of Heaven, the goddess of Love and Light, daughter of the moon god Nanna-Sin and the moon goddess Ningal, who reigned over the Sumerian cities of Ur and Haran. It was true what Sarai said. While the high priestess could marry, she was not allowed to have children. Sarai had always been so careful about this. She knew how to protect herself against conception. The contraceptive had never failed her—until now. But that was another matter. Now she had things to deal with, including an emotional husband on the verge of hysteria.

Abram! she said sharply. We’ve discussed all this! Now, control yourself.

Anticipating his next move, she signaled her eunuchs. Impulsively, Abram reached for the baby. Before he could snatch it away, Anot, the more powerful of the two men, enveloped Abram in his arms from behind, restraining him. Sarai quickly handed the baby to Enkut and signaled him to go and do what had to be done.

No!Abram screamed, struggling to free himself. Noooooooo!

Shhhhh, Abram, shhhhhh, whispered Anot, not unkindly, shhh- hhh, shhhhhh, it’s all right, it’s all right.

Overpowered and exhausted, Abram went limp.

I need fresh air, he said.

"Let me walk with