TorahParsha

What is religious experience?

for Parshat VaYeirah

 

i

God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son

but suddenly reveals a ram

to offer instead.

 

ii

One would think that,

honoring this story,

we would offer God ram upon ram in His Temple.

But we offer rams rarely:

if a man misuses Temple property,

if he sins without realizing,

if he swears falsely

that he does not have another man’s things;

inaugurating priests,

on holidays.

Mostly we offer sheep,

lambs, cows, goats, flour, birds.

 

iii

Had Abraham sacrificed his son

he would have parted completely

from his life.

Perhaps the ram is a symbol

of stepping out of life:

as when you encounter holy property too closely,

or sin without knowing,

or assume another man’s things,

his person;

or on special holy times.

 

iv

If we rarely offer rams in the Temple,

where we meet God,

perhaps it is to tell us how

if we stray from life

on the way to God,

it can be wrong

or it can be special

but either way

in any case

it should be rare.

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

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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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Trees and Wood (For Parshat VaYeireh)

i

God promises Abraham that he will father many children within the Land; and Abraham dwelt by the terebinth-trees of Mamreh.

Abraham invites angels to partake of his plenty. And he stood them under a tree, and they ate.

Abraham forms a pact with the nation of Gerar; and he planted a tamarisk tree.

The tree is Abraham’s sign of security, plenty, of having.

*

Then God asks Abraham to give up all that he has: God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac, up on a mountain.

And Abraham… broke up wood for the offering.

And Abraham built an altar…and laid the wood

and Abraham laid Isaac on the altar upon the wood.

Abraham now deals in broken trees, in dead trees.

ii

Much later, God will say: the priest shall burn wood on the altar every morning.

Every morning: here is security, here is regularity, here is promise.

This very promise will come through broken trees, through wood.

iii

You give up the security of your life for God, by which you gain the security of life with God.

The near-sacrifice of Isaac brings this possibility to the world.

________

Shabbat Shalom, Abe
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God, Memory

i
God sends the Plagues to force Pharaoh to send the Children of Israel free.

Pharaoh cannot bear the Plagues. So over and over, Pharaoh promises to free the Children of Israel if God will call off the new Plague that has come.

And after Pharaoh's promise, God calls off the Plague.

And after God calls off the Plague, Pharaoh sees that there is respite.

And after Pharaoh sees that there is respite, he reneges on his promise.

And after Pharaoh reneges on his promise, he does not let the people go free.

*
Pharaoh is a man with no memory. His experience of the world is wholly an experience of the now.

When he is frightened of God, he follows God. When things are better, he forgets that he is frightened of God.

Because he is a man with no memory, Pharaoh cannot make promises.

He cannot tie what he must do to what has happened, to what has been said; he cannot understand how the past obligates him.

ii
God heard the groaning of the Children of Israel in Egypt. And God remembered His Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob to bring his People to the Land.

Because God remembers the Covenant, God frees the Children of Israel from slavery.

*
God's memory of the Covenant outlasts and overpowers and undoes any immediate experience that there is: of suffering (of His people) or of triumph (of Pharaoh, the tyrant).

*
Pharaoh is a man with no memory. God rules through memory.

iii
Remember the day when you came out from Egypt, Moses says: all the days of your life.

Tie each moment of your life—all the days of your life—to the eternality of the Covenant of God, to the eternality of the promise of God.

Let your memory join with God's memory.

~~~~~

Section III is based on a thought of my father. The wording around "....is a man with no memory" is borrowed; I cannot remember from where.

~~~~~

Home

i
Abraham sits at the entrance to his tent, in the heat of the day. And from there he sees wandering angels, who are disguised as men. And he invites the men to take food from him and to take water from him and to rest from the heat of the desert beneath his tree.

The angels accept this offer right away.

*
Lot, Abraham’s nephew, sits in the gate of Sodom, the wicked city, that is the city where he lives. And he sees the same angels-disguised-as-men, and he invites the angels-disguised-as-men in to his home.

But the angels only accept Lot’s invitation after great pressure.

*
When the angels come to Lot’s house, the people of Sodom demand that the angels come out to be raped. Lot offers to send his daughters out in the angels’ stead. The people refuse Lot’s offer; and they try to break down the door to Lot’s house.

*
Since Abraham never invites the angels into his home, and Sarah, Abraham’s wife, is in the tent when they come, the angels do not see her.

The angels need to ask: Where is Sarah, your wife?

ii
The people of Sodom do not recognize the concept of home, of private space, of a precious hidden life. They only have a public space, public wants. This is the core of their evil.

Lot, the man of Sodom, greets guests at the city gate.

Lot brings strange men in to his home, though his daughters are there.

Guests are demanded up, and daughters are offered up, and houses are destroyed, all in the name of public pleasure.

*

Abraham’s life is of the home: of things apart from the public.

Abraham greets guests at the entrance to his own tent.

Abraham does not bring the men in to his tent: so the angels cannot see his wife who is in the tent.

The things of Abraham’s life emanate from within his home, in which his life is hidden.

*
God tells Abraham that he will punish the people of Sodom. Abraham argues to God that He should spare Sodom if there will be righteous people within the city, nestled among the wicked.

In a life of the home—a life in which all wonderful things are hidden—such hope for hidden goodness is possible.

And so it is Abraham who can pray for a wicked city.

*
In this way it is the home that lays open the option that people are good. It is the home that allows for hope for humanity.

So it is the home that allows for acts of mercy.

Based, in small part, on a speech of Rabbi Michael Whitman.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sodom

God punishes the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous.

*
Angels disguised as men come to Sodom. The men of the city…both young and old, all the people from every quarter, surround the house where the angels stay, so as to rape them.

And they attempt to do evil against Lot, who houses the angels.

All the people of that city are wicked.

*
Because all the people of that city are wicked, the cry of Sodom cannot be the cry of the weak and innocent who are hurt by the wicked and strong.

The cry of Sodom must be something else.

The cry of Sodom must be the cry of the wicked themselves, as they are hurt by one another.

*
Yet the cry of Sodom has gone up to God—that is why He sends punishment.

This is to say that God hears the cry of the people of Sodom even as they are wicked.

*
God hears the cry of the people of Sodom, because he hears the cry of all people who are crying. Even in Sodom.