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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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In Every Moment, the Choice Is Ours
Oct 16, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayera
Sight and vision play an important role in the two opening narratives of Parashat Vayera.
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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.
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Planting Trees, Planting Hesed
Oct 31, 2012 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayera
Just after the expulsion of Hagar and immediately before the binding of Isaac, a curious and somewhat cryptic episode appears in Genesis 21.
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Prolepsis: How the Bible Tells Us the Future
Oct 31, 2012 By David Marcus | Commentary | Vayera
Regular screen watchers know that if in an opening scene the camera pans in on a detail like a dagger or a bicycle, then that detail—the dagger or the bicycle—will somehow have an important role to play later on in the movie. Known as foreshadowing, this cinematic technique has its parallel in literature in the rhetorical device known as prolepsis, which indicates a future event that is presumed to have occurred.
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