Avot

Early in his story (before he becomes Abraham), Abram is greeted with bread, wine and a blessing by Malchizedek, the priest of El Elyon/God Supreme.  Malchizedek appears just this once in the entire Torah, never before or after.  The sages identify him as Abraham’s ancestor Shem who (in the rabbinic imagination), together with Eber led for centuries an academy for the study of universal religion.  There, they carried forward a chain of tradition stretching back to Adam, the knowledge and service of El Elyon, the “Supreme God.”

            In meeting Malchizedek, Abram, the first to discover God without the benefit of parent or teacher, encounters his own distant ancestor, who represents the original unbroken tradition of universal God-knowledge. 

             In the Avot, first benediction of the Amidah, we bind our own profoundly solitary encounter with God to that of our earliest ancestors.  We stand in community not only with the founders of our religion, whom we invoke by name, but also with their mysterious precursor, mighty teacher of universal religion, the priest of El Elyon.