How We Teach

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, November 15, 2003

I was thinking this week about biographies and about the decisions that have to be made about what events in a person's life are included or excluded. Rabbi Arthur Waskow is a reasonably famous contemporary American Jew. Someone writing his biography would probably recount as his finest moments some of the very public and dramatic things he did- his Freedom Seder for example in the late 60's and the speeches he gave at various protests. But for me the lesson he taught and for which I will always remember him came in a very small thing. Back in the early 1980's when women rabbis were still scarce and infants at rabbinical conventions greeted with about the same enthusiasm as infants on airplanes, Rabbi Waskow walked over to my empty table and sat down next to me and my 6 month old daughter at the Central Conference of America Rabbis' annual meeting.

In this week's Torah portion, various dramatic things happen. Abraham challenges God's authority. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are consumed by sulfurous fire. Hagar and Ishmael are banished and Abraham stands ready, knife in hand, to sacrifice his son.

Yet with all the drama in this parshah, the rabbis insist that some of the most important lessons in this portion are contained not in the dramatic moments but in the little things.

The first is a lesson learned from God's behavior. The portion takes its name Vayera from its first words. It begins "Adonai appeared to him by the large oak trees of Mamre." God having appeared to Abraham, we expect God to say something- but there is no "and God spoke to Abraham saying." What do we learn from this? God appeared to Abraham to fulfill the mitzvah of bikkur cholim, of visiting the sick, as we know that at the end of the previous chapter Abraham was circumcised at 99 years of age. By appearing but not speaking, God is teaching us that it is not our words, but our presence that is the essential thing when we come to visit with the sick or bereaved.

The second lesson is learned from the gap between what Abraham says and what he does. When three strangers approach, he says to them: "Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves." But in just the next paragraph we have Sarah instructed by Abraham: "Quick three seahs of choice flour. ( My Biblical dictionary tells me that a seah is equivalent to 12 liters or about 10 and a half quarts) Knead and make a cake." Meanwhile Abraham himself runs out to the herd to fetch a calf which he has slaughtered and prepared for dinner. That's quite a morsel of bread. This is also a lesson for the rabbis: say little and do much, they tell us, never promise more than you are sure you can deliver. They further say that God looked to this as an example when considering the situation of the Israelites in the desert. "As you brought a little water to my emissaries, I will give your descendents water in the desert. As you brought them a morsel of bread to eat, I will sustain your descendents with manna for forty years. As you gave them shade under a tree, I will give the Israelites a cover of clouds to protect them from the desert sun."

Finally, in a reversal that may seem strange, the rabbis learn obedience from Abraham's arguing with God. They note all the little phrases that Abraham used, that we tend to ignore, "here I venture to speak to my Lord, I who am but dust and ashes," and "let not my Lord be angry if I go on." This was not a negative challenge to God's authority. Instead they argue that this was the ultimate in obedience. They teaching: "The best way for a student to keep faith with a teacher is to hold the teacher to the teacher's teaching." Abraham showed himself God disciple in holding God to the standards God had taught.

At the beginning of the parshah God explained: "I have singled Abraham out that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep they way of the Eternal, by doing what is just and right." God and Abraham instruct us, not just in the big things, but in subtle ways, the same ways that we ourselves influence our children and our students.