Abraham

            We are just one month into the new Jewish year, and it already feels like we need a reset.  In this country, brazen and unapologetic antisemitism from a hugely popular hip hop musician, and now from a star basketball player, are racing through the internet like burning embers on dry grass, and in Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has returned to power, in a new government with openly racist, ultranationalist coalition partners.  How did hatred…proud and not embarrassed to openly declare itself…become popular again?

            We would like to find the reset button, and to begin again.

            But that button does not exist.  We can only go forward from here.  How do we do that?

            In the Torah this week, we read the first stories of Abraham.  One man who is regarded as the founder of Judaism, of Christianity and of Islam, which are referred to collectively as the Abrahamic Faiths.  In this moment of rising hatred, against us and within us, how might we draw strength and wisdom and courage from the man that we remember as the first to call out in the name of God?  We have hundreds if not thousands of stories about Abraham, and our Muslim and Christian sisters and brothers tell many of the same stories and have many of their own.  But for this frightening moment in history, which Abraham stories should we tell?

            We say that Abraham discovered God.  But what do we mean by that?

            How does a person become aware of the silent, hidden, mysterious presence of God?

This is the miracle of Abraham.  And in truth, we don’t know.  The Torah itself is silent on the matter of Abraham’s first questions, his first religious intuitions.  But we have midrashim, legends which have come down to us over the generations.  In one story after another, Abraham’s defining quality…his personal genius…was hospitality, a gift for welcoming guests. 

            Here is one story:  according to the midrash, Abraham was an innkeeper, famous for his feasts.  Just like our beloved Judy Meisel who, for many years, would host in her small apartment Shabbat dinners week after week for 15 or 20 people, Abraham would seat his guests around his table and feed them, and give them drink, and there would be hours of singing and laughter, and at the end of the evening, when his guests would turn to him in gratitude and say  “Abraham, thank you” he would reply: “Did I create this food? No, let us thank the One who spoke and the world came into being.”

            Abraham taught people about God by opening his home to them, by opening his own heart to them.  For this reason, Abraham is known in Jewish tradition as ish chesed, the man of lovingkindness.

            Next week’s portion in the Torah opens with Abraham sitting in the doorway of his tent, in the heat of the day.  The midrash says that he was actually recovering from circumcising himself, at age 99!  But even if he was completely healthy, still, he was ninety nine years old and it was hot out!  Suddenly three travelers appear, and Abraham springs into action, urging them to stop, and bathe their feet, and to sit in the shade beneath a tree, and to share a meal together.   In that moment, according to our sages, Abraham established for all future Jewish generations the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim, welcoming guests.   Here again, and throughout all time, Abraham is the man of chesed, the man of kindness, of love.

            Welcoming guests, by the way, is not easy.  It begins with vulnerability.  Physical and emotional vulnerability.  Physically, a locked door creates a wall.  But an open door creates a breach.  And emotionally, when we open our door, we reveal ourselves.  “Come in.  Come into my house.  See how I live.  See the pictures on my walls.  The books on my shelves.”  The moment I bring you into my house, you know all about me. Who I am, and where I come from.  In this moment of opening myself to you, I make myself vulnerable to your judgment.  Abraham understood all of this, and he opened himself to the world, for the sake of love.

            I believe that Abraham was moved to open his home, and himself, to the people around him because of his great discovery.  Abraham was the first to look into the face of another person, and to see in that other face the God of his own soul.

            Abraham gazed into the faces of the hungry children begging outside his tent, and saw in those faces the God of his own soul.

            Abraham looked into the faces of the elderly women and men who sat quietly by the road, or who walked with difficulty over the rocky ground, and in their worn and creased faces, Abraham saw the God of his own soul.

            Abraham looked into the faces of men and women of every tribe and people, gazed out onto the human race in all our spectacular diversity, and saw in every human face the God of his own soul.

            This is what we mean when we speak of Abraham as the one who discovered God.  He discerned a single profound truth, from which grew three mighty trees, Judaism and Christianity and Islam.  The three monotheistic religions all revere Abraham for precisely this reason.

            With strength, with courage, Abraham let down his guard and entered into relationship.  A covenant with God and with all of humanity.  A relationship founded upon chesed and emunah, upon faith and lovingkindness.

How did that happen?  We really do not know.  The Torah is silent regarding the mystery of Abraham’s first religious intuitions. 

But here is one thought.  The very first thing we are told about Abraham, before anything else, is that he married a woman named Sarai, and they were unable to have children.  After all of those “begats” in Genesis, generation after generation after generation, all bearing children and living and dying, Abraham and Sarah are the first couple who have difficulty conceiving.  That heartbreak is the beginning of our story.

Maybe, in that sad and strange disappointment, after many years, Abraham and Sarah turned toward each other and looked into each other’s eyes….and saw their own sadness.  In that moment, each of them realized that they were not alone in the world. 

Abraham and Sarah together discovered, in each other’s eyes, the God of their own soul.

As we face a rising tide of hatred, against us and within us, in this country and in our Jewish homeland, we need the profound religious wisdom of our first parents, Abraham and Sarah.  In every human face, black, white, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Native American, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Israeli, Palestinian….

In every human face, let us learn to see the God of our own soul.  Ken yehi ratzon.  May this be God’s will.