Blogs

In Pirkei Avot – the sayings of our ancestors – we read this line: “Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.”[1]  Ben Bag Bag was speaking of Torah, emphasizing that there is always more than meets the eye.  The turning was and is literal, as we turn the Torah scroll just a little bit forward week by week, following the path of its narration and its laws to see what will happen next.  It also was, and is, metaphorical -- reminding us that while the words themselves may not change year by year, we – its readers – do change.  It’s our own growth, our own transformations large and small that go such a long way in providing new readings of Torah, and new ways to approach our Jewish lives.

A Torah portion like this week’s – Vayera – beautifully exemplifies this turning, because it is displayed through the life of just one person: Abraham, our first patriarch.  The arc of his story is the quintessential kaleidoscope; the pieces shifting with each turn to display the best and worst of which a person is capable.

Of everything we learn about him in Vayera, there is one story in particular that contains both the seeds of human inspiration and the direction that Judaism eternally asks us to go.

It’s the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Near the beginning of the portion, after some deliberation on God’s part, Abraham is taken into God’s confidence and told of the Divine intention to destroy these cities because of the wickedness and debauchery of their inhabitants.  The plan is that first God will go down for one more investigation as to the state of things… “if not,” the text tells us, “I (Adonai) will take note.”[2]  (Just so you know: in Torah terms, God or human beings “taking note” or “keeping a matter in mind” is almost never a harbinger of good news!)

Abraham now pleads with God, advocating for a place he has never been, and people he has never met.  “Would you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” he asks.  “If there were 50 righteous people who lived there, God?  Would you do this thing then?”  When God concedes that the city would be preserved for 50, Abraham keeps going, bargaining God down to 45, then 40, then 30, and finally asks God, “what if there were just 10 who were righteous?  What then?  Would you, God, do this thing still?”

The suffering, or even potential suffering of the innocent is no abstraction for Abraham.  With a combination of empathy and audacity, he shows us a model of arguing with God.  He shows us that in our own individual ways we can have a sphere of influence in standing up for others… of drawing righteousness out of the marrow of who we are and manifesting that righteousness in ways that just may make a difference.  As Torah evolved, this core teaching remained… amplified in the reminder to hold dear the soul of the stranger, for we were once strangers in Egypt.  Amplified again when Rabbi Hillel asked, “if I am only for myself, what am I?”  Amplified across time and space, l’dor vador, finding us in our own time… in our own place.

When we protest, when we worry, when we experience hope, Abraham’s example lives on.

Immersed as we are in uncertainty, struggling as we do against despair, reaching as we are for better days, I believe we will discover still more layers of our authentic selves as we learn how to ask the right questions, as we pay attention and prepare to stand up for each other, and for others who need it.  In just a few weeks we will gather with our families and loved ones for Thanksgiving; still a time to rejoice in and reconnect with our country’s ideals.  And a time now for not taking them for granted.  Not anymore.  Not ever.

Shabbat Shalom,