In recent years, the escalation of a violent and ugly Palestinian intifada has placed before the Jewish People some stark and difficult questions: How does one battle a faceless terrorism and a stateless enemy? How do we cope with the painful realities of suicide bombers and a broader propaganda onslaught against Israel? And as Jews, how do we somehow extract these very real and painful events from the arena of mere media and politics, and seek a context for them through Torah study?
These lectures explore the possibility that the Arab-Israeli conflict being played out today is at its core a war over "unfinished business" that took place long ago. In the long eye of history, the genesis of the conflict may have taken place thousands of years ago, in the Biblical narratives that detail the interaction of Abraham and Sarah with Hagar and her son Ishmael -- the mother and child who are the apparent ancestors of the modern Arab world. In this series, we undertake a close study of these narratives -- deceptively simple stories that could prove crucial to understanding the conflict in which we find ourselves enmeshed today.
