These were my words of introduction to the Torah portion Lech L’cha on Shabbat morning in 5782, October 16, 2021, the morning of a Bat Mitzvah at our congregation!
Shabbat Shalom and Boker Tov (Good Morning), welcome to everyone! This synagogue is called Beth Abraham or as I like to call it Bayt Avraham v’Sarah, which means the house of Avraham and Sarah, and welcoming was their big thing, so I want to say a special welcome to those of who are together for a first time or a first time in a long time or specially for Moriah’s Bat Mitzvah.
As we get ready to read from the Torah I want to tell you a few things about Sarah and Avraham whose story really gets going in the reading for this week, and it’s important to connect to the name of our community, which also has connection to Moriah’s name as she’ll mention.
One thing about Sarah and Avraham that’s like many of us who live here is that they came originally from Ur, a great ancient city that once upon a time had been a civilization of the cutting edge in terms of advanced culture, advanced politics, advanced economic organization. But what they two of them saw was that the people of Ur had become worshippers of idols. I’m not talking about just little blocks of wood or stone, small and frozen representations of power and material. An idol is a partial power that you think is everything, all-powerful, or an idea that you think can explain everything. The people of Ur had once been the great creators of new patterns of human living and new ways of seeing the world. But they had stopped learning and growing. And all they had were these superficial idols, and a hodgepodge of them – they couldn’t see Echad, the Oneness that makes all life and connects people that are different and somehow leads to greater wisdom.
So Avram and Sarai left. They could have gone off by themselves, either one of them alone or the two together, to some mountain or some cave to pursue enlightenment. But they stayed in that general area, in the Fertile Crescent from Iraq to Syria to the Land of Israel, where people were trading and moving between all parts of the world. They stayed near people. They picked less settled places to travel and then settle for a time, even small cities, but they were still inside that big world. That’s why I call the Canaan where they went the New Hampshire of their world — near its Boston and its New York, but not in it.
So here are two vignettes about Sarah and Avraham. You won’t find them in the Torah itself on the surface but in the midrash, which I’ve heard described as fan fiction about the Torah, from medieval and modern times.
Vignette #1, from the start of their journey: Avraham and Sarah were the inventors of chesed — of kindness, of generosity, of reaching out. They left Ur, the great ancient city; they left alone and walked. They knew separation, being apart from their families, and that’s what it meant so much to them to be connected at first to the Divine. They believed that each day was like a tallit that the Blessed Holy One wrapped around them, they felt that God steadied their feet so they wouldn’t wobble, gave sun and water and nourishment for them and their small flocks. They knew the first commandment before God even had to tell them: Be like Me. Reach out, look for ways to care for the varied people you will meet on your journey.
When they stopped along the road from Ur to Israel, Avraham and Sarah would go into the marketplace and pray. This how they prayed: They stood facing each other. They looked up at the heavens, then at each other. Then they each turned around in place, slowly to the right, clockwise and looked in all directions. They paid attention to everyone they could see. When they completed a circle, they would close their eyes, and look up again. It took about thirty seconds.
It was remarkable the visions they would have in those thirty seconds. Invariably, they could see a forehead furrowed with worry even a mile away, or hear a cry that someone was trying not to let out for people to hear. Sarah would go off and bake, and bring the bread to someone she had noticed somewhere in that 360. Avraham would leave a basket of fruit and saplings for an orchard for someone he had seen.
And people started joining them – some were people who had been touched by their kindness, and some who watched them in the daily, circling prayer and said that’s how I want to be, and threw away their idols. By the time Avraham and Sarah picked up for Canaan, they were a community of hundreds. A growing circle of chesed, of generosity and devotion, not just to each other but to anyone.
Vignette #2, from toward the end of their lives: One of the only places Sarah and Avraham lived for a long time was among the Philistines, in and near Be’er Sheva, and they opened there a bed and breakfast. It was a crossroads between the desert and the mountains, so people would be there just a night or a couple. You could just stay, on one condition which was to eat together and talk. You could talk with the two of them about anything you wanted, whatever interested you, from the safety report on the roads out of town to, I don’t know, an interesting scroll you just read.
There was always a moment when the traveler would say thank you, which was both the point of the B&B and just the beginning.
What are you thankful for? Having food, the taste of this particular food, like take a moment and know what you’re thankful for. And why are you thanking us? Surely we couldn’t do this on our own. What do you think makes food possible, makes kindness possible, makes your safety possible so you could arrive here? Don’t you think there’s an Echad, a divine one-ness that flows among all of us?
And some people got interested in those conversations, and learned some Torah from Avraham and Sarah, and went away questioning the idols they were carrying around that were just broken pieces off of some greater truth and greater peace. From just one breakfast in that small town, sort of near the center of civilization but kind of away, like us, not a long-term relationship – who knows if this traveler would ever see Avraham and Sarah again — something would happened that was kind and generous and probing, and brought people closer to what they needed to be closer to.
And even if you weren’t interested, Sarah and Avraham were satisfied if they could give you rest, some physical sustenance, some interesting ideas for the journey you would continue on. They arranged some protection for you when you checked out, as you got ready to travel out into a world where people weren’t guaranteed to be quite as interested in you.
These are just two vignettes about where we come from. The Talmud says that because of Avraham and Sarah, the Jewish people are known as Rachmanim B’nai Rachmanim, compassionate people descended from compassionate ancestors. Who prayed by looking outward in a circle, who welcomed and fed whoever passed through town. That’s the kernel of what it means to be Beth Abraham, or even just to pass through. Welcome and Shabbat Shalom!
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