- Hagar (Bible)
Hagar (
Since the 1970s the custom has arisen of giving the name "Hagar" to newborn female babies. The giving of this name is often taken as a controversial political act, marking the parents as being left-leaning and supporters of reconciliation with the Palestinians and Arab World, and is frowned upon by many, including nationalists and the religious. The connotations of the name were represented by the founding of the Israeli journal "Hagar: Studies in Culture, Polity and Identities" in 2000. [ [http://hsf.bgu.ac.il/hagar/issues/1_1_2000/1120001.aspx Oren Yiftachel, "Launching Hagar: Marginality, Beer-Sheva", Critique, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva.] ]
The Israeli
Women in Black movement has unofficially renamed Jerusalem's Paris Square, where the movement has been holding anti-occupation vigils every Friday since 1988, as "Hagar Square". The name commorates the lateHagar Roublev , a prominent Israeli feminist and peace activist, who was among the founders of these Friday vigils.Fact|date=August 2008African-Americans
Several black American feminists have written about Hagar as though her story was comparable to that of slaves in American history. Wilma Bailey in an article entitled "Hagar: A Model for an Anabaptist Feminist", refers to her as a "maidservant" and "slave". She sees Hagar as a model of "power, skills, strength and drive." In the article "A Mistress, A Maid, and No Mercy", Renita Weems argues that the relationship between Sarah and Hagar exhibits "ethnic prejudice exacerbated by economic and social exploitation." [Bailey, Wilma Ann " [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4044/is_200201/ai_n9026537 Black and Jewish women consider Hagar", "Encounter", Winter 2002] ] According to Susanne Scholz,
cquote|Enslaved, raped [sic] , but seen by God, Hagar has been a cherished biblical character in African-American communities. Womanist theologian Delores S. Williams explains:
:The African-American community has taken Hagar's story unto itself. Hagar has ‘spoken’ to generation after generation of black women because her story has been validated as true by suffering black people. She and Ishmael together, as family, model many black American families in which a lone woman/mother struggles to hold the family together in spite of the poverty to which ruling class economics consign it. Hagar, like many black women, goes into the wide world to make a living for herself and her child, with only God by her side.
The story of Hagar demonstrates that survival is possible even under harshest conditions. [ [http://www.lectio.unibe.ch/04_1/Scholz.Enslaved.htm Susanne Scholz, "Gender, Class, and Androcentric Compliance in the Rapes of Enslaved Women in the Hebrew Bible", "Lectio Difficilior" ("European Electronic Journal for Feminist Exegisis"), 1/2004] (see especially section "The Story of Hagar (Genesis 16:1-16; 21:9-21)".]
References
ee also
* , a controversial book discussing the origins of Islam.
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