Looking Up--Vayera

Looking Up

D’var Torah for Parashat Vayera

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

I like to read the newspaper advice columns in the morning, cup of coffee in hand.  It’s a short read; simple stories of complex relationships, all with one simple solution that could make everything right again.

It’s warm-up for the rest of the day.  The vignettes from human life are a part of who we are; they resonate within us for that simple reason.  Yet when we see them in print or watch them on a screen, they become simple.  Little lessons for the day ahead.

Though similar to situations in our life, the particular experiences aren’t ours.  They’re someone else’s.  Yet perhaps because of this objectivity, it’s easy to see the solution.  It’s tempting to just call it out:  Open your eyes—it’s all laid out for you.   Just look about you.  See the possibilities.

In this week’s portion, Vayera (“And God Appeared,” Genesis 18:1—22:24), there are several instances where life’s course changed when this advice was followed.

In the first, we have the famous scene of Abraham arguing with God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.  God agrees to allow a minimum of ten righteous people save the entire wicked community—yet, as we know, even that number couldn't be found in the bastions of evil that the two cities represented, and their Biblical fate became proverbial.

But when Abraham goes on his way after this discussion of evil and righteousness, he sees a whole new realm.  The gods of his native land, Mesopotamia, were fickle, untrustworthy and even dangerous.  Abraham’s great discovery at that moment was of a God who could be reasoned with.  To a point.

Later in the portion, the situation at home becomes unbearable for our first great-great grandparents.   Childless, Abraham and Sarah decide to raise a child fathered (with Sarah’s approval) by Abraham with Sarah’s handmaiden, Hagar.

Needless to say, this doesn’t go anywhere good.  Abraham is forced to send Hagar and the boy, Ishmael, away into the wilderness.  Abraham is comforted by God telling him that Ishmael will be blessed.  Abraham, shutting his eyes (and heart) to the pain of separation, proceeds with what he believes God tells him to do.

Had he opened his eyes and seen the future—the wars between the descendants of his two sons—the Arabs, descendants of Ishmael, and the Jews, descendants of Isaac—would he still have sent mother and child away?

In the wilderness, Hagar and Ishmael are without water.  Parched and desperate, Hagar leaves the child under a scraggly bush and moves away so as not to hear his cries.  Bereft of any hope, Hagar suddenly hears an angel of God who tells her to look up and see a spring of water not far away.  A world of possibilities opens up as Hagar just opens her eyes.

Vayera is that great portion in the Torah where another terrible sacrifice almost takes place.    

                    

That God was telling Abraham to go and offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, should have made Abraham’s heart go cold.  Yet, unlike the instance with Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham does not argue with God.  He accepts what he believes is inevitable based on some irrational belief—that God simply couldn’t ask him to go through with it.  In a telling conversation between father and son, when Isaac asks Abraham, “Father, here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering,” Abrahams answers, “God will see to the lamb my son.” The ambiguity is couched in hope.  The sacrifice may be “my son,” or it may be something else that God will see to instead.

To the last moment, God holds off.  Abraham lays Isaac upon the altar, binds the boy to the wood, and is about to plunge the knife when an angel of God stays his hand.  “Look up,” he says.

Human sacrifice was common in those days.  Child sacrifice was honored.  When Abraham lifted his eyes and saw a ram caught by its horns in the thicket, he understood God better than ever, for in the strongest possible way God just taught him something huge:  Human sacrifice was abhorrent to God.  Child sacrifice was an abomination of the greatest degree.

And at that moment, too, Abraham saw his future role and understood his mission better than ever.  The akeida—the binding of Isaac—became a metaphor.  From now on, dedication to God would take a different path.  Instead of killing him, Abraham’s—as any parent’s—role, from that moment on, would be to raise the child, to prepare him for life, to make him feel secure and loved, to give him roots, to give him wings, to teach him or her all about God and how to argue with God about justice and compassion.

It was a new world, and all it took was looking up.

©2012 by Boaz D. Heilman