I met Abraham when I married him. That was how it worked. Your parents told you when your wedding day was, who your husband would be, and that was that. If you missed home, well, that was just how things were.

After I married him, his brother Nahor told me the story of the idols. Their father was a craftsman who made idols. One day Abraham was watching the store, and when his father came back from the trip he had taken, the idols were all shattered, in pieces. It was a mess. The only one left standing was the biggest idol in the room, and there was a hammer put in his hand. Terach, the father, was furious. "How could you do this? Don't you know this is our livelihood? Have you no respect at all?" Abraham told him that the large idol had done it. Terach didn't believe it. "You know very well that's not true. That idol can't do anything!"

"If the idol can't do anything," Abraham asked, "Why do you pray to it?"

Everyone was completely shocked that he would do such a thing. But it made me smile. It was my first inkling that he was special. I thought maybe he knew something that no one else knew.

And then, he said he felt a compulsion, he just had to leave. "For where?" I wanted to know. He wouldn't tell me. He said he didn't know, but how could he not have known? He was full of adventure, full of conviction, he had to go! But what about me? I had friends, a wonderful group of women I was close to. And then Abraham reminded me about the idols, and I knew we were both meant to follow the Voice that told him to leave.

Children. Oh, my god, children. Maybe some of you know the pain, every month, knowing that there won't be a child, not this time....And I felt it for years, for decades, the hole in my life reopened like clockwork, raw and hurting, until it was too late. And after a while the pain wasn't so sharp, but every once in a while it would return with full force. Abraham never said anything, but I knew he was suffering too.

We laughed, Abraham and I. Oh, yes, we said, we've been promised that we'd be a great nation. Or at least, Abraham was promised that he would father a great nation. I guessed I wasn't meant to share in that greatness. And the pain, the anger, welled up inside me. I didn't want to feel such resentment of my husband, but I did. But he had received his promise. And I had my honor. My husband deserved a child. So I did the honorable thing, I gave him Hagar.

Hagar and I had been friends. It's hard to live that closely with someone for so many years without becoming close. So, yes, we enjoyed each other's company, knew each other like sisters. But then she became pregnant. And she changed entirely. It was the one thing she could do that I couldn't. And so whatever resentment she had that I was her superior in social stature suddenly came to the surface. I couldn't stand it. I never hurt her physically, but I made sure she knew she was still a servant of mine - I made her carry drinks and towels to the bath house, something a slave usually does.

I knew that Hagar and Ishmael had to leave. I knew there would be rivalry between her son and mine. It always happens that way between brothers, It scared me. I was afraid her son would kill mine - he was so much bigger, it might not even be on purpose. Or, even worse, what if my son killed his older brother? I didn't want my son to become a killer, and I didn't want him to be in danger And then when I saw Ishmael teasing my baby, my little boy, the decision was made.

Years later, Hagar told me how hard it was - that scene in the desert, watching her son.... She didn't believe he would live, certainly didn't believe he would become a great nation. And I wept for her, the tears of a woman, the tears of a mother.

Years later, I told her how it had been for me. My relationship with Abraham would never be the same. He lived apart from me for a long time, in Beersheva. Was he with her then? Did he prefer her? Did he miss his older son? He never told me. So I had my son, but not my husband. Years later, when I told Hagar about those lonely times, she wept for me, the tears of a woman, the tears of a wife, the tears of a mother.

So here I am talking to you all these centuries later. All these wars later between Hagar's descendents and mine. Hostility within the family is worse than between strangers. Inside a family, there's such emotion, such deep feelings of -- of everything. Of hatred. Of mistrust. Of envy, envy of power, or wealth, or standing in the world. It's worse because you're so much alike. You descendants of Abraham through Isaac and through Ishmael, you both have that Middle Eastern reliance on law, on rules about how to do every little thing. You both speak Semitic languages, you both chant your holy books, you both pray in established ways at established times. You think you don't understand each other, but you understand more than you know.

You share something else. You share a sense of memory. You relive your history through your study, through your holidays. And it makes it very hard for you to hear each other, because the litany of cruelties just gets longer and longer. You are each so set on redeeming that history. You would rather die than give up that recrimination.* Maybe you believe that you would die if you gave it up. And so you are killing each other. My worst fear was that one of you would die. I want both of you to live.

You're so good at remembering each drop of blood you've taken from each other, each indignity, each cruelty.

Let me tell you some other things I want you to remember: . Never forget the centuries of cooperation you had, times when you fed each other, bounced off each other in intellect, in literature, in mathematics and science and language. Never forget that you were both created in the image of God, as is every human being. . Never forget that your ancestors were brothers.

And now, listen to my voice: never, ever become accustomed to the pain of each other. Never get used to it. I want it always to come as a shock. Because one day, maybe you will both be shocked into putting an end to this seething hatred. The alternative, the way things are now, cannot stand.

*I am indebted to Rabbi Alan Lew for the idea expressed in these last two sentences. It is expanded in his book, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, pp. 48-49.