On Thursday afternoon a delegation of DePaul University undergraduates came to visit the shul. They are brought here each year by their professor as a field trip for a course they are taking on Chicago’s Jewish community. They had visited the other Lakeview congregations and I told them about our shul and our community and some of the distinguishing features of Modern Orthodoxy. By now you should know that we invite these visiting students to come to shul so that I can have material to talk about during drashot…
I shared with them that the observance of Shabbat as a day without work or commerce or travel frees up time that is then available for us to focus on our relationship with God, our relationships with our families, and our relationships with our community. Those of us who aren’t rushing off to work, or to shop, or to some form of recreation are available for one another and for the sort of cohesive community that other Americans haven’t experienced in generations.
Robert Putnam book Bowling Alone, published in 2000 and based on a 1995 article with the same title explores how Americans still like to bowl, but we no longer bowl in leagues as we did in the 1950s and 1960s and we are less likely to be members of unions or rotary clubs or any sort of organization or to know our next door neighbors and socialize with them. Shabbat carves out time for us to engage in the activities that create social capital.
I said a few more things about how awesome this congregation is and how fun it is to live in Lakeview and about Modern Orthodoxy yada yada yada. And then the students had a chance to ask questions.
“You just explained,” asked one of the undergrads, “that the Jewish community exists as a cohesive and embracing community that is similar to what many Americans experienced generations ago. Do Jews have time for other commitments?”
I do not remember what I answered but whatever I said I know that the answer was inadequate. The answer is inadequate because we are called upon to devote ourselves to Torah and Mitzvot and the needs of the Jewish community and those needs are infinite and the Torah is infinite and mitzvot are infinite. And we are called upon as well to serve humanity and to join together with all human beings in responding to the task that God has imposed upon all of us in common to tend to the Earth and to protect it. And the needs of our fellow human beings are infinite and the task of settling the Earth is infinite.
The tension between multiple allegiances can never be resolved. But we are not the first ones to face that tension; they go back to the very origins of our people and to the lives of Avraham and Sarah themselves.
According to rabbinic tradition, indeed, according to explicit hints in the text of Bereishit itself, Avraham and Sarah were people animated by a sense of mission to reach out to others in a kind embrace and Avraham and Sarah were the first to be told they had to separate from the rest of humanity and cultivate something different and particular. This was an ethical challenge for Avraham and Sarah. God had to promise Avraham that וְנִבְרכ֣ו בְָ֔ כֹ֖ל מִשְפְחֹ֥ת הָאֲדמָֽה that all humanity would be blessed as a result of Avraham and Sarah’s choice to listen to God’s voice and leave everything and almost everyone that they knew behind.
The paradox is, perhaps, most obvious when Avram and Sarai were given their full names, Avraham and Sarah. Those new expanded names represented a new and expanded influence they were going to have in world affairs and in the moral development of humanity. Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, known by the acronym Netziv, explains that Avraham and Sarah had influenced a small circle of followers and disciples whom they knew personally and taught. But their expanded names, to become “a father of many nations” indicated that their example would lead, eventually, to all people recognizing God and embracing a form of ethical monotheism.
והיית לאב המון גוים שעד כה שקרא אברהם בשם ה׳ וגייר כמה אנשים לא הי׳ אלא אותם אנשים שנתגיירו לגמרי ונכנסו בכלל עובדי ה׳ בתורתו שלמדם אברהם וכמבואר בגמ׳ סנהדרין דצ״ט ע״ב ובעבודת כוכבים ד״ט דמשמעות ואת הנפש אשר עשו בחרן. הוא שלמדם תורה. ודבר זה א״א בכל
העולם ומראש מקדם לא הי׳ הכונה אלא להציב גבולות עמים למספר בנ״י. אבל לא שיהיו כולם בכלל עדת ישראל. אבל זה הי׳ הרצון והתכלית שיהיו כל אוה״ע יודעים את ה׳. והאלילים כליל יחליף ולדבר זה הזהיר הקב״ה את אברהם שיהי רצונו להשקיע דעתו להיות לאב המון גוים להכירם את ה׳. ובזה יהי׳ נקרא אב המון גוים כאב המעמיד את בנו על דעת ישרה ובזה נתבאר דבר ה׳ הקודם
Avraham and Sarah were given their new names right after the mitzvah of circumcision made Avraham and his family more different than they had ever been before. That is the paradox! We are a nation that dwells apart and we are a nation that influences humanity.
This was a paradox for Avraham and Sarah and it is a conflict for many contemporary Jews. We feel torn between serving our people and our own narrow parochial interests and serving humanity. And, more alarmingly, Jews are sometimes made to feel that we must leave our particular identities behind if we wish to join alliances and broad coalitions of human beings.
To focus just on events of the last week, a fringe candidate for mayor of Toronto who has allied herself with American neo-Nazis for many years received the enthusiastic endorsement of a sitting member of Congress from Iowa and Louis Farrakhan returned to his decades long habit of referring to Jews using the most vile and foul and hateful rhetoric even as he continues to enjoy the company of public figures.
This conflict goes back to the dawn of our people and we can look to Avraham and Sarah for navigating this conflict by devoting ourselves with extra care to the mitzvot that they exemplified.
According to the ancient rabbis the tent of Avraham and Sarah was open on all four sides so they could enthusiastically welcome and serve guests. Next week’s Torah portion tells how Avraham saw three wondering Arabs and served them like the angels that they turned out to be. Hospitality, the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim is always an act of inclusion because inviting your friends and neighbors who live in the community together with us over for a meal is a wonderful thing but it is not the mitzvah of hospitality. The mitzvah hospitality is to invite people who don’t have another place to eat because they are traveling or because they are impoverished or because they would eat alone when they don’t want to eat alone.
Avraham and Sarah were the first in the Torah’s account of human history who believed that ethical traits could be passed down from generation to generation. This is something that Noach, despite his righteousness and his accomplishments, did not understand.
כִ֣י יְדעְתִ֗יו לְמַעַן֩ אֲשֶ֨ר יְצַוֶ֜ה אֶת־בָנָ֤יו וְאֶת־בֵיתו֙ אַחֲר֔יו
“For I know that he will command his children and household after him…”
God testifies to Avraham’s commitment to education and moral instruction and when we understand that discoveries about morality and ethics can be shared with our neighbors and with our descendants alike, we then navigate the tension between devotion to our family and devotion to a broader circle.
The book of Genesis, explains the Netziv, was called by the rabbis “Sefer HaYashar” the book of Upright Behavior because it chronicles the ways that our patriarchs and matriarchs acted with ethical integrity even with neighbors who were challenging to live near. The midrash says that Avraham’s animals wore muzzles when they went out to pasture to prevent them from grazing in privately owned land. This was a school project for parashat Lekh Lekhah at a school our children once attended. They came home on Friday of Parashat Lekh Lekha wearing muzzles. At the time I was not familiar with this midrashic tradition and Akiva and Hillel, who must have been three years old at the time couldn’t explain to me why they were muzzled, (it was particularly hard to understand them with their mouths covered).
But how amazing is this tradition! We pay attention to how our ancestors displayed respect for all people and their property and this very respect and the way it was shown was something that distinguished Avraham’s conduct. Wearing the muzzle was distinctly Jewish in its extreme way that it showed concern for all people.
And finally, our parasha began with a journey to Eretz Yisrael. And now, in the State of Israel the need to navigate a complicated terrain between concern for one’s own and concern for others is most fraught, but also has the most potential. Israel is the place where we can most easily become a blessing to all people at the same time that we cultivate our own religious civilization. It is not a zero-sum game. A nation’s accomplishments can be exported. A nation living in security and peace, cultivating justice and mercy, can become a role model and a blessing to all people.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 