GEN1102 See [[GEN1080]] Genesis 20:7 intercede PASTIMP 87

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GEN1097 … the overwhelming majority of [rabbinic] sources understand [a person’s] duty to forgive as conditional upon the offender’s prior repentance.   It should be noted, of course, that the offended party might voluntarily choose to forgive in this case, but Jewish law would not regard it as his duty to do so.   PASTIMP 245

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GEN1100 If the offender repents and pleads for forgiveness, he should be forgiven.   The forgiver should not be obdurate, as it is said [this verse]. PASTIMP 90

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GEN1106 Whence is it derived that if one asks his friend for forgiveness the latter is considered cruel if he does not forgive him?   From [this verse].  Baba Kamma 92a TEMIMAH-GEN 95

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GEN1104 There are different types of hatred. One may hate his neighbor for causing him a monetary loss, striking him, shaming him, or giving him a bad name and the like. For all these and the like one must not hate his friend in silence, as stated in respect to the wicked (I Shemuel 13:22): "And Avshalom did not speak with Amnon either good or evil, for Avshlom hated Amnon," but it is a mitzvah to inform him and to say to him: "Why did you do this and this to me? as it is written [this verse]: "You shall surely reprove your friend." And if ... If [your friend] asks for forgiveness, he must be forgiven; and the one who forgives must not be hard-hearted, as it is written [this verse].   “And Avraham prayed to God” [on behalf of Avimelech]. Baba Kama 92a.  And even if the offender does not ask to be forgiven, he should not be hated but handled with love, so that in the end the injury will be righted.   TZADIK 133-5

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GEN1107 Rava said to Rabbah b. Mari: “Whence do the Rabbis derive their formula: ‘If one prays for his friend, and he is in need of the same thing himself, he is answered first’? From the verse Genesis 20:17: ‘And Abraham prayed [for Avimelech],’ after which it is written: ‘And the Lord remembered Sarah as he said’ – as Abraham said on behalf of Avimelech” Baba Kamma 92a TEMIMAH-GEN 95

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GEN1108 See [[GEN1126]] Genesis 22:1 words GOODSOC 178-9

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GEN1109 [This story] shows us the potential negative impact of peer pressure.   When Sarah saw that her handmaiden, Hagar, and Hagar’s (and Abraham’s) son. Yishmael, negatively affected Abraham’s (and Sarah’s) younger, “true” son, Isaac, she ordered Abraham to throw both Hagar and Yishmael out of the house. It is clear that Sarah was fearful that negative peer pressure by Yishmael and his mother might influence Isaac.   Abraham was in a quandary because, on the one hand, he understood Sarah’s request, but on the other hand, he was reluctant to throw out his own flesh and blood.   It was God Himself who came to Abraham and said to listen to Sarah because the potential impact of peer pressure is more important than the desire to retain your relatives in your household (Abraham himself came to this same conclusion earlier with Lot, but Lot was not a son).   AMEMEI 214-5

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GEN1110 A good son’s value is indicated in the Talmud: “It is written, Hadad heard in Egypt that David was a rest with his fathers and that Joab … was dead.”   Why is David described as laid to rest, but Joab as dead? … Because David left behind a son like himself, he is called lying at rest; Joab, who did not leave a son like himself, is called dead.” I Kings 11:21. Talmud, Baba Batrha 116a. Similarly, Abraham had Ishmael and other sons from other wives; yet the Almighty promised him, ‘through Isaac shall progeny be called yours.” [this verse] Only Isaac, then Jacob and his descendants, are truly the “children of Abraham,” for in Isaac Abraham’s faith lived on. Hence in a very real sense Abraham, like David, did not die but only came to rest. Their spiritual achievements, the essence of heir lives, lived on.  SINAI3 377

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GEN1111 In a treatise entitled “Ornaments of Woman” one of the saints of the early Church, Tertullian, writes bitterly: “O woman! Thou shouldst always wear mourning and rags, in order to show thy penitence and thy weeping and atoning for they great crime of having corrupted humanity soon after the Creation. For thou are the one who first tasted of the forbidden fruit and who first transgressed the law of God. It was thou who hast seduced man whom the devil himself did not dare to approach.” The Jew found it therefore hard to heed the claim of Christianity that it was the first to teach that “God is love”.  He preferred, though threatened by the inquisition and the torture-chamber to embrace the new creed, to remain a member of “a stiff-necked people” ever ready to die for Judaism than to live for Christianity. From the Gospels, especially from the Epistles to the ancient Greek and Roman communities sent by Paul, the real architect of Christianity, it is evident that it was Judaism that first liberated woman and converted marriage into an inviolable sacrament. [In Hebrew, the words for man and woman – ish and ishah – contain the same two letters (aleph and shin), sharing equally between them the two letters (yod, he) which form one of the name of God. [This will be more closely seen from the Hebrew איש (man) and אשה (woman); the word for God is יה.   Incidentally, R. Meir points out, if you leave out the two letters spelling the name of God, the word left, in both cases, is אש (fire), indicative of the consuming nature of such a Godless relationship. Could the equality of the sexes have been more forcibly and picturesquely described?] the words Kiddushin and Nissuin [both describing marriage but literally meaning “holy” and “uplifting” – AJL] should be sufficient guarantee for the protection of woman in Judaism and should convince all but the bigot that marriage is a loving alliance of Godliness and happiness.   In such an ideal union, the wife is not the slave of the husband but his better self with whom her husband should always confer and whose good advice he should ever be ready to follow. “Whatever Sarah shall tell thee to do, listen to her” was the behest God gave to Abraham when he felt disinclined to act on her advice of banishing Hagar from his home [this verse].  The Jew does not “fall” in love; he rises.  Our religion never wearies in reminding its adherents that “to be fruitful and to multiply” is the first command in the Torah. “A man’s home is his wife” Yoma 1:1. If he treats here as an inferior being, he will be responsible for the destruction of his home-life and of his general welfare. LEHRMAN 253-4

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