Show me the way to go home…
Parashat Vayera exemplifies cycles and patterns drawn from the stories of its characters that can help prevent us from repeating the mistakes of our predecessors. Our beloved rabbi always likened the events in our lives to a spiral that can be viewed from an upward or downward perspective. He would say that when we walk with God, the events of our lives follow an upward trend. It may seem that we are repeating them but it’s important to note that we take two steps forward but only one step back so that we are always improving and handling situations with more wisdom than before. However the opposite is also true…when we don’t trust in our Creator and choose to do things our way, the spiral can lead us downward. This is true not only on a personal level but also for all mankind and seems to be a law in the universe in which the microcosm depicts the macrocosm.
This was true for Abraham and Sarah. Their trust in God would be repeatedly tested, as is ours, and it would help them to fulfill their callings as first father and mother of Israel. If no one had been willing to follow Abraham, he would have questioned whether or not he did hear God’s voice, but the hearts of the other souls who were also stirred to leave with him would have encouraged him. He also met others along the way…like Melchizedek…a cohen of El Elyon who, appearing out of nowhere, inspired Abraham to share a tenth (tithe) of his wealth before continuing his journey.
Why would Abraham give such a huge offering to a perfect stranger? I think that it’s because he recognized that this cohen knew the GOD who spoke to him and was so happy and willing to share with him from what GOD had blessed him. Whenever I meet someone who has the same love for the Creator as I do, it fills my heart and soul with such joy that it opens a well-spring of generosity. Over the years I have seen that those of us who love and want to serve GOD within this community, have given a generosity of spirit and the desire to support it from what GOD has provided to them. These are the ones who are truly blessed. They serve not only with their time but also with the resources that GOD has poured into their lives.
Our rabbi’s story reminds me so much of Abraham’s. He told us about his clear call to serve God which eventually led him here to Montreal to start this congregation…but that’s a long story meant for another day.
Abraham was tested when God told him to listen to Sarah and send Hagar and Ishmael away. He loved his first-born son even if he wasn’t from Sarah, but Abraham obeyed God who told him to send them away and not to worry because He would also make a nation from Ishmael. The Torah doesn’t say that all nations would be blessed through Ishmael but that the world would be blessed through Abraham and his descendants. We know that Isaac is the son of the promise. He would be the forefather of the people chosen by God for a special purpose…to be ohr l’goyim. We were also told that Ishmael and his descendants would be like wild donkeys, always fighting amongst themselves and if not, with others. This was not a new pattern for humanity… that’s the wild donkey side of our human nature. It began with Cain killing his brother Abel and the cycle of brother killing brother will continue until we learn to dominate the wild donkey within us. Adam was given dominion over all God’s creation and that includes us. That can only happen when we surrender to and trust in the God of Abraham as he was being taught to do. The world still has a long way to go in that area but from our prophecies, we know that it will happen one day. For now, we begin with ourselves.
We know about the troubles ahead for future generations because Sarah ran ahead of God and here that pattern continues with the two daughters of Lot. They got their father drunk, reminiscent of Noah after the flood, and both slept with their father, taking it to the next step after Ham’s incident with his father. The consequences….more enemies for Israel, the Moabites and the Ammonites.
The girls must have believed that the whole world was destroyed. Certainly, their entire world was, and sleeping with their father was the only way to continue his lineage. This was interesting because these girls were raised in Sodom where there were no moral standards. Lot must have taught them about the God of Abraham because they understood the importance of descendants and it also says they were virgins. We may think that living in North America today makes us better than those in Sodom but sadly, the idea of being a virgin before marriage is rare in our modern Western society. The secular world is no longer interested in having children to keep the lineage going. They are more interested in having careers and freedom and if they want to raise anything, they buy a dog. That’s a spiral downward in my estimation but hopefully, it’s not too late to turn that around in my lifetime. The Scriptures, however, give us hope with the story of Ruth, a Moabite who turned to the GOD of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and became a great mother of Israel and the great, great grandmother of King David. The Torah is brutally honest about our failures but it always shows us the way to return and provides us with the route to redemption both personally and nationally.
I question, however, why Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away with nothing but bread and water. He was a wealthy man. We know that his inheritance would be for Isaac but perhaps it was because Abraham knew that Ishmael’s offspring would also become a wealthy nation. Look at Saudi Arabia and the Emirates today; they have the oil that we don’t. Our wealth lies in God’s blessings to us, promised to Abraham, so that we, in turn, could bless all the nations of the world. That is exactly what we are doing although few wish to acknowledge it.
That stems from these ancient jealousies carried down throughout the ages. There has been enmity toward Israel throughout the ages by the descendants of Ishmael, Lot (Moab and Ammon) and later the other sons of Abraham with Keturah (Psalm 83:6) and we are waiting for that root of hostility to be healed. There are family feuds that go on for centuries, long after the descendants know why. We see this in our own families but we must try our best to rebuild broken relationships. It begins with those of us who know GOD. No other nations do as much for others as Israel does and that stems from the heart of GOD. Sadly, when Israel gives in to the opposite aspect of our nature, we suffer the consequences.
The ultimate test for Abraham was when God asked him to take his ‘only’, his unique son Isaac and sacrifice him on an altar of wood. This request sets up another pattern that Israel would have to follow throughout their generations, that human beings were not meant to be sacrificed. Throughout the Scriptures, we see God weaning His Chosen People, Israel away from their cruel rituals meant to appease their gods. Abraham knew that God would do something to save Isaac because he told his servants to wait for him stating, ‘We will return…’. Those words are prophetic and reminded me of our name, Kehilat She’ar Yashuv…A remnant shall return. No matter what trials we go through, we always return to our GOD.
The angel of God stopped the hand of Abraham at the last minute and God then provided a “ram” not a “lamb”. This story has been used to compare the sacrifice of Isaac with the sacrifice of Jesus but the concept of human sacrifice is abhorrent in both Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism and is a pagan practice. The pattern set down here is that the pagan practice of sacrificing children would be stayed by the Hand of God. He would provide the perfect offering when He was satisfied that trust was established. He waited until the very last moment before showing up. How often do we pray for something to relieve us from the trials we are experiencing and then at the very last moment, something appears that could only come from the mind of God?
Another pattern established in this story begins with Sarah. Although hers is remembered as the first story of a miraculous birth, within this parashah lies a tale of how God had closed the wombs of all the women in King Abimelech’s household when Sarah was held there. Abraham’s God spoke to Abimelech in a dream showing us that God speaks to anyone He chooses. Hearing from God is not only confined to those who belong to a religious sect. This gives us hope that God can certainly speak to any one of us. That’s the beautiful thing about having a personal relationship with the GOD of creation. Sarah’s miraculous birth would be the first of many in the Scriptures and beyond, including Yeshua. Again it depicts that God is present in every aspect of our lives …from birth to death. The most difficult thing for us to do is to be still and listen to the quiet voice of GOD directing us. It usually takes us getting sick or some seeming disaster that happens to get us to pay attention.
Why did Abraham spend so much time negotiating with God about saving Sodom when he never said a word about saving Isaac? He didn’t give up… “If there are 50, 45, 40, 30, 20 and finally 10 righteous men in Sodom, will you save it?” God quietly repeated after each one, “I will save it”. Was it because the story of the flood was still fresh in Abraham’s mind? After all, Noah died when Abraham was 58. For all of us born at or just after the end of WW2, the Holocaust is still fresh on our minds. This is also evidence of God’s endless mercy and patience with us. This shows that God never gives up on us so let us not give up on ourselves.
In this parashah, we read about the well of water named Beersheva, “Well of an oath”, where Abimelech and Abraham made a pact after their quarrel. We will read many stories about people gathering at wells. They were social hotspots, where people met to gather water for drinking, watering their cattle and their agriculture. Far more than mere sources of water, they hold deep spiritual significance – God’s provision, spiritual nourishment and communal harmony. This community provides a well-spring of living water to anyone who wants to learn how to apply God’s Written Torah to their lives so that they can build a personal relationship with the God of Israel. This is the key to building healthy relationships with ourselves and others.
These patterns, cycles and spirals also depict where we are in God’s timetable for humanity. As we choose to drink from GOD’s well of provision and spiritual sustenance, we, like Abraham, thrive within that upward spiral but if and when we choose to ignore Him, we fall into a downward spiral. Right now, as we look at the uprisings in Europe, around the world, and even in Israel we see the wild donkey kicking once again. The only way to turn that around is to humble ourselves, return to the God of Abraham, be obedient to His Commandments, thank Him for everything and beg Him to go to battle for us. He will always have our backs.
Shabbat Shalom
Peggy Pardo