Lekh Lekha (archives)

Who was Abraham?

There is perhaps no other figure in Jewish life whose image is so much shaped by Midrash as that of Abraham—and no other who has so shaped the Jewish sense of the ideal self as he. Moses’ personality was somehow too transcendent, too overpowering; but Abraham was “the first Jew,” the one whom we constantly mention in our prayers, and who is in some sense a model for what we strive to become. At times, looking at Abraham, one almost feels as though one is looking at two almost completely different figures: the Abraham of the midrash, and the Abraham of the actual biblical text.

Almost everyone, as a small child, heard about the Midrashic figure of Abraham the iconoclast, breaking the idols in his father’s shop; Abraham, the home-spun philosopher who questioned the assumptions of his pagan environment and discovered God by pondering the world; Abraham, whose “two kidneys became two founts of wisdom.”

Maimonides uses an interesting term when speaking of Abraham: Avraham ohavi (Isa 41:8) or Ohev Hashem, “Abraham, the lover of God.” Moses was a prophet, a visionary, a man who lived his life in the rarefied space between heaven and earth; he was Moshe Rabbenu, the Teacher par excellence of the Jewish people; their stern leader, who was oft enough livid with anger at them, but was also the one who pleaded on their behalf and defended the people before God. Abraham was none of these, but was, quite simply, one who loved God, and who brought men “under the wings of the Shekhinah,” going about and spreading his message far and wide. Or perhaps Avraham ohavi may be read simply as “Abraham my friend”: that is, God’s “friend” in the world; His partner in teaching the path of decency, of knowledge of the One God, of doing acts justice and righteousness in the post-diluvian world, after humankind’s capacity for evil had been revealed to the full extent.

God, so-to-speak, faced a problem after the Flood. In making the covenant over the rainbow (9:8-17, esp. 13-15; cf. 8:22-23), He signaled his rejection of the path of total destruction, and His decision to allow human history to continue. Yet He knew full well that the weaknesses in the human soul expressed in the generation of the Flood were still very much alive; indeed, they had already showed themselves in the tower of Babel and in the rampant idolatry of the generation of Terach. So He needed to combat the tendencies toward evil by another means: initially by means of a single individual who “knew Him” and would spread knowledge of Him; thereafter, by means of his descendants, who would become a nation that would live in accordance with Divine teachings. “For I have known him, that he might command his household after him, to perform righteousness and justice” (la’asot tzedaka umishpat; Gen 18:19).

These two paths may be seen as emblematic of two basic religious strategies for the survival of goodness in a wicked world: the one, that of withdrawal from the world (like Noah in the ark?) in self-enclosed communities of the righteous concerned with their own spiritual survival, leaving the rest of mankind, in thought or in actuality, to damnation and, if not waging war against them, at least wishing them dead. The second path is that of Abraham: of living in the world; of accepting wickedness as an inevitable feature of human life; of spreading goodness and righteousness insofar as possible, both by example and by teaching; and of “drowning” evil-doers in the milk of human kindness and love. (sorry, couldn’t resist the outrageous metaphor.)

We spoke last week, in the context of the Noachide commandments, of “natural religion” and “revelation” as two different, possible complementary paths towards the knowledge of God. But it would seem that there is a strong strain of “natural religion” in Abraham’s path and personality, as well. He knew God intuitively, naturally. Abraham’s path was the quintessential pre-Torah, pre-revelational path. True, some traditions hold that Abraham and the other patriarchs observed all details of the Torah even before it was given. But another strain insists that they performed yihudim, acts of unifying the Divine, without mitzvot. Rather, Isaac, by digging his wells, Jacob, through his tricks of animal husbandry with the peeled sticks in the water troughs used by the flock, accomplished the same thing as we do today through tefillin or Shabbat. That is, to strip the idea of its Kabbalistic trappings: by living in the world in a holy way.

Some twenty-five years ago, at a conference held in Beer-Sheva honoring the centennial of Martin Buber’s birth, Professor R. J. Zwi Werblowsky spoke of Buber as an “Abrahamic” personality. By this, he meant to say that Buber was, in a paradoxical sense, “anti-religious,” meaning that he was against the formal rituals and structures that we think of as “religion,” as too often getting in the way of true knowledge of God and a Godly life. God is known, according to Buber, through the direct, immediate encounter—be it between man and man, or between man and God. Whatever one may think of Buber’s position vis-a-vis the mitzvot, it is clear that Abraham’s path was indeed a “pre-Torah” path—based upon unmediated awareness and knowledge of God, and cultivation of the ideal human personality and character—and as such one that was indeed without the trappings of “religion.”

The second aspect of the “midrashic” Abraham, which dovetails with this image, is that of a man who was wholeheartedly devoted to performing deeds of Hesed, of lovingkindness (indeed, in the Kabbalah he is the very embodiment of this quality). He was one who constantly reached out to others, whose tent was always open in all four directions, to welcome any and all visitors. This Hesed, we are told, went far beyond the boundaries of conventional, decorous giving to others, to a caring for others that makes no distinction between ones own family and others.

This type of extravagant, wild generosity is part of the spiritual physiognomy of Jewish tzaddikim in every generation, encountered in the most unexpected places. It also overlooks the faults in the one receiving, who may be eccentric, strange, repulsive, even grasping and manipulative; all this does not matter to the Ba’al Hesed, who only sees a fellow creature of God in his need. Of all the traits making up the complete Jewish personality (and Hesed is indeed meant to be balanced by other traits), Hesed is the most basic, because it opens up the self to the world of others. Periodically, usually when somebody dies, one hears that he cared for the needs of such-and-such a person “as if he were a member of his own family.” Most recently, I heard this told of Professor David Flusser. It was certainly true of Reb Shlomo Carlebach, a true Abrahamic personality, whose sixth yahrzeit falls this week (on the 16^th of Heshvan). Would that I might enjoy the merit of being unreasonably generous to one person.

Interestingly, on the periphery of these opening sections of Genesis we are introduced to two minor figures, each one of whom has an innate God consciousness. Enoch “walks with God”; when he dies the Torah uses the unusual phrase, “and he was not, because God had taken him” (Gen 4:21-24). In this week’s portion we encounter Malchizedek, king of the city of Shalem (Yerushalayim?), who was “priest to the Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth” (14:18-20). We are told tantalizing little about these men, leading us to wonder from whence they derived their evidently highly developed religious consciousness. Interestingly, both Enoch and Malchizedek became the central figures of eschatological books in the Pseudepigraphic literature.

The mention of the town of Shalem, or Jerusalem, brings to mind an interesting comment by the Meshekh Hokhmah (Rabbi Meir Simhah ha-Kohen of Dvinsk). We have already mentioned that “Shalem” was Jerusalem. In the chapter describing the Binding of Isaac on Mt. Moriah (= Jerusalem), this same place is called by Abraham “Hashem Yera'eh” (“God will see”; Gen 22:14). The Meshekh Hokhmah comments that the words yare’eh plus shalem together comprise the name Yerushalayim. He goes on to explain that these two names symbolize seeing, i.e., spiritual perception (hasaga) and wholeness of character (middot)—the two components of the complete religious personality and, I might add, the two essential “Abrahamic” qualities.

The Abraham of the Text

How much of this is present in the biblical text? The Rabbis (m. Avot 5.4) describe Abraham’s life in schematic terms as a progression of ten tests. The central events in his life, as described in the two “Abrahamic” parshiyot of Lekh Lekha and Vayera (Gen 12-22), were all such tests, and simultaneously encounters with the Divine: the departure from his native land for the unknown land which God “would show him”; the “Covenant Between the Pieces” (brit ben habetarim), the uncanny night vision in which God passed with a torch between pieces of animals, and told him of the future—a scene pregnant with a sense of destiny; the covenant of circumcision—a test accompanied by Divine promises and blessings, but no mean feat for a man who was already quite old; the visit of the three angels announcing Sarah’s expected child—here he manifested his famed hospitality; the argument with God over Sodom; and, the culminating act of his life, the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac.

In counterpoint to these central moments, we have a series of separations, of parting from people and places who were important in his life: leaving his fatherland and birthplace; the separation from Lot; from Hagar; from Ishmael; his difficulties with Sarah in Egypt (and later, his becoming a widower); culminating in the Akedah, his willingness to relinquish his own beloved son. Is there a connection between these two movements: Abraham’s drawing closer and closer to God, while gradually separating himself from human attachments? Couched in those terms, the idea seems more Buddhist than it does Jewish, but perhaps there is nevertheless a certain truth here about the demands of attachment to God (see Rambam on prophecy, Yesodei haTorah 7.2).