TorahParsha

God of Laughter

for Parshat Lech-Licha

i

Sarah has been barren all her life. She will be ninety.

Abraham will be one-hundred.

God announces that they will give birth to a son. They laugh.

*

God says: you shall call your son’s name Isaac, Yitzchak.

Yitzchak means: He-Will-Laugh.

ii

A joke does not make sense until its conclusion comes.

The punchline comes, and the punchline reveals that there are ways of viewing the world that you had not considered: and the story makes sense.

You are given sudden clarity. You laugh.

iii

You would have thought it impossible that Abraham and Sarah should have a child.

But there is another way of viewing the world.

There is the world beyond the level at which we understand things.

There is the level of God.

*

Isaac guides Abraham and Sarah to this level of God.

This revelation brings laughter.

Isaac is the punchline to the story of Abraham and Sarah.

iv

The story of Abraham and Sarah is a story which can have a punchline, because it is a story that God tells.

And the people they birth, too, is a story that God tells.

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

I cannot remember how much of this idea is my own: it came to me and felt recollected, I think largely from Avivah Zornberg. 

TorahParsha.com.

Does God care who we are?

for Parshat VaYeirah

i

God walks in the Garden

and the Man and the Woman are hiding

(for they have eaten the Fruit).

*

God says

Ayekah

Where are you?

Then they answer.

*

Soon after

the man names the woman

Chavah:

from chai,

the word of life—

for Chavah

will be the mother

of all the living.

 

ii

Sarah, Abraham’s wife, is barren.

God’s angels come to Sarah and Abraham’s house.

The angels ask Abraham: Where

ayeih

is Sarah, your wife?

Abraham says:

Here, in the tent.

*

God says:

I will return to you

at a later time

and Sarah will bear a son.

*

God’s exact words

for this later time

are: as in a time of life.

In a time of life,

Sarah will bear a son:

becoming like Chavah,

mother of all life.

 

iii

There is a self

that we hold shameful

or that we hold precious

that we hide away.

It is into this hiddenness

that God cries:

Ayekah?,

Where are you?

*

When we answer Him

it is like a baby come out

from inside its mother.

Life begins.

*

And God asks and asks:

Ayekah

Where are you? 
 

 
_____
Shabbat shalom,
Abe
 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya


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Thought for Parshat VaYeireh

 

How do we (a separate people) reach out to the world?

i

Abraham sits by the entrance of his tent. He sees angels. He thinks they are men. He invites them to sit in the shade of his tree.

 

He tells his wife to bake bread,  his servant to prepare meat.

He feeds the angels these things.

*

Lot sits at the city gates of Sodom.

He sees these same men.

He invites them to stay in his house.

When they come in, the people of the city gather around the house, to rape them.

Lot offers to send his daughters out in their stead.

 

ii

Abraham does not invite the angel/men in, or even mention them to his household.

He only says to his household: Prepare food.

His home is a place of food-making.

He shares this food-making with the world.

*

Lot, by the city gates, brings strangers in to his house.

He offers to send his daughters outside.

 

iii

The lesson of Abraham (the father of our people):

If your home is a separate world,  you have a world to offer the world.

 

The lesson of Lot:

If you have no boundaries to your home, you have no home.

 

             

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

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Please continue to pray for Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah, for Rachel Tovah bat Yehudit Esther

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