Today we continue Genesis and properly meet Abraham né Abram. Much less discussion than last week; much of the portion is a discussion of Abraham's travels; him tricking the pharaoh about Sarah not being his wife before being kicked out of Egypt; geopolitics occuring around himself and his brother's son Lot; the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah jumping into tar pits; the G-d promising Abraham sooooo many children repeatedly over several decades; Hagar giving birth to Ishmael and Sarah growing frustrated with her, Abraham, and G-d; various sacrifices and visions Abraham received of the exiles that awaited Israel; G-d renaming Abram and Sarai by adding characters to their names; and the circumcision of Abraham's household.
Not too much to discuss this week. We had a lot of thoughts around Hagar and Sarah and the context of their tensions towards each other, and the unfortunately relatable ways in which Sarah was cruel to her. There was a lot of discussion of the process of sacrifice. We talked about how Abraham kinda comes off a jerk with the whole tricking pharaoh about whether Sarah was his wife or not thing. We also got into the logistics of circumcising a household- given 314 non-slave members of the household and only working during a presumed 12 hours of daylight, the man would have had to perform 26.5 circumcisions an hour to get everything done the same day as G-d told him to do it1. There was also discussion of Abraham and Sarah's genders, given there's some argument as to their specific gender categories in the Talmud and how that informs our own reads of them and their troubles with having children.
We also, importantly, determine whether Sarah is a milf2.
As for the sages:
Rashi discusses the jewish immunity to astrology, as well as the funny little tricks G-d likes to play on astrologers when it comes to israel.
Many it/shes are saying this
At one point Rashi is discussing the blessings given unto Sarah and brings up a discussion of G-d blessing Sarah with tremendous amounts of breastmilk. So much breastmilk that she feeds every child in the room to prove that she's nursing. So do with that as you will.
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h/t to spacecatte in chat for the math
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emphatically yes. she's having kids in her nineties and the text is explicit about how attractive she is