Deeds and Values

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, November 11, 2006

In the elevator speech version of our lives, that is the speech we would give to introduce ourselves to someone in the time in takes for the elevator to go up from the first floor to our destination, we would touch only on the high points of our lives. We might mention a graduation, wedding, birth or Bar Mitzvah. We would share some dramatic turning point in our lives perhaps or some great moment of achievement. But if we thought about it, we might come to the conclusion that our life is really more significantly shaped by the many small things we do day in and day out than by the few dramatic moments we recounted.

Abraham’s story begins with the dramatic call to leave his home with which last week’s Torah potion opens and comes to a climax in the story of the Binding of Isaac with which this week’s Torah portion concludes. But the rabbis looking carefully at all of the stories about Abraham in the Torah, identify ten important turning points or tests, by which Abraham proved himself through his deeds. For example, they valued his performance of the mitzvah of hachnassat orchim, of hospitality with which this Torah begins as being as important a witness to his character as the more dramatic moments of arguing with God or being willing to bring his son Isaac to Mt Moriah.

Maimonides writing about moral development in his treatise Seder HaChinuch, the book of education, points to the quantity of Abraham’s good deeds as being as significant as their quality. He writes: “Deeds are the tangible dress in which the world of values is clothed. “ Further he insists:” Good attributes are not acquired according to the greatness of the deed, but by the multiplicity of deeds, for good attributes are acquired only by performing good deeds time after time, thus making them part of a person’s nature.”

Dramatic moments when we stand up for what we believe in defiance of an authority figure are one test of our values. But equally a test of our values are the more prosaic moments when we act on our values with friends and family. Similarly our Jewish values are expressed in the peak moments of our lives, like today’s service for Jordan and Tas, but also in the way we integrate our Jewish values into the more mundane aspects of life whether that be shopping, eating, or what we chose to do with our free time.

Maimonides is reminding us that no good deed is trivial, in that it is the pattern of good deeds in everyday life which is in the foundation of our spiritual life.

In Jewish tradition Abraham is identified as the model by which future generations will learn to do what is right and just. As we look to Abraham this morning, let us aspire to his integration of deeds and values, and to the living out of our ideals in the great and small moments of our lives.