Welcome to the wacky world of the Torah. This week we have lots of good action. The parsha (portion of the week) starts out with haShem (god) appearing to Abraham at the Trees of Reflection, where Abraham has been camping. God appears as 3 angels (the word for angel in Hebrew, mal’ach, means messenger) in the guise of men and Abraham begs them to stay for a foot washing and a meal.
After they eat, the men/angels tell Abraham that Sarah will give him a son in a year’s time. Sarah laughs because she is so old. The men/angels, escorted by Abraham head out to Sodom.
At this moment, haShem asks if he should hide from Abraham what he is about to do. He doesn’t and Abraham convinces haShem not to destroy the city of Sodom unless there are less than 10 righteous men there. Two of the angel/men come to Sodom and are met by Lot. Lot persuades them to stay with him overnight. The townsfolk find out and want a piece of these visitors. This is enough to convince the angel/men to destroy the city, but not until Lot and his family are safely away. Lot and his daughters escape to the hills (Lot’s wife turned around to see the destruction and turned into a pillar of salt).
In the mountains, Lot’s daughters, thinking they are the last people alive, get Lot drunk, and sleep with him, creating two nations from the sons born to them: Moav (meaning “from father”) and Ben-Ami (meaning “the son of my people”). The latter are called the Ammonites.
Abraham and Sarah travel to Gerar where they again say that Sarah is Abraham’s sister, and again a king, this time Avimelech (Hebrew for “my father is king”), decides to take Sarah for a wife. God comes to Avimelech in a dream and tells him she is already married, and Avimelech confronts Abraham. Abraham explains the need for the deception and they make peace.
Sarah gives birth and they name the boy Isaac (in Hebrew, it is Yitzhak which means laughter). At the weaning party for Yitzhak, Yishma’el laughs and Sarah gets upset and tells Abraham to send Hagar and Yishma’el away. Abraham does, with God’s assurance that Yishma’el will be ok. Hagar runs out of water and starts to cry, and an angel calls out to Hagar telling her that Yishma’el has been heard by god. She, then, sees a well and gets water and gives water to Yishma’el. Yishma’el grows up in the desert and becomes a crack archer and his mother provides him and Egyptian wife.
Avimelech meets up again with Abraham and they make a covenant between them.
After all this, god decides to test Abraham by telling him to take Yitzhak up to a mountain and sacrifice him. Abraham goes and just as he is grabbing the knife, an angel stops him and tells Abraham that because he didn’t withhold his son, his children will be like the stars or the grains of sand on the beach, and all nations will bless themselves thru his offspring. The parsha then ends with a listing of his brother, Nachor’s (meaning snore) offspring.
The beginning of the parsha provides us with a nice lesson. Abraham is sitting in the heat of the day meditating (what else does one do by oneself in the heat of the day at a place called the Trees of Reflection) when he suddenly sees three men right on top of him. What does he do? He runs and calls them and gives them respect and makes them comfortable and honors them and feeds them.
It is a nice story, but what is the lesson? The lesson is to always do good for other people, even if it means putting off your own gains and comforts.
Abraham could have just shouted a greeting to them and told his servants to help them. Or he could have ignored them and continued his meditation. If they were still there when he was done, he would deal with them. Instead, Abraham stopped his endeavors as soon as he became aware of them. He ran and bowed to them, and personally attended to them, so as to make them feel important. He waited over them while they ate. Why did he do this?
He did this because he believed in one god who created everything out of itself (before the world, there was only god, so where could the world and all that is in it come from if not from god?), and so he was really honoring a part of himself, for he and those people are all part of god.
This is why he ran and honored the three men, and made them feel important, because they were important! And this is also why they were angels: to emphasize the need to honor god (which is oneself!).
Now, the question becomes, what is the more important part of god to honor: the internal or the external?
An answer to that can also be found here: the more immediate. First we see Abraham honoring himself by being with himself and not abusing himself in the hot son. Then when he sees a more immediate need, parts of himself (the three men) suffering in the hot sun, he immediately takes action to help them/the external him. Once he has done that, those external parts of himself help his internal self by promising him what he desires: a child.
So, in a nutshell we learn that the best way to take care of ourselves is to take care of others. We are all in this together because we are all one, we are all part of the one.
May you all honor yourselves by honoring the others around you.
If you want to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.