November 3rd: Vayera’
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
“The Lord appeared to Abraham…” (Genesis 18.1)
Most religion is based on revelation, and this is both wonderfully inspiring and fraught with danger. Revelation is generally understood as the Deity (or a deity) appearing to humans and giving them instructions. Since the instructions come from the Deity, they are to be followed.
In religions like Judaism, the usual process is for the Deity to appear to a Navi/Prophet who then brings the message of God to the people. The meaning of the Hebrew word Navi is one who brings. Thus many Prophets begin their messages with the phrase, “Thus saith the Lord.”
It is wonderful to believe that the Divine is present in our lives, and it fills us with purpose when we submit ourselves to the Divine Will—in the words of Rabban Gamliel, “Aseh r’tzono chir’tzon’cha / to make God’s Will your will.” (Avot 2.4) The question is, however: What exactly is God’s Will?
We know from this week’s Torah portion the difficulty in determining God’s meaning. Does God really command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Or, when God says, “v’ha’alehu sham l’olah (Genesis 22.2), does the Deity mean, “Slaughter him and cook him as a sacrifice,” or “Bring him up to the mountain and elevate his spirituality?” Does God want Abraham to kill Isaac or to educate him in the ways of holiness? What exactly is God’s Will?
In the previous chapter, when Sarah insists that Hagar and Ishmael be expelled from the household—and God agrees, does this mean that Abraham is to send them away completely? Or is the Midrashic suggestion that Abraham separates the households but keeps Hagar and Ishmael in his life—installed a few miles away in the territory of Abraham’s friend Abimelech of Gerar—a reasonable interpretation? What exactly is God’s Will?
There is also the matter of God’s multiple—and not consistent—promises about The Land being given to Abraham and his descendants. Is Abraham’s possession (1) all the land he can see, (2) all the Land of Canaan, (3) the land of his sojourning (semi-nomadic shepherding), or (4) everything from the Euphrates to the Nile?
It can be difficult to know exactly what God means—and whether God’s general instructions are okay to interpret or interpret differently over time.
One of the problems with revelation is what we could call “the revelation attitude.” Some people believe so intently in revelation that they regard their current leaders as part of the revelatory chain of command. Though the revelation (Tanach, New Testament, or Koran) occurred many, many centuries ago, some people accept their current leaders’ modern interpretations as God’s official instructions.
Thus were there Evangelical Christians in the mid-Twentieth century who believed their segregationist preachers who “found” segregation of the races in the Bible. Thus are there Orthodox Jews who believe that the current age’s Ultra-Orthodox Judaism is exactly what God decreed back at Mount Sinai. Thus are there modern Muslims who believe that hate-filled preachers are communicating what Mohammed heard from God.
Among the many modern Muslim leaders who believe in peace and tolerance—and studying and working with Jews—is Imam Abdullah Antepli, currently on the staff and faculty at Duke University and involved in peace and education efforts at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. When he tells his story, he cites a gathering he attended as a teenager in Turkey where the Islamist speaker “quoted” something from the Koran that young Abdullah had never seen. When he asked the speaker for the citation, the speaker got defensive and dismissed the question without answering. The future imam did some research and found that the quotation did not exist—neither in the Sura (the revelations of God to the Prophet Mohammed) or the Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed). The passage did not exist, but the speaker had been convinced by someone else that it did, and he preached it to people who believed it. Thus a decidedly non-Koranic message was attributed to the Koran—and hate was presented as the Will of God.
This is what in Judaism we call Chillul Hashem, a Desecration of the Divine Name. We could also classify it as a violation of the Ninth Commandment, bearing false witness and lying about what God says. It is bad news regardless of the religion of the mis-speaker, and we who aspire to be godly need to be wary of those who claim to speak for the Lord.
One of my favorite teachers, the late Ellis Rivkin of the Hebrew Union College, used to declare that he was a fundamentalist—that he believed every single word in the Bible. Of course, since the Bible has many differing views, he continued, he had to think for himself and figure out which of the many Biblical positions is godly.
His humorous irony points to what I think is an important view of Scripture—any scripture of any religion. Holy books reflect the thinking of people striving for holiness—of trying to ascertain the nature of God and the Will of God. As a result, all holy books present a chorus of different opinions about how humans can best aspire to holy and righteous behavior. The various contexts of the writers’/aspirers’ lives lead to views that may or may not agree with each other or be applicable to different situations. This is why honest and thoughtful interpretations are crucial. Are the teachings of an interpreter holy, righteous, kind, and gracious, or are they harsh, unyielding, and unholy? Do they reflect the gracious, forgiving, and hopeful qualities of the Divine, or do they reflect the impatience and hostility of frustrated people—who love doctrine more than other people? Are good things being proposed in the Name of God, or is God being implicated in the “evil devisings of the heart?”
Faith is more than quoting the Scripture—be it Tanach, New Testament, or Koran. Faith is approaching life as an opportunity to be holy, and thinking clearly and carefully is the only way to make sure that God is in the passages and their interpretations.