Turning Ordinary into Holy: Vayeira.22

 Turning Ordinary into Holy: Vayeira.22

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

November 8, 2022

This week’s Torah portion, Vayeira (“And He Saw,” Genesis 18:1—22:24) is filled with miracles and wonders. First, three angels appear to Abraham; they foretell the birth, in exactly one year’s time, of Abraham and Sarah’s child, Isaac. Then they tell him of God’s intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And finally we read about that ram, the one that famously gets its horns entangled in a bush just in time to stop Abraham from sacrificing his beloved son, Isaac.

There’s enough in this portion to spend an entire lifetime learning and discussing. Take that famous story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac, known in Hebrew as the Akeida (“the binding” of Isaac). How to understand this breathtaking, yet also tremendously disturbing story? Does God make a horrible mistake in commanding Abraham to do the unthinkable? Is Abraham wrong in not arguing with God—particularly after vigorously trying to defend Sodom and Gomorrah, despite the evil that is rampant in those two doomed cities? And where is Sarah’s voice in all this?

And what about that poor ram? How does a ram, intimately familiar with every rock, stone and bush within his grazing territory, get so terribly enmeshed and allows itself to be bound up and sacrificed?

The dozen or so verses that comprise the Akeida story have inspired countless books, articles, midrashim and rabbinic commentaries. This story, a traditional reading on Rosh Ha-Shanah, is one of the foundation stones of the Jewish Faith. 

None of the events described in this portion can be considered “everyday.” And yet for Abraham, arguably the ultimate Man of Faith who ever lived, that is exactly what they were. When Abraham first lifts up his eyes and sees the three angels, all he sees is human beings. No wings, no halos, no golden harps. Just tired, dusty, hungry and thirsty men—and an opportunity for Abraham to practice his beloved mitzvah of hospitality.

Arguing with God, for Abraham is “everyday.” Knowing when not to, is a sign of his constant faith.

What Abraham learns from the turn of these events—and through him, we too, Abraham’s descendants—is that “ordinary” isn’t necessarily right or correct.

In Abraham’s day, the destruction of entire cities was not extraordinary. Empires and conquerors striving for power and riches engaged in wholesale destruction; men enslaved one another; blood-thirsty gods and goddesses demanded the impossible of their human subjects. All these were considered “ordinary” in those horrible times.

The stories that we find in this portion are larger than life. They’re meant to be. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah makes wonderful fodder for Hollywood and evangelical television. Abraham looms impossibly huge in our culture both for at times standing up to God’s bloody intentions and at other times for not standing up. Everything in this portion is told the way it is because its lessons are meant to help us see the world in a different way. That to which we are accustomed, that which too often we see as “ordinary” simply because that’s the way it’s always been—isn’t necessarily the way it ought to be. 

The rampant immorality, injustice and cruelty of those days are not, and should never be, “ordinary.” We must never think of them as such. The lesson Abraham teaches us in this portion is to see the potential for “ordinary” to become “holy.” From Abraham we also learn that we must never think of ourselves as powerless before seemingly enormous forces. We must do whatever we can to root out evil from wherever we see it.

We can be better. We can do better. We, like Abraham, can transform the world by striving to make things better, by turning “ordinary” into “holy.”  

Such is the power of faith.

© 2022 by Boaz D. Heilman