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D’var Torah by Ric Arenstein, Past President and Campaign Chair, JCFR.  Kiddush following services sponsored by the Jewish Federation

Torah Genesis 35:16-36:43

Haftarah Obadiah 1:1-21

 

Matt Langsam, Ellen Bernstein, Michael Doniger and Paula Bernstein

Haftarah: Moshe Zasler

 

Have You Seen Your Shadow Reflect in the Mirror?

By Reb Mimi Feigelson, Mashpiah Ruchanit, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

 

Prof. Nechama Leibovitz's voice roared across the room and I shrank into my seat. It was a study seminar that Gesher (an Israeli organization that focused on bridging and binding together Jews of all lifestyles in Israel) was holding in Tzfat in the late Seventies. I was one of a dozen and a half Israeli teens that were blessed to learn Nechama's method of biblical commentary with Nechama herself. Yes, everyone called her "Nechama", even when speaking directly to her! She glared at us and roared: "Do you think that the Ten Commandments had Rashi's commentary on the bottom of the tablets when Moshe brought them down from the heavens??? I'm asking you to read the verse and tell me what it says, not to quote what you remember Rashi explains!" It wasn't that she didn't want us to labor, ten minutes later, on Rashi and other commentaries, trying to understand what they were seeing that we didn't, and how, using one definitive word, they differed from each other. But first and foremost she wanted us to read the Torah with our naked eyes. Along with the fear of her roar I was also relieved - I had flunked my first Rashi exam in tenth grade, since I couldn't figure out what was troubling Rashi - I was happy to put off having to succumb to Nachama's frightening glare if she asked me, "What was Rashi's problem?" And yes, by the end of tenth grade I learned how to figure out what my teacher thought was Rashi's question, even when I knew that he really had a very different agenda then what my teacher proposed

 

Nonetheless, there are those moments where Rashi's words reverberate thirty years later, only this time with different questions.

 

In preparation for Ya'akov's encounter with his brother Esav, the Torah tells us: "Then Ya'akov was greatly afraid and distressed" (Breishit/Genesis 32:8). Clearly, Rashi wants to know what the difference is between fear and distress. Is fear not a form of stress, is stress not a form of fear, asks the Midrash Rabba 76(II), on our verse? Rashi quotes this Midrash, teaching us that Ya'kov was concerned "lest he be killed, lest he kill."

 

"Lest he be killed" I understand - Esav was on his way with four hundred men. And Esav had a lot of good reasons to want to square off an old bill that he carried between himself and his brother. But Ya'kov killing, "lest he kill" - who was there with him that could help him overcome his brother and fleet? The women and children were going to stand behind him as support in his battle with his brother? And why would Ya'akov be afraid of killing his brother? What was it that he was harboring in his heart for all those years that would muster up so much energy and strength that would enable him to overcome Esav? Was it the years of estrangement, far from his home? Was the encounter with Esav a 'second chance' so-to-speak, enabling Ya'akov to do all he wanted to do when confronting Lavan, but there he held back? There are many ways we could begin to unpack this question. Why was Ya'akov distressed that he might kill his brother?

 

I would like to offer one possibility by asking a preliminary question: How many of our Rabbis and teachers spoke to us about the shadow / the dark side of the Torah?

 

Peter Pan is serious. The theatrical presentation of Peter Pan begins with his attempt to sew his shadow back on! Like Carl Jung he understands that anything that has a true existence has a shadow. He can not embrace life without embracing his shadow! The Torah, as a code of law, can evoke judgment; the quest for spiritual intimacy with the Divine can draw one to arrogance and elitism, as examples of what this shadow looks like. The Ishbitzer Rebbe (Rabbi Mordechai Yoseph Lainer of Ishbitza, 1800 - 1853) on last week's Torah portion teaches us that it is in the place of our strength that our true weakness is revealed.

 

Could it be that Ya'akov is distressed for he knows that when he stands in front of Esav what he will be seeing is not only his twin brother, but also the 'Esav' qualities that he himself has buried deep within himself? Is he distressed because for all those years he could make believe that they were not part of his biography, not a component of his biological and spiritual D.N.A.? Does he know that the only way to truly meet his brother, the only way to pave his way home is by virtue of owning his ability to kill his brother, "lest he kill"?

 

Ya'akov Avinu (our patriarch), Peter Pan, and each and every one of us, is asked to stand in front of a mirror, and with the naked eye that Nechama asked us to, read the verses of the Torah. We are asked to see our shadow staring at us. As in the way that Ya'akov asks the angel that he struggles with for his name (Breishit/Genesis 32:31), as in the manner with which Ya'akov receives a new name (Brieshit/Genesis 32:29), we are asked to name our shadow. We may see Ya'akov as Ya'akov or Yisrael, but when Ya'kov is alone, when he talks to himself, could it be that he calls himself 'Esav'?

 

The Parmishlaner Rebbe (Rabbi Meyer of Parmishlan, 1703 - 1773) says that there are three Mitzvote (commandments) that we enter into with the totality of our being - the Land of Israel, the Sukkah and Shabbat. Three mitzvote, he teaches, that we embrace with the complexity of our personality. Three places, moments, where one cannot hide. We enter these three hand in hand with our shadow.

 

May the light of the Shabbat candles in our homes enable us to see our shadow flickering in the darkness of the night.

 

Shabbat shalom

 

Reb Mimi Feigelson is the Mashpiah Ruchanit (Spiritual Mentor) and Lecturer of Rabbinic Literature at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University (formerly the U.J.), Los Angeles. She is an Orthodox - Israeli Rabbi and an international Chassidut teacher and story teller.
( http://www.zieglerpodcasts.com )

 

A short commentary on this week's Haftarah can be read here: www.uscj.org.il/haftarahEdit.php?id=539

Torah Genesis 31:17-32:3

Haftarah Hosea 12:13-14:10

 

Ed Mollen and Merrill Gold

Haftarah: Yahoshua Michaels

 

Boundaries and Crossing

Dr. Aryeh Cohen Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature
Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Angels, it seems, are everywhere. From contemporary popular culture (TV's Saving Grace with its beer chugging angel Earl) to the classic Christmas movie Its a Wonderful Life with its slightly shlemiel-like angel Clarence. In the literary world Anne Rice's new series of books is called Songs of the Seraphim and Tony Kushner's Angels in America was played out on both stage and screen. My own personal research angel, Google, tells me that there is a 2008 Baylor University study that found that half of all Americans believe that they are protected by a guardian angel. This brings us to the specific angels who appear in this week's Torah portion (Va'Yetzei, Genesis 28:10-32:2) who have been the subjects of paintings by artists from Rafael in the sixteenth century to Marc Chagall in the twentieth.

 

The story, in short, is that Jacob, running from his twin brother Esau after a nasty little "mix-up" (abetted by Rebecca) concerning the thorny matter of who should actually have gotten the blessing of the first-born from Isaac, comes upon a place (as yet unnamed) towards dusk and decides to camp there for the night. As Jacob sleeps, he dreams, and in his dream he sees a ladder standing twixt heaven and earth, and angels ascending and descending upon that ladder. Finally, God appears and blesses Jacob and promises him protection in his sojourn to Haran. Jacob wakes up in the morning and says: "Surely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it!This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven." He then builds an altar and calls the site Beth El (abode of God).

 

This is not the first time that angels have appeared in Genesis. Angels ("cherubim") guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden so that Adam and Eve cannot return. Angels announce to Abraham the coming birth of Isaac; angels save Lot from Sodom and earlier from the Sodomites; angels save Isaac from the knife of Abraham. This is definitely not the first time that God has appeared in Genesis. And yet, Jacob expresses surprise ("and I did not know it!") and is either "shaken" (in the new Jewish Publication Society translation) or "afraid" (in the old Jewish Publication Society translation). (The former translation follows the context while the latter translation conforms to the ancient Greek, Syriac and Aramaic translations.) It seems to me that this "I don't know" (ve-anochi lo yadati) is significant.

 

Let us look at another story, a much later story, a story found in the Babylonian Talmud (edited in the seventh century CE) which might lend a helpful frame to Jacob's shock in this tale. The story in the Talmud tells of an incident that occurred in Jerusalem after the destruction of the Second Temple. Here is the story as related by R. Yosi, a second century CE Palestinian Sage (Tractate Berachot 3a):

One time I was travelling on the road and I entered into one of the ruins of Jerusalem in order to pray. Elijah, of blessed memory, came, and guarded the door for me, and waited for me, until I finished my prayer. After I finished my prayer, he said to me:
- Peace be with you my master!
And I said to him: "Peace be with you my master and teacher!"
And he said to me: "My son, why did you go into this ruin?"
I said to him: "To pray."
And he said to me: "You ought to have prayed on the road."
And I said to him: "I feared lest passer-by might interrupt me."
And he said to me: "You ought to have said an abbreviated prayer."
At that moment I learned from him three things: 1. One must not go into a ruin; 2. One must say the prayer on the road, 3. And if one does say his prayer on the road, he says an abbreviated prayer.
And he said to me: "My son, what sound did you hear in this ruin?"
I said to him: "I heard a divine voice, cooing like a dove, and saying: Woe to the children! For on account of their sins I destroyed my house and burnt my Temple, and exiled them among the nations!'"
And he said to me: "By your life and by your head! Not in this moment alone does it exclaim thus. But three times every day does it exclaim thus. And not only this, but whenever Israel go into the synagogues and study houses and responds: May His great name be blessed!' the Holy One of Blessing, shakes his head, and says: Happy is the king who is thus praised in his house! What is there for the father who had to banish his children?! And woe to the children who were banished from the table of their father.'"

 

There is much that one can say about this wonderful story. The moment that I wish to focus on comes halfway through the tale. Rabbi Yosi entered a ruin in Jerusalem - and all ruins in Jerusalem point towards or stand in for the one ruin, the Temple. Rabbi Yosi went into the ruin to pray. He was not worried that he would be attacked by highwaymen if he prayed on the road (a danger discussed further on in this same chapter of Talmud), he was worried lest his prayer be interrupted. Elijah appears to him and teaches him three things about prayer. First, one must not go into a ruin. Second, one must pray on the road. Finally, if one prays on the road, one says an abbreviated prayer. I suggest that it is not too much of a stretch to see this conversation in a larger frame. Elijah is teaching Rabbi Yosi (a student of Rabbi Akiva, who was a follower of Bar Kochba and anticipated the imminent rebuilding of the Temple) that one cannot return to pray in The Ruin, that is the Temple. Further, one is allowed to pray on the road, that is, there is still prayer in Exile. Finally, even though the prayer in Exile is not the same fulsome prayer as was once said in the Temple, when one prays "on the road" one must say "an abbreviated prayer" - and that prayer counts as the former prayer used to.

 

Here, then, is the moment. Elijah asks Rabbi Yosi: "My son, what sound did you hear in this ruin?" From this we understand that to this moment Rabbi Yosi had no idea that the cooing of a dove that he heard was relevant to the ongoing narrative. (If I were telling a tale which included my hearing the voice of God, I am pretty sure that that bit of information would come pretty much at the beginning of the tale.) Even when Rabbi Yosi answers Elijah it is clear that Rabbi Yosi does not understand what he heard. God's statement, or more accurately, God's wail (Woe to the children! For on account of their sins I destroyed my house and burnt my Temple, and exiled them among the nations!') is the response to R. Yosi's prayer. This is exactly what Elijah has to teach Rabbi Yosi. In Exile there is prayer, but it is not the prayer of yore. It is not the prayer wherein a supplication is made and then the omnipotent God of Jerusalem who resides between the cherubs in the Holy of Holies in the Temple - but who rules all of creation - answers the prayer - smiting enemies, bequeathing blessings. Diasporic prayer means partaking of God's mourning. Prayer is for God as much as to God.

 

Jacob, encamped on the boundary between Israel and Exile (the Exile which, as Andre Neher has taught us, is the place where we most often find our matriarchs and patriarchs), has a surprising, shocking encounter with God. Apparently this is not the same type of encounter in which God's word was crystal clear and cut like a knife or burnt like a pillar of fire. This was a God standing at the top of a parade of angels who, as the midrash tells us, were changing shifts - the angels of Canaan were going off duty and the angels of the Exile were coming on.

 

It is this moment of surprise, of shock, of fear combined with the relation with God at a distance that was to frame Jacob's sojourn in Haran and his return. Before he is able to traverse the river to return to Canaan, he must once again pass the angel, the angel who bestows upon him his new name - Israel.

 

Jacob's diasporic sojourn was, as such sojourns always are, a mixed bag. He marries and raises a family. He establishes himself as the father of a large clan who will one day be a nation, but at the same time he skirts and flirts with danger. He gathers the knowledge and the life that he will plant in the Land of Israel, just before he leaves for Egypt. Jacob was perhaps the first fully fleshed out Diasporic Jew. He was, as we all know, not the last.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

Aryeh Cohen is Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University. Dr. Cohen is a widely published author who has written two books (Rereading Talmud: Gender, Law and the Poetics of Sugyot and Beginning/Again: Towards a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts) and many articles both scholarly and popular. He has lectured on Judaism, Talmud, gender, social justice and other topics across North America and in England. 
His writing has been published in Conservative Judasim, Sh'ma, Zeek, The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, The Association of Jewish Studies Review, Tikkun, The Reconstructionist, Kerem, The Jewish Spectator, The Jewish Journal and elsewhere. Dr. Cohen is one of the founders of the Shtibl, a hassidic egalitarian minyan, and helped found the Jewish Community Justice Project. Dr. Cohen is a member of the Scriptural Reasoning group (which consists of Moslem, Christian and Jewish scholars) which is located in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University.

 

 

A short commentary on this week's Haftarah can be read here:  www.uscj.org.il/haftarahEdit.php?id=421

Torah Genesis 27:28-28:9

Haftarah Malachi 1:1-2:7

 

Elizabeth DaCosta-Kaufman, Gary Goldberg and Katherine Flax 

Haftarah: Rhoda Nachman

www.uscj.org/compact.html

The Stories We Tell

This commentary was written by Rabbi Abigail Treu, JTS

 

The evidence stared at us: a hot pink eye embedded in dark skin. "Which one of you did this?" my mother demanded. I, of course, knew the secret, having mashed the Bubbilicious bubble gum into a crack in the dark-stained paneling of our family room some hours earlier. My little sister, trying to be helpful, asked with what I knew to be complete innocence: "Well, what kind of gum is it?" Which was all our mother needed to hear to jump to a conclusion that brought her investigation to its end and my sister to her inevitable reprimand.

My first lie (or at least the first one I got away with), in this case by omission.

It's a shameful memory that brings me to a question: What if George Washington had decided to lie about chopping down that cherry tree, rather than insisting "I cannot tell a lie"?

Or, to put it differently, what are we to do with a story about a patriarch who lies, cheats, and steals his way through life?

The most egregious instance of Jacob's less-than-honorable behavior comes in Parashat Tol'dot when, at his mother's suggestion, he dons a costume; appears before his old, blind father; and uses a lie to steal the blessing intended for his twin brother Esau:

"He [Jacob] went to his father and said, "Father."
And he [Isaac] said, "Yes, which of my sons are you?"
Jacob said to his father, "I am Esau, your firstborn; I have done as you told me.
Pray sit up and eat of my game, that you may give me your blessing." (Gen. 27:18–19)

No cherry-tree virtue here. Of course, interpreters throughout the ages have sought to "correct" the story so as to bolster Jacob's ethical position. Much of it hinges on the exact words uttered by Jacob: "I am Esau, your firstborn; I have done as you told me." Rashi (in an I-did-not-sleep-with-that-woman approach) tries to get Jacob off on a technicality. What Jacob really meant was, "I [am the one bringing you these things]; Esau [is] your firstborn. I have done [many things] as you told me." The midrash in Genesis Rabbah 65:18 moves similarly, but with the added bonus of purifying Jacob's motive: "Rabbi Levi said: I [am the one who will one day receive God's Commandments; but] Esau is your firstborn." At least here Jacob isn't just after the material gains and power contained in Isaac's blessing, but is imagined to desire God's word. And the Hasidic Noam Elimelech follows the Zohar's lead, considering Rebecca's voice, encouraging Jacob to receive Isaac's blessing, representing the Shekhinah (God's Presence), guiding Jacob to do what is necessary for the divine plan of the election of Israel to take place. Far-fetched, but at least it attributes to Jacob the merits of struggling internally over the spiritual cost of receiving Isaac's blessing.

Bible scholar James Kugel describes the dilemma:

Since Jacob was their people's immediate founder, Jewish interpreters were naturally interested in celebrating his virtues—and in stressing the faults of his rival, Esau . . . Believing that the purpose of biblical narratives was to present readers with moral exemplars and role models (either positive or negative), interpreters naturally had a tendency to exaggerate the virtues and vices of the people involved. As a result, readers soon came to expect biblical figures to come with a clear label: "altogether righteous" or "completely wicked." (How to Read the Bible, 137)

But what if we don't bother trying to defend him? What if we accept that Jacob lied?

In a recent op-ed column in the New York Times, David Brooks wrote of our ability to choose the stories we tell about ourselves: "Among all the things we don't control," he wrote on November 10, "we do have some control over our stories. We do have a conscious say in selecting the narrative we will use to make sense of the world." Having selected, generations ago, a story about a patriarch who lies to his father at the expense of his brother for his own gain, and having selected—in every generation since then, including our own—this year, this week, to retell that story, what do we gain if we accept the story at face value?

What we gain is a mirror. I wonder if our discomfort in reading Jacob's moral failure here (and elsewhere) is a reflection of the discomfort we feel internally as we struggle with our own morality. We all learned, at some point in life, that we could lie. We all got away with it at some point (in our childhood at least), and had to teach ourselves to refrain from such behavior. Reading the story literally and accepting Jacob's lie means that we don't have to pretend that we are all as innocent as George Washington, who "could not tell a lie," and frees us up to focus inward. Rather than project a holier-than-thou expectation onto Jacob, we can use Parashat Tol'dot as an invitation to scrutinize our own lies and sibling rivalries.

We descend from a patriarch who struggled with his yetzer ha-ra, his own temptations to do wrong. So too, each of us struggles. Reading this story without rushing to defend Jacob reminds us that each of us has the capacity to be a liar and a cheat, or a person of integrity and honor. When we hear of the latest scandal involving a bribe, a swindle, marital infidelity, whichever vice du jour lands on the front pages, we are incensed, indignant. But when we read Tol'dot, we remember—if we choose not to exonerate Jacob—the adjuration of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai (BT Berakhot 28b): "May you fear heaven more than you fear one another." Each of us is tempted every day in so many ways, and the integrity that comes from a life of honesty is sacred because it is so difficult to achieve.

The important thing is that Jacob outgrows the behavior we see and dislike. By the time he matures into the father of twelve tribes, he has struggled with God and come to the realization that God dwells in "this place" in ways he did not know in his youth. We don't need to pretend that Jacob never lied; we need to realize that Jacob did lie and cheat, and that he successfully struggled to abandon those behaviors. That is what makes him worthy of being our patriarch.

George Washington may not have told a lie, but most of us have. We were thrown out of Eden to live in the world, and we were given Torah to keep us holy. We choose to tell Jacob's story because Torah teaches us that we can grow wise over time, that we can learn from our mistakes, and that we are always on the path toward self-improvement and self-refinement. For "its ways are ways of truth, and all its paths are peace."

 

A short commentary on this week's Haftarah can be read here:

www.uscj.org.il/haftarahEdit.php?id=537

Shorashim, our learning service for Students grades K-2 their siblings, parents and friends, will meet in the Kiddush room at  10:30 AM Saturday morning. All are welcome!

Torah Genesis 24:53-25:18

Haftarah 1 Kings 1:1-31

 

Maureen Genderson and Aaron Goff

Haftarah: Jay Berliner

"Everything is in the Hands of Heaven"

This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Marc Wolf, vice chancellor and chief development officer, JTS.

 

Oh, if the atheists read the Torah! During this week's parashah, we encounter a text that could have been fodder for the atheist argument against prayer. Shortly before his death, Abraham calls his senior servant for one last assignment. The servant is to return to Abraham's homeland to find a fitting wife for Isaac, and, after swearing that Abraham's bidding will be done, he sets off.

As he arrives in Abraham's homeland, the servant prays to God:

O Lord, God of my master, Abraham, grant me good fortune this day, and deal graciously with my master Abraham: Here I stand by the spring as the daughters of the townsmen come out to draw water; let the maiden to whom I say, "Please lower your jar that I may drink, and who replies, 'Drink, and I will also water your camels', let her be the one whom You have decreed for your servant Isaac. Thereby shall I know that You have dealt graciously with my master." (Genesis 24:12-14)

The servant's prayer is essentially the gambler's prayer: he prays for luck. He is asking for God to preordain events, to intentionally set the stage and direct the future.

Richard Dawkins, possibly one of the most vocal atheists out there, takes issue with religion functioning this way. The chapter of his book The God Delusion devoted to prayer focuses on an April 2006 article in American Heart Journal reporting on a study that tracked 1,802 patients who received coronary bypass surgery and the role that intercessory prayer played in their recovery. These patients' names were distributed to churchgoers across the country who were told to pray for the patients' recovery. The study found that not only did prayer not play a role in the recovery process, but patients who knew they were being prayed for actually had a higher rate of complications. To Dawkins this is damning evidence for religion—we might as well blaspheme God and live our lives as atheists.

While Abraham's servant leaves everything to the grace of God, his prayer is not unfounded. Commenting on this verse, Abraham Ibn Ezra reframes the "luck" the servant prays for by stating, "Cause good fortune: in the sense of God arranging that it should happen" (24:12). Here, the servant is asking not for good fortune, but for God to actually arrange the meeting with Isaac's future wife.

Divine intervention in human affairs surfaces throughout Judaism, most notably in the Talmud tractate of Berakhot where we read, "Everything is in the hands of heaven, except for the fear of heaven" (32b). In Dawkins's world, this statement is blasphemy. God does not dictate our actions—Dawkins's rhetoric would even go so far as to state that evils of the world (and in many of those cases evils in the name of religion) prove that God cannot dictate our actions. But this understanding neglects the nuanced history of this text and Judaism in general.

With all its depth of difficulty, "Everything is in the hands of heaven" has not been disregarded. Throughout rabbinic literature, great thinkers have grappled with the idea of God's omnipotence.

Moses ben Maimonides, for one, could not accept a world in which God dictated the future. He, like the vast majority of us, recognized our active role in our own future and considered our only recourse to be this interpretation of this excerpt from the Talmud. In his book The Eight Chapters, Maimonides wrote that when our Sages said that everything was in the hands of heaven, it referred to our physical characteristics (eye color, height, etc.) and those of the natural world. These attributes are in the hands of heaven. Everything else—every action we undertake, every thought we have, everything we do—is motivated by "the fear of heaven." What previously seemed to be a limiting term is, as Rambam can only understand it in our world, all-encompassing of our actions.

With Rambam's interpretation of the Talmudic passage, our understanding of God's role changes, but Abraham's servant seems to be left muttering in the desert. How do we understand the servant's prayer in a world where we believe that God cannot define the future?

Prayer in its many forms is an essential element of Judaism, but for many modern people it is difficult to find religious expression in traditional prayers. Discovering meaning in prayer—both our own and Abraham's servant's—demands interpretation. Prayer needs meaning beyond the words, and meaningful prayer requires an understanding of our need for prayer. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:

Prayer is our attachment to the utmost. Without God in sight, we are like the scattered rungs of a broken ladder. To pray is to become a ladder on which thoughts mount to God to join the movement toward God which surges unnoticed throughout the entire universe. (Man's Quest for God, 7)

Prayer, then, is a moment to recognize our connection to the divine; to connect the rungs of the ladder and remember that we have a purpose larger than our current task.

At this point on his journey, when we hear his prayer, Abraham's servant has been forced to face the difficulty of his chore. It was not only finding a wife for Isaac, but also straying from the safety of Abraham's tent, encountering the outside world. It was then that prayer became of utmost importance. He needed to reconnect himself to the importance of his charge. This search was of divine importance and, "without God in sight," he recounted what he needed to make happen.

Dawkins's attack on religion would have been critical if he wrote during an age when our conception of religion had no depth and if we relied solely on the God of the Bible and were bereft of interpretation. Our ability to interpret the sacred has and will continue to keep skeptical believers working to ensure that the "movement toward God" doesn't surge unnoticed—maybe even by Dawkins.

 

 

A short commentary on this week's Haftarah can be read here: 

www.uscj.org.il/haftarahEdit.php?id=536 

Torah Genesis 21:1-22:24

Haftarah 2 Kings 4:1-37

 

Linda Price, Nathaniel Fink and Hannah Sampson

www.uscj.org/compact.html

Avraham the Avatar

Dr. Carol Ingall, Dr. Bernard Heller Professor of Jewish Education, JTS

 

Although many of us recognize the word avatar as a representation of the self in computer games (a "mini-me," or so my granddaughter tells me), in fact the term originates in Hindu mythology. An avatar is a personification or embodiment of a divine principle. While we traditionally refer to Avraham as avinu, our father, perhaps we would get a more nuanced view of this biblical hero by imagining Avraham as an avatar. What does avinu mean? Surely not blood lineage; converts also refer to themselves as b'nai avraham. In his letter to Obadiah—the proselyte who worried about whether it was hypocritical to pray to "our God and the God of our fathers"—Rambam unequivocally substitutes moral attributes for DNA: "Thus Abraham our Father, peace be with him, is the father of his pious posterity who keep his ways, and the father of his disciples and all proselytes who adopt Judaism" (Ed. Twersky, Isadore. A Maimonides Reader, 476).

Avraham Avinu is an avatar in that he embodies ethical principles and moral behavior. These middot, ma'alot, or virtues (from the Latin, vir, man; mensh in Yiddish) allow mere mortals to emulate God. According to philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, a virtue is distinguished by three elements:

• It has a practice, i.e., rules that tell us how to live our lives according to that virtue.
• It has been accepted by a community and then shapes that community's beliefs and behaviors.
• It is connected to a hero narrative, thereby appealing to our moral imagination.

The Abraham we meet in Va-yera is a classic moral exemplar, an avatar. Even God is impressed with his potential to serve as a model for the Jewish people. In Genesis 18:1, God approaches Abraham while Abraham sits. Rashi explains what appears to be an inexcusable gaffe. "He [Abraham] wished to rise, but the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, 'Sit and I will stand. You shall form an example to your descendants (siman l'vaneikha) that I, in time to come, will stand in the assembly of the judges while they sit, as it is said (Psalms 82:1), 'God stands in the assembly of the judges' " (Gen. R. 48).

In this parashah, we find Abraham personifying the virtues of hospitality, compassion, humility, peacemaking, and fear of God. All of these qualities can be found in our musar literature and in Max Kadushin's rabbinic value concepts.

It is tempting to let the horrific story of the Akedah dominate the discussion of Abraham as moral exemplar. This narrative centers on the middah of fearing God, Abraham binding himself to God's inscrutable demands, and passing his ultimate test of faithfulness. During the Middle Ages when rampaging Crusaders massacred Jews (why wait to get to the Holy Land to kill the infidels when there were infidels en route?), these Jews imagined themselves latter-day Abrahams. In 1140, Solomon bar Samson recorded the horror that befell the community of Mainz: "They tied their sons as Abraham tied his son, and they received upon themselves with a willing soul the yoke of the fear of God, the King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He . . . The ears of him who hears these things will tingle, for who has ever heard anything like this? Inquire now and look about. Was there ever such an abundant sacrifice as this since the days of primeval Adam? Were there ever eleven hundred sacrifices on one day, each of them like the sacrifice of Isaac, the son of Abraham? " (Ed. Marcus, Jacob R.; The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791; 117–118).

This understanding of Avraham Avinu is highly problematic. Although those who died for Kiddush Hashem (sanctifying God's name) claimed to be following Abraham's example, their reading of the Akedah makes sense only if Abraham killed his son. Also, the readiness to sacrifice one's child does not fit MacIntyre's criteria for a virtue. Unlike other ma'alot or middot that constitute normative behavior bounded by communally determined rules ("this is the way we do things around here"), child sacrifice is not held up as a Jewish ideal. A far better example of Avraham as avatar, one that reflects the simple meaning of the text, is in the depiction of hakhnassat orhim (welcoming guests), a narrative that is twice as long as the Akedah.

The parashah includes three vignettes of greeting wayfarers: how Abraham, Lot, and the people of Sodom understand the moral obligation of hospitality and the practice of this virtue. According to tradition, Abraham's tent was open on all sides to view passersby. Upon seeing the three messengers, Abraham runs to them, bows, arranges for water and shade. He promises a morsel but prepares a lavish spread. "Such is the way of the righteous; they promise little but perform much" (BM 87a). He orders Sarah to use the choicest of ingredients: the flour that would later be used in the Mishkan, curds and milk much prized in the Ancient Near East, and tender veal (Rashi, no doubt prefiguring the French obsession with gastronomy, observes that Abraham needed to kill three calves to serve each guest the delicacy of tongue with mustard sauce [Rashi on Gen. 18:7]).

Unlike Abraham, Lot does not run to greet the angel-messengers who visit him in chapter 19. He sits until they approach him and then stands. While he does urge them to stay in his home, rather than in the public square, he prepares a much simpler meal than the generous Abraham, i.e., unleavened bread rather than cakes of fine flour. To his credit, Lot does try to protect the visitors from the rage of the people of Sodom.

Although living in Sodom, Lot is still somewhat connected to the moral values of the Abrahamic family. His mores, his understanding of normative behavior, are at odds with those of his neighbors. The rabbis capture the moral depravity of Sodom through its contempt for hakhnassat orhim. They claim that the Sodomites refused to expend any of their lavish wealth on strangers and that they brutally killed a young girl for helping a poor man (Tosefta Sotah 3:11f). Genesis Rabbah tells us that Sodom provided only one bed for strangers; if an unlucky wayfarer was too short to fit, he was stretched until he could; if another was too tall, his legs were chopped off.

Reflecting on the oddity of Abraham not standing when the Lord spoke to him (Gen. 18:1), but running to greet the messengers, the Rabbis opined, "Hospitality to wayfarers is greater than welcoming the Divine Presence" (Shab. 127a). We are called upon to test our moral centeredness in the quotidian. Judaism provides a map for living in ordinary times. How does Avraham the avatar show his love for God? As we should: by practicing on His creatures.

 

 

A short commentary on this week's Haftarah can be read here:

www.uscj.org.il/haftarahEdit.php?id=535