Significantly, in the only place where the Torah explains why Abraham was chosen to carry the promise of the covenant, the reason is given in terms of parenthood: “For I have chosen him so that he will instruct his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the LORD, doing what is right and just” (Gen. 18:19). Abraham was chosen in order to be a parent. He was also chosen to be an educator. The two concepts, so different in many societies, including our own, are in Judaism inseparable.
Fatherhood and motherhood are two distinct phenomena, and Judaism attaches equal importance to both. A child derives its biological identity as part of the Jewish people from its mother. The Hebrew word for compassion, raḥamim, derives from reḥem, “womb.” A mother, more than a father, is bound to a child through unconditional love.
Fatherhood, by contrast, is a social construct. It belongs to culture rather than nature. There are animals – including primates, genetically close to human beings – in which fathers do not even recognize their children after a few months. Fatherhood, like fidelity, is not a constant across cultures. The supreme challenge of any civilization, said the anthropologist Margaret Mead, is to socialize males and persuade them to invest their energies in the home, the family, and children.
This was one of Judaism’s greatest achievements through the ages. The Hebrew word for male, zakhar, is closely related to the word for memory, zakhor. It is the task of fathers to hand on to their children the memories of the past. For we are related to the past not just biologically but also culturally, through the stories we tell and the history we relate (see “History and Memory”). That is what we do on Pesaḥ. Thus Pesaḥ, the festival of Jewish memory, is celebrated in the home, the birthplace of memory.
Families are a source of immense strength, but they can also be the source of narrowness, nepotism, and indifference to the world outside. There is a potential conflict between the family and the wider concerns that are needed to build a society of justice and compassion. For that reason a Jewish home must always be open – to the hungry, the lonely, and visitors. Abraham and Sarah, waiting at their tent to provide food and shelter to passersby, are an enduring symbol of this Jewish value. “Greater is hospitality,” said the sages, “than welcoming the Divine Presence” (Shabbat 127a). The Hebrew letter beit, whose name also means “house,” is open at one side, to show that a Jewish home must always be open to the needy. Thus the seder night begins with an invitation, “Let all who are hungry come in and eat.” In fact, in all ages, Jews celebrating Pesaḥ sought guests long before the meal began. The invitation, at this point, is simply to remind us that a free society exists only where families share their warmth with others.
Fatherhood and motherhood are two distinct phenomena, and Judaism attaches equal importance to both. A child derives its biological identity as part of the Jewish people from its mother. The Hebrew word for compassion, raḥamim, derives from reḥem, “womb.” A mother, more than a father, is bound to a child through unconditional love.
Fatherhood, by contrast, is a social construct. It belongs to culture rather than nature. There are animals – including primates, genetically close to human beings – in which fathers do not even recognize their children after a few months. Fatherhood, like fidelity, is not a constant across cultures. The supreme challenge of any civilization, said the anthropologist Margaret Mead, is to socialize males and persuade them to invest their energies in the home, the family, and children.
This was one of Judaism’s greatest achievements through the ages. The Hebrew word for male, zakhar, is closely related to the word for memory, zakhor. It is the task of fathers to hand on to their children the memories of the past. For we are related to the past not just biologically but also culturally, through the stories we tell and the history we relate (see “History and Memory”). That is what we do on Pesaḥ. Thus Pesaḥ, the festival of Jewish memory, is celebrated in the home, the birthplace of memory.
Families are a source of immense strength, but they can also be the source of narrowness, nepotism, and indifference to the world outside. There is a potential conflict between the family and the wider concerns that are needed to build a society of justice and compassion. For that reason a Jewish home must always be open – to the hungry, the lonely, and visitors. Abraham and Sarah, waiting at their tent to provide food and shelter to passersby, are an enduring symbol of this Jewish value. “Greater is hospitality,” said the sages, “than welcoming the Divine Presence” (Shabbat 127a). The Hebrew letter beit, whose name also means “house,” is open at one side, to show that a Jewish home must always be open to the needy. Thus the seder night begins with an invitation, “Let all who are hungry come in and eat.” In fact, in all ages, Jews celebrating Pesaḥ sought guests long before the meal began. The invitation, at this point, is simply to remind us that a free society exists only where families share their warmth with others.
Vayera
To Bless the Space Between Us
Jonathan Sacks
There is a mystery at the heart of the biblical story of Abraham, and it has immense implications for our understanding of Judaism.
Who was Abraham and why was he chosen? The answer is far from obvious. Nowhere is he described, as was Noah, as “a righteous man, perfect in his generations” (Gen. 6:9). We have no portrait of him, like the young Moses, physically intervening in conflicts as a protest against injustice. He was not a soldier like David or a visionary like Isaiah. In only one place, near the beginning of our parasha, does the Torah say why God singled him out:
Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.” (18:17–19)
Abraham was chosen in order to be a father. Indeed Abraham’s original name, Av ram, means “mighty father,” and his enlarged name, Avraham, means “father of many nations.”
No sooner do we notice this than we recall that the first person in history to be given a proper name was Ḥava, Eve, because, said Adam, “she is the mother of all life” (3:20). Note that motherhood is drawn attention to in the Torah long before fatherhood (twenty generations to be precise, ten from Adam to Noah, and ten from Noah to Abraham). The reason is that motherhood is a biological phenomenon. It is common to almost all forms of advanced life. Fatherhood is a cultural phenomenon. There is little in biology that supports pair-bonding, monogamy, and faithfulness in marriage, and less still that connects males with their offspring. That is why fatherhood always needs reinforcement from the moral code operative in a society. Absent that, and families fragment very fast indeed, with the burden being overwhelmingly borne by the abandoned mother.
This emphasis on parenthood – motherhood in the case of Eve, fatherhood in that of Abraham – is absolutely central to Jewish spirituality, because what Abrahamic monotheism brought into the world was not just a mathematical reduction of the number of gods from many to one. The God of Israel is not primarily the God of the scientists who set the universe into motion with the Big Bang. It is not the God of the philosophers, whose necessary being undergirds our contingency. Nor is it even the God of the mystics, the Ein Sof, the Infinity that frames our finitude. The God of Israel is the God who loves us and cares for us as a parent loves for and cares for a child.
Sometimes God is described as our father: “Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” (Mal. 2:10). Sometimes, especially in the late chapters of the book of Isaiah, God is described as a mother: “Like one whom his mother comforts, so shall I comfort you” (Is. 66:13). “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you” (ibid. 49:15). The primary attribute of God, especially whenever the four-letter name Hashem is used, is compassion, the Hebrew word for which, raḥamim, comes from the word reḥem, meaning “a womb.”
Thus our relationship with God is deeply connected with our relationship with our parents, and our understanding of God is deepened if we have had the blessing of children (I love the remark of a young American Jewish mother: “Now that I’ve become a parent I find that I can relate to God much better: now I know what it’s like creating something you can’t control”).
All of which makes the story of Abraham very hard to understand for two reasons. The first is that Abraham was the son told by God to leave his father: “Leave your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house” (Gen. 12:1). The second is that Abraham was the father told by God to sacrifice his son: “Then God said: Take your son, your only son, whom you love – Isaac – and go to the land of Moriah, and there sacrifice him as a burnt offering on the mountain I will show you” (22:2). How can this make sense? It is hard enough to understand God commanding these things of anyone. How much more so given that God chose Abraham specifically to become a role model of the parent-child, father-son relationship.
The Torah is teaching us something fundamental and counter-intuitive. There has to be separation before there can be connection. We have to have the space to be ourselves if we are to be good children to our parents, and we have to allow our children the space to be themselves if we are to be good parents.
To Bless the Space Between Us
Jonathan Sacks
There is a mystery at the heart of the biblical story of Abraham, and it has immense implications for our understanding of Judaism.
Who was Abraham and why was he chosen? The answer is far from obvious. Nowhere is he described, as was Noah, as “a righteous man, perfect in his generations” (Gen. 6:9). We have no portrait of him, like the young Moses, physically intervening in conflicts as a protest against injustice. He was not a soldier like David or a visionary like Isaiah. In only one place, near the beginning of our parasha, does the Torah say why God singled him out:
Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.” (18:17–19)
Abraham was chosen in order to be a father. Indeed Abraham’s original name, Av ram, means “mighty father,” and his enlarged name, Avraham, means “father of many nations.”
No sooner do we notice this than we recall that the first person in history to be given a proper name was Ḥava, Eve, because, said Adam, “she is the mother of all life” (3:20). Note that motherhood is drawn attention to in the Torah long before fatherhood (twenty generations to be precise, ten from Adam to Noah, and ten from Noah to Abraham). The reason is that motherhood is a biological phenomenon. It is common to almost all forms of advanced life. Fatherhood is a cultural phenomenon. There is little in biology that supports pair-bonding, monogamy, and faithfulness in marriage, and less still that connects males with their offspring. That is why fatherhood always needs reinforcement from the moral code operative in a society. Absent that, and families fragment very fast indeed, with the burden being overwhelmingly borne by the abandoned mother.
This emphasis on parenthood – motherhood in the case of Eve, fatherhood in that of Abraham – is absolutely central to Jewish spirituality, because what Abrahamic monotheism brought into the world was not just a mathematical reduction of the number of gods from many to one. The God of Israel is not primarily the God of the scientists who set the universe into motion with the Big Bang. It is not the God of the philosophers, whose necessary being undergirds our contingency. Nor is it even the God of the mystics, the Ein Sof, the Infinity that frames our finitude. The God of Israel is the God who loves us and cares for us as a parent loves for and cares for a child.
Sometimes God is described as our father: “Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” (Mal. 2:10). Sometimes, especially in the late chapters of the book of Isaiah, God is described as a mother: “Like one whom his mother comforts, so shall I comfort you” (Is. 66:13). “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you” (ibid. 49:15). The primary attribute of God, especially whenever the four-letter name Hashem is used, is compassion, the Hebrew word for which, raḥamim, comes from the word reḥem, meaning “a womb.”
Thus our relationship with God is deeply connected with our relationship with our parents, and our understanding of God is deepened if we have had the blessing of children (I love the remark of a young American Jewish mother: “Now that I’ve become a parent I find that I can relate to God much better: now I know what it’s like creating something you can’t control”).
All of which makes the story of Abraham very hard to understand for two reasons. The first is that Abraham was the son told by God to leave his father: “Leave your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house” (Gen. 12:1). The second is that Abraham was the father told by God to sacrifice his son: “Then God said: Take your son, your only son, whom you love – Isaac – and go to the land of Moriah, and there sacrifice him as a burnt offering on the mountain I will show you” (22:2). How can this make sense? It is hard enough to understand God commanding these things of anyone. How much more so given that God chose Abraham specifically to become a role model of the parent-child, father-son relationship.
The Torah is teaching us something fundamental and counter-intuitive. There has to be separation before there can be connection. We have to have the space to be ourselves if we are to be good children to our parents, and we have to allow our children the space to be themselves if we are to be good parents.