Hi everyone,
Hope you had a great week. This week’s parshah is Vayerah and it’s filled with controversy and some of the most challenging concepts in Judaism. It contains the narrative of the binding of Isaac, the test that shatters all relationships, and it contains the Sodom narrative.
I think Jews will struggle with the binding of Isaac narrative for all time. How could God ask Abraham to kill his son? How could Abraham have been willing to do so? In willing to do so, does Abraham pass or fail the test? A labyrinth of theological dilemmas with no way out. But on the other end of it is an outcome we must all be grateful for: Jewish children will be saved forever from ending up on religious altars. Abraham introduces the sacrificial substitute of a ram and never again could a Jewish child end up on the altar of its parents.
But it costs everything. The Torah doesn’t hide that God and Abraham never speak again. Abraham and Isaac also never speak again and Sarah dies as a result of that moment on the mountain. In one midrash, Isaac speaks his last words to his father, Abraham, and asks that after all is done and he is burned to ashes, he wants Abraham to collect his ashes and place them in a jar in his parent’s bed so he can sleep next to them forever. Abraham asks his son, ‘what makes you think I’ll live through this?’
That says it all.
But as a result of that heartbreaking moment, all Jewish children are forever safe from the altars of their parents.
And the Sodom narrative is no less challenging. The brutality of the populace of Sodom is juxtaposed with the hospitality of Abraham’s tent. The same strangers (angels) who are treated so beautifully in Abraham’s household are mistreated so horribly in Sodom, in Lot’s household. The fact that the men of Sodom demand Lot’s guests be brought out so they may sexually abuse them is horribly answered by Lot offering his virgin daughters to the rape mob. Another father thinking to sacrifice his children.
Most challenging of all is the fact that it is the Lot narrative that will eventually give us final redemption, a messiah. After Sodom is destroyed, Lot’s daughters believe God destroyed the world again (this is only 10 generations after the Flood of Noah’s ark). Just like in the Noah story, the daughters believe God only saved 1 family (them) and therefore it is up to them to save humanity. Except…the only male left alive, they believe, is Lot, their father. Thinking they have no choice and that this must be what God wants, they plan to become pregnant by their father. With God on their side (or so they believe), they get Lot drunk, lay with him and both become pregnant. In today’s world, when someone gets someone else drunk, with the intention of taking advantage of them, it’s called rape. The irony is not lost on us that they do to Lot what he had offered that the mob do to them.
One of the daughters bears a son named Moab. The Moabite people will come from that baby and the Moabites will eventually give us Ruth. Ruth gives us David and eventually David will give us the messiah. It all starts in Sodom – the epitome of the worst of human brutalities. The Sages ask how such potential redemption can result from such terrible action. The answer lies in the intention of these women. With erroneous information they still intended to save everyone they could. Redemption begins with intention.
In another midrash, that always impacted me, God is speaking with Abraham and telling him that while searching the world entire, God has finally found the seeds of redemption. Abraham says ‘tell me’ and God replies ‘they lay buried in Sodom’- they are deep within the intention and action of 2 young women.
Years ago, I was driving with one of my sons north of the city. He was about 7 or 8 years old and we were talking about God. He was asking me where God lives and I was explaining how God could live everywhere. We broke it down to his world and were finally concluding that, yes, God also lived in pockets. Suddenly he pointed at something outside and said that God lives everywhere but he thinks God lives mostly there. He was pointing at an abandoned, broken down, dirty school bus sitting in a derelict field. I was baffled and asked him why God lives mostly there and he said: ‘because I would never go there, it’s too scary’.
Parshat Vayerah is filled with those scary places and scary moments and then shows us that God lives there. We feel trapped by those theologies and our minds reel, but in the end we emerge knowing that on the other side of Abraham’s nightmare lies the safety of all our children.
The Torah shows us again ‘that which enslaves us, redeems us.’