We're excited to be continuing a tradition we began last year of inviting members of our community and other scholars to compose and share Torah Gems (insights from that week's Torah portion). This weeks selection is taken from Commentary on the Torah by Richard Elliott Friedman.
Following a noontime Kiddush, Landers Playspace will be open. Talmud will convene at 5:00 pm. Mincha will be in our Rabb Chapel at 5:23 pm. My Mincha and Metaphysics topic will be "Divine Hospitality". Havdallah takes place no earlier than 6:37 pm.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi William Hamilton
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12:3. all the families will be blessed through you. The Tanak is so focused on the people of Israel that one can underestimate the overwhelming significance of its opening section. The first eleven chapters (Parshat Bereshit and Parashat Noah) are about the relationship between God and the entire human community. That relationship does not go well, and after ten generations the deity decides to destroy the mass and start over with a single virtuous man's family. But it turns out that choosing a virtuous individual does not guarantee that this individual's descendants will be virtuous as well. Another ten generations pass, and humans in general are not a planet-full of Noahs. So once again the focus narrows to a single virtuous person, Abraham. We must keep in mind what has happened up to this point when we read this, or else we will lose the significance of what is happening here. Wiping out everyone but a virtuous person does not work. So God leaves the species alive but chooses an individual who will produce a family that will ultimately bring blessing to all the families of the earth.
To make sure we get it, it is the final point of God's first revelation to Abraham: Go to the land I'll show you. I'll make you a big nation. I'll bless you. "And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you" (Gen 12:3).
To make sure we do not forget it, it is repeated four times - and always in crucial moments of revelation: during the appearance of the three visitors to Abraham (Gen 18:17-18); in the blessing following the near-sacrifice of Isaac (22:16-18); in God's first appearance to Isaac (26:2-4); and in Jacob's first encounter with God in the dream of the ladder at Beth-El (28:10-14).
It is important. In some way, at some time, the result of the divine choice of Abraham is supposed to be some good for all humankind. We are never told what this good is supposed to be. Is it that Abraham's descendants are supposed to bring blessing by being "a light to the nations" - setting an example, showing how a community can live: caring for one another, not cheating one another, not enslaving one another, not lending to each other for profit, and so on and on? Or is it that they are to bring blessing by doing things that benefit the species: inventions, cures, literature, music, learning? It does not say. But at the minimum it must mean that the people of Israel do not live alone or apart. Their destiny - our destiny - whatever it is, must be bound up in the destiny of all humankind.
This adds a dimension, an additional layer of significance, to every story that will follow in the Torah. When Abraham travels to Canaan, we might imagine it from a God's-eye view above the earth: the tiny movement of a man and his family along with the globe is a first step in the process that is to bring benefit for all the earth. When Abraham travels to Egypt, this is the first in a series of encounters that he and his descendants will have with the peoples of the world. When he and Lot are forced to part, this is a step in distinguishing his destiny from that of the families of his brothers Haran and Nahor, though he and his descendants will continue to interact with them. When he joins in a battle among kings in order to rescue Lot (Genesis 14), he is being drawn into world events, and it is another first step, an anticipation of all the times that his descendants, the people of Israel, will be drawn into contact and interaction with nations. When Abraham covenants with God (Genesis 15 and 17) the ceremony includes specific references to Ur of the Chaldees, the land from which Abraham has come; to Egypt, the land where his descendants will be enslaved; and to ten peoples of the land that Abraham is promised. It also includes the announcement of his coming son Isaac, the key to the fulfillment of the destiny to be a blessing to all the families of the earth - as will be confirmed explicitly following the Aqedah. And in between the two chapters concerning the Abrahamic covenant comes the story of the birth of Abraham's son Ishmael, whose descendants, the Ishmaelites, will be among Israel's related neighbors.
All of these episodes are conveying the formative stages of development that begins with that narrowing of attention to Abraham. The interpretive point is that we must understand every section of the Torah with awareness of what has preceded it and what will come after it. The social and moral point is that Abraham's descendants are not to live by themselves or only for themselves. Whether dealing with non-Jews who live in Israel or dealing with non-Jews who are their neighbors in the countries in which they reside, the Jews are a community that connects its birth with a prediction (?), a promise (?), an obligation (?), a destiny (?) to be a blessing to them all.
SHABBAT SHALOM
