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Going Toward the Present

Nov 11, 2011 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Vayera

Martin Buber, the great 20th-century Jewish theologian, observed a powerful literary connection between the beginning of Abraham’s life and the end. God first speaks to Abraham suddenly, seemingly without introduction, and commands: “Go forth (lekh lekha) from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). With these few words, God introduces God’s Self to Abraham and it is with these words that their relationship is founded.

The Person You Are Now

Oct 23, 2010 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Vayera

“Innocent until proven guilty” approximates God’s judgment of Ishmael in the midrash above.

Is Seeing Believing?

Oct 23, 2010 By Deborah Miller | Commentary | Vayera

Is seeing believing? Or, to put it another way, is seeing necessary for believing? I am not asking a theological question, but a psychological/social/emotional one.

Sitting in God’s Presence

Nov 6, 2009 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Vayera

What do we find ourselves doing when God’s Presence suddenly appears to us?

Avraham the Avatar

Oct 7, 2009 By Carol K. Ingall | Commentary | Vayera

Although many of us recognize the word avatar as a representation of the self in computer games (a “mini-me,” or so my granddaughter tells me), in fact the term originates in Hindu mythology. An avatar is a personification or embodiment of a divine principle. While we traditionally refer to Avraham as avinu, our father, perhaps we would get a more nuanced view of this biblical hero by imagining Avraham as an avatar.

The Original Walking Man

Nov 15, 2008 By David M. Ackerman | Commentary | Vayera

On the topic of walking, the rock ‘n’ roll references come fast and furious. From Lou Reed’s teasing nudge to “take a walk on the wild side,” to the Rolling Stones’ and Peter Tosh’s advice to “keep on walking and don’t look back,” and from the Grateful Dead’s reflection on “walking around Grosvenor Square,” which leads to the revelatory insight that “once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right,” to James Taylor’s evocation of the “walking man,” who “doesn’t do nothing at all,” but walk, our popular culture sees the very basic human act of walking in very personal and highly symbolic terms.

Subverting Abraham As a Knight of Faith

Oct 26, 2007 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Vayera

In a world in which so much violence and pain are caused in the name of religion, how can we read the story of “the Binding of Isaac” as anything but what Phyllis Trible would call a “text of terror”?

Examining the Word Moriah

Nov 11, 2006 By Robert Harris | Commentary | Vayera

Years ago, in a national television program called Laugh In (yes, I lived during the Stone Age — the Rolling Stone Age. Never mind.), a comedian lampooned the song “They Called the Wind Moriah” from the Broadway show Paint Your Wagon.

Not a “Yes Man”

Nov 11, 2006 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayera

Dr. Yohanan Muffs, a beloved teacher of Bible at The Jewish Theological Seminary, discusses the essential qualities of a prophet in his seminal article “Who Will Stand in the Breach?” Far from merely being the divine messenger, the prophet has the duty to act as an empathetic sounding board for God. More than that, the prophet must exercise his/her own free will in an effort to calm the divine temper. First and foremost, it is the responsibility of the prophet to push back on God. As one of my students in Atlanta pointed out this past week, it is as if the prophet is God’s ezer k’negdo, “a helper against himself.” The prophet does not stand passively by, mirroring divine emotion, but rather must be willing to access the gumption to confront God.

The Past Leading to the Present

Oct 30, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera

The unusual Hebrew phrase “lekh lekha” occurs only twice in the entire Tanakh: at the beginning of last week’s parasha when God instructs Abraham to leave Haran, and this week, when God asks him to offer up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice (Genesis 12:1; 22:2).

Confronting God

Nov 15, 2003 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayera

The tension and ultimate destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah stand at the core of Parashat Vayera. God’s quality of justice is ironically put on trial. One midrash places the following words in the mouth of Abraham as he encourages God to think twice about the immanent destruction of these towns: “If You seek to have a world, strict justice cannot be exercised; and if You seek strict justice, there will be no world . . . You can have only one of the two. If you do not relent a little, the world will not endure” (Genesis Rabbah 39:6).

Visiting the Sick

Nov 15, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera

During World War II and the Korean War, my father served as the civilian Jewish chaplain at the sprawling army hospital at Valley Forge, not far from his pulpit in Pottstown. Every Wednesday he would walk its endless halls visiting wounded Jewish servicemen. On Thursday evenings he returned to conduct a prayer service for them accompanied by a few women from the synagogue sisterhood who had prepared a collation of kosher deli. No part of my father’s rabbinate gave him more satisfaction because no Jews ever needed him more than this pitiful refuse of military carnage. Their numbers were large and their condition often shattering. My father assuaged their pain with warmth, wisdom and faith. In 1918, as a teenager in the German army on the Western Front, he had witnessed the devastating brutality of mechanized warfare and the chaos of defeat. That experience brought him to choose the rabbinate while his empathy for victims of misfortune made him an ideal pastor. He turned the mitzvah of bikkur holim (visiting the sick) into a fine art.

Abraham’s Love

Oct 26, 2002 By Melissa Crespy | Commentary | Vayera

vi, our three and a half-year-old son, went to work with his Abba the other day. Though he spent a good deal of the day in the company’s child care center, he and his dad traveled on the subway together (watching the “local” and “express” trains), had lunch together, and then came home together. And these “father and son” experiences have become more and more frequent in the last year – Abba giving Avi a bath, Abba taking Avi to minyan with him, and of course, the nightly singing of “Abba Shema” before Avi goes to sleep. These experiences are endearing to me because I watch the flowering of the special relationship between our son and his father.

The Test of Abraham

Oct 22, 2002 By Joshua Heller | Commentary | Vayera

Ever since I was a child, I’ve struggled with a fundamental question about Abraham’s personality, a question which is posed by this week’s parashah, Va-Yera. When God comes to Abraham to inform him that the city of Sodom is to be destroyed for its wickedness, Abraham responds aggressively by shaming God into agreeing to spare the city if fifty righteous can be found within it, saying, “Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Genesis 18:25). Then, with a bargaining style that would be the envy of any used-car buyer, teenager or trial lawyer, he lowers the number to forty-five, to thirty, to twenty, to ten.

Learning Through Torah

Nov 3, 2001 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Vayera

The five books that form the most sacred writings of the Jews are called by various names in various languages. Only the Hebrew name conveys exactly the content and not just the structure of these books. “Torah” means teaching. One of the aspects of the Torah that has made it so compelling for so many people over so long a time is that it not only is a teaching but teaches about teaching. The Torah, in its own terms, is both God’s teaching for human beings and the handbook for people to teach each other.

Our Ancestors in Egypt

Jan 27, 2001 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera

We are accustomed to thinking of our ancestors in Egypt as people of virtue and character. Neither in times of prosperity nor persecution did they abandon the unconventional faith of their progenitors. It is a view that we owe to the Passover Haggadah, which each year affirms for us at the Seder that despite the long sojourn in a foreign land, the identity of our ancestors remained undiluted. The midrash that constitutes the form in which we narrate the story of the Exodus to our children, expounds the phrase, “and there [in Egypt] he became a nation (Deuteronomy 26:5),” as referring to Jewish distinctiveness. The underlying force of the Hebrew word for nation, “goy,” denotes a national group bearing its own identity. In other words, as the descendants of Jacob grew in number, their undiminished sense of apartness welded them into a cohesive and visible minority. The world-class civilization of Egypt did not swallow them through assimilation.

Welcoming the Stranger

Oct 30, 1999 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayera

Parashat Va-Yera opens with two seemingly unrelated narratives: first, ‘three men’ appear mysteriously to Abraham, bearing the news that his wife, Sarah, will soon conceive. Next we read of God’s destruction of the cities of S’dom and Amora for their immorality and corruption.

The Politics of Genesis

Nov 7, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera

It was during my sabbatical in Israel in 1974-75 that I first began to sense the political thrust of the book of Genesis. The messianic order of Gush Emunim, the radical young nationalists destined to take over the National Religious Party, had not been dimmed by the near debacle of the Yom Kippur War. The melancholy and self-doubt that pervaded Israeli society did not dilute their resolve to settle the West Bank. The effort to mobilize the sacred texts of Judaism to reinforce the ideal of a Greater Israel was well underway. Where we live undeniedly impacts on the way we see things. Only in America, with its worship of the self, would we ever come to regard the biblical saga of our ancestors as the mirror of our own dysfunctional families.

Giving Women a Voice

Nov 7, 1997 By Anne Lapidus Lerner | Commentary | Vayera

I did not celebrate my bat mitzvah on parashat Vayera; in fact, I never celebrated it at all. My birthday on 19 Heshvan gives me, as a legitimate birthright, permission to indulge in constant grappling with this incredibly rich and complex text. Yet I have never voiced that connection with a proper celebration of my Jewish coming of age.

Holding Up Heaven (In Memory of Nahshon Waxman)

Oct 22, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera

We turn to this week’s Parasha numbed by the brutal kidnapping and murder of Corporal Nahshon Waxman just outside of Jerusalem, two miles from his home. Terrorism again shocks us with its power to outrage, disrupt and paralyze civilized society. The weapon of the savage few to force their will on the decent majority, terrorism reminds us of just how easy it is to wreak havoc on modern urban life. In contrast to Abraham’s inquiry about the minimum number of good people necessary to save Sodom, we find ourselves asking how few terrorists does it take to bring a modern city or country to its knees?

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