Parashat Vayera begins with the story of the generous hospitality that Avraham Avinu extended to three wayfarers, who were actually angels. Avraham rushed to greet them and mobilized his family to prepare a robust meal for them. This story is commonly seen as the embodiment of the attribute of hesed for which Avraham Avinu was legendary.
Somebody once made an astute observation about the life of Avraham Avinu. While this story of his welcoming the guests is truly a beautiful expression of hesed, several other things that Avraham was forced to do appear to be the precise opposite of hesed. For example, when his shepherds began fighting with those of his nephew, Lot, Avraham had to separate from Lot, distancing himself from his nephew. Later, when Lot was captured, Avraham had to go out and wage war, which required taking people’s lives. When famine struck Eretz Yisrael, Avraham was forced to move to Egypt, despite knowing that his wife would likely be abducted (which in fact happened). When Avraham’s older son, Yishmael, began causing trouble to the younger son, Yitzhak, Avraham was forced to send Yishmael and his mother out of the house. Most dramatically of all, Avraham was commanded to sacrifice Yitzhak, and was told only at the very last moment to desist.
How might we to explain this curious phenomenon? It is clear that Avraham was full of kindness, and that he loved and genuinely cared about all people. Yet, Hashem tested him on numerous occasions, placing him in very difficult situations that required making very painful decisions and undertaking very painful actions. Why?
The Tragic Misconception
A young man in the community, in his mid-20s, once called me and said he urgently needed to meet with me. We scheduled a time and he came to sit with me in my office.
“I have been struggling with serious anxiety problems,” he told me, “to the point where at one point I attempted suicide and spent an entire month in the hospital.”
After speaking to him for a few minutes about his unfortunate struggles, I asked him why he wanted to speak with me.
“When all of this was going on,” he explained, “I kind of lost my religion. But I think I want to get it back.”
“Which one was it?” I asked, familiar as I am with the phenomenon of people “losing” religion. “You became lazy, you couldn’t focus on religion because you needed to focus on recovering, or you’re mad at Hashem?”
“All three,” he answered bluntly.
I then went through these factors one at a time. If the issue was laziness, I said, then this was something he needed to overcome. In order to lead a fulfilling, accomplished life, we need to be structured and disciplined. One cannot build a family or a career if he is lazy. As for not being focused, this was completely understandable, and it was perhaps even legitimate for this boy, in his circumstances, to prioritize his mental health over all else. He absolutely needed to focus as much attention as he could to recovering from his illness.
“But what about number 3?” I asked. “Why are you angry at Hashem?”
He explained that he had gone to Israel, prayed at the Kotel and at the graves of tzadikim, but it didn’t help. He still ended up in a terrible situation.
This young man’s disillusionment is something experienced by many people – young and old – in our community. If I had a dollar for every time somebody said to me something to the effect of, “I don’t understand – I pray and do the mitzvot, but I don’t get what I want! It’s so frustrating!” I’d be a millionaire. So many people get annoyed and frustrated with religion because, in their minds, it doesn’t work for them. They follow the rules, they do what they’re supposed to do, but they don’t get the results they want. And it makes them frustrated, and disillusioned. They are angry at Hashem, like this young man in my office.
This disillusionment is the result of a terrible misconception, and it is our fault – myself included – that so many people have this misconception.
Some 50 or 60 years ago, there was hardly any English-language Torah literature, as opposed to now, when we have dozens of new books published every month. One particularly popular genre is “cool” stories of Hashgahah (Providence). We have all heard and told zillions of wonderful stories of how people were helped through prayer and by doing mitzvot. There are so many stories of ill patients whose doctors had despaired but were then cured, singles who finally found their soulmate, and couples who finally had children, as the result of prayer, a Rabbi’s blessing, or some mitzvah. These are beautiful stories, and I myself tell such stories, but unwittingly, in the noble process of reinforcing our belief in Hashem and Hashgahah, we have conveyed a very wrong and dangerous message – that this is what Judaism is about. People hearing these stories are led to believe that Judaism is about doing the right things so we get what we want. All we need to do is follow the rules and pray, and then our lives are perfect, without any problems. After all, this is what happens in all these stories, right? A person is sick, he or a relative prays or receives a blessing, or a group of people say Tehillim or decide to take on a certain mitzvah, and then everything works out perfectly. Isn’t this how it works?
Of course not. And it is when we believe that it does work this way that we end up with people like that young man who become angry at Hashem for not giving them the life they wanted.
Let us set the record straight. Torah life is beautiful because it’s beautiful, not because it is the “currency” that buys us what we want.
We recently had several weeks of holidays. These holidays are beautiful. The tefilot are beautiful. Sitting around the table with family and guests, in the home and in the sukkah, is beautiful. It makes no difference what happens when we get back to work after the holidays, whether the deal goes through, or whether we get the raise or promotion we wanted. It is beautiful.
Shabbat is beautiful. No matter how busy we are, no matter how many things MUST get done, it all stops just before sundown on Friday afternoon. If Hashem came to me and assured me that one weekend I can do what I want on Shabbat – I don’t need to have Shabbat meals, and I can use my phone as much as I wanted – and nothing bad would happen to me, I would refuse the offer. I relish the precious gift of 25 hours without technology, without texts and emails, devoted to learning, singing and family time. I wouldn’t give it up for anything. It has nothing to do with whether or not we are successful during the coming week because we observe Shabbat. Shabbat is beautiful because Shabbat is beautiful, not because it makes everything perfect.
Prayer is beautiful even if we don’t get exactly what we want. The fact that we start our day talking to Hashem, praising Him for this beautiful world and beseeching Him to take care of us, is beautiful. The fact that we can turn to Hashem and talk to Him at any time about any problem we have is beautiful. The fact that we have problems in our lives, and some of us have very difficult and painful problems in our lives, does not make Judaism any less beautiful. To the contrary, this is what makes it so special – that no matter how harsh life gets, we can find beauty and meaning through our relationship to Hashem.
Finding Beauty Amid Challenges
The greatness of Avraham Avinu was precisely that he retained his faith and lived a noble, righteous life despite the complicated and harsh circumstances he faced.
Hashem told him to leave his homeland and move to Eretz Yisrael, and soon after he got there, a famine struck. He had to go to Egypt, and his wife was taken. Hashem told him he would have children and produce a large nation, but he remained childless for many years. Hashem told him he would be blessed, but he had to go out and fight a war. If Avraham’s life was perfectly smooth, all the stories told about him would be his inviting guests and treating them to a multicourse meal, like at the beginning of Parashat Vayera. But most of the stories are hardly this happy and serene, because Avraham faced many challenges. A religious life is not perfectly smooth, but it is beautiful despite the challenges and complications. A Torah Jew can have just as difficult a workweek as anybody else, but it always ends with Shabbat. A Torah Jew will have issues with marriage and childrearing just like anybody else, but he is given the tools and principles to make marriage and family life beautiful. This is what Judaism is about.
Avraham’s tests showed how he lived under real-life conditions, when economic hardship surfaced, when the family was under strain, when he needed to go to war – when there were real, difficult challenges that needed to be overcome. The story of Avraham is not about earning a perfect, idyllic life through serving Hashem, but about serving Hashem even when life is far from perfect and idyllic.
When the angels first came to Avraham, the Torah describes, Avraham saw three men נצבים עליו – “standing over him.” This could be understood to mean that the angels saw themselves as higher than Avraham. After all, they were pure angels, who lived in the pristine conditions of the heavens. But later, after Avraham – who had just undergone circumcision at the age of 99 – ran in the searing heat to greet them, bring them water, and serve them a large meal, the Torah says, והוא עומד עליהם – Avraham “stood over them.” When the angels saw how Avraham conducted himself under difficult circumstances, how he acted kindly and generously even when things were hard, they acknowledged that he was greater.
This is what makes Torah life so special – that it allows us to find beauty and fulfillment even when life is challenging.
Let’s look at it this way: There is one thing that every single Jew from the time of Avraham Avinu until around the year 1900 has in common, without exception: they are all dead. This means that there have been millions upon millions of Jews, including pious, devout Jews, whose family members and friends prayed desperately for them, who did not make it. The did not live forever. And we can be pretty sure that even when they were alive, they had problems, including some very difficult problems. Nobody, not even the most righteous tzadik, has a perfectly smooth, easy life. We should not let anyone fool us into thinking that following the Torah or receiving a blessing will give us a perfectly smooth, easy life, because this is clearly false. But the point is that following the Torah makes life beautiful and meaningful even when it is not smooth and easy.
Significantly, there are only two prayers which are explicitly recorded in the entire Torah – and both went unanswered. The first is Avraham Avinu’s impassioned plea in Parashat Vayera that Hashem spare the city of Sedom, which Hashem had condemned to annihilation. Despite Avraham’s entreaties, G-d destroyed the city. The second prayer is Moshe’s plea toward the end of his life to be allowed to enter Eretz Yisrael, a request which was denied. Neither Avraham nor Moshe was “disillusioned” when they did not get what he wanted. And nobody deserved to have their wishes fulfilled more than these towering spiritual giants. But they understood what all of us need to understand – that being a religious Jew is not about always getting what we want. It is about finding meaning, beauty and fulfillment in life regardless of whether we get what we want.
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived
Somebody once showed me a fascinating book written by a non-Jew that perhaps expresses the unparalleled beauty of Torah life more compellingly than I ever could. It is called The Richest Man Who Ever Lived.
The author, a fellow named Steven Scott, was living a disastrous life. His marriage was horrible, his relationship with his children was horrible, and he could hardly make a living. He worked nine different jobs in his first six years after college, because he could not keep a job. One day, a friend approached him and told him he could help. He had a way for him to put his life back into shape in just two years, and to be thriving and successful within five years. He followed the friend’s advice, and sure enough, in just one year his life was back in shape, and within just two years he enjoyed a wonderful relationship with his wife and was earning $7 million a year.
What was the tip? To read one chapter of a certain book each day. This book has 31 chapters, and by reading one chapter a day – and two chapters on the last day of a 30-day month – and abiding by what it says, one can transform his life.
That book is the Book of Mishleh (Proverbs), written by King Shlomo, whom Steven Scott describes in his book’s title as “the richest man who ever lived.” The Book of Mishleh is filled with profound wisdom for life. Every page, every verse, is powerful and relevant, and reading and studying this book can be a life-altering, transformative exercise.
After perusing through this book, I was astonished, and, in all honesty, I was ashamed. I’m an Orthodox Jew, and a Rabbi, and I needed somebody outside our religion to show me how beautiful life can be when we follow King Shlomo’s instructions in Mishleh. We have such a precious treasure at our disposal – a Torah, which tells us how to live. Following the guidance in Mishleh will not guarantee that we never have a flat tire, that we will never lose a job, or that we or our loved ones will never get sick. But it will make our lives wonderful even when we hit the inevitable bumps along the road.
Just as one random example, there is a command in the Torah לא תהיה לו כנושה, which applies to a lender who knows that the borrower does not have the money to repay the debt. In such a case, as the Gemara explains in Masechet Bava Metzia, it is forbidden for the lender to even walk past the borrower, in order not to make him feel bad. The borrower already feels anxious and embarrassed about being unable to repay the loan, and so the Torah forbids the lender from exacerbating the borrower’s pain by presenting himself to him. Of course, if the borrower has the money, then the lender is fully entitled to claim the debt. But if the borrower is unable to pay, the lender may not even pass by the borrower.
This is just one example of how the Torah expects us to be great. This generous fellow saw his friend was struggling, and lent him $10,000. Now, when the debt is due to be paid, he cannot do anything to remind his friend of the debt. This is how high the Torah sets the bar for us. The Torah believes in us. The Torah believes that we can be amazing people, and this is what it expects of us. Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t it a great feeling to know that we have something that can make us into incredible people? No matter what we’re struggling with, no matter what challenges we have, we know that we have a priceless treasure, a corpus of timeless, profound wisdom that can make us exceptional. This is the precious gift of Torah life.
The Rambam, when he discusses the obligation to learn Torah, emphasizes that this mitzvah applies to all people – young and old, rich and poor, healthy and ill. It applies to unmarried young men, and to husbands and fathers with large families to care for. The Rambam then gives as examples the stories told in the Talmud of great Rabbis who performed backbreaking, cheap labor, such as woodcutting, to support themselves, and of others who were blind. Significantly, the Rambam does not then tell us that in the merit of their Torah learning the poor Rabbis suddenly became rich and the blind Rabbis suddenly regained their vision. These Rabbis remained poor and blind. But they nevertheless continued learning Torah because learning Torah is beautiful, it makes life beautiful, and shows us how to enjoy the beauty of life even under difficult conditions.
The Ramban’s Guarantee
The Ramban once wrote a letter to his son which later became very famous, and in which he gave his son very important instructions about how to properly conduct himself. He promised his son that on any day he reads this letter, all his wishes will be fulfilled.
Some people understood this as a magical formula – by reading the letter, presto, a person gets what he wants. But this is not how it works. This letter talks about things like humility, patience, tranquility, faith, and fear of Hashem. If we remind ourselves about these important values, and we make a concentrated effort to live by them, then our lives are beautiful. The Ramban would never tell his son or anybody else that by reading a text one magically makes all problems disappear. In fact, the Ramban himself did not have an easy life. He meant that we make our lives beautiful and fulfilling even while struggling with problems, by living according to the Torah’s teachings.
I recall one period when I was feeling on edge, anxious and “snappy.” I was coming home each day in a lousy mood. Noticing this, I sat down and asked myself the simple question, “What does Hashem want from me?” and I thought it over for a while. This little conversation with myself did not make all my pressures disappear. But how beautiful is that – being able to think in these terms when we’re in a rut? Aren’t we fortunate to have this gift, that we can sit and think of what Hashem wants us to do when we’re feeling down? This is what makes Torah life so special and so precious.
I once paid a shivah call to a woman who in one five-year period lost her husband, both her parents, and then her second husband. When I arrived, I expected her to say something like, “Rabbi, what am I supposed to do? Why is Hashem doing this to me?” But this is not at all what she said. Instead, she turned to me and said, “Rabbi, I know that Hashem has a journey for me, and I am going to follow that road.”
This woman’s inspiring words are actually expressed in Parashat Vayera, which tells of the experiences of Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant who married Avraham. As her son, Yishmael, posed a threat to Yitzhak, Avraham was forced to send her and her son away from the home. The Torah tells that Hagar was lost: ותלך ותתע במדבר. Rashi explains this to mean that she resumed worshipping idols, as she had done before joining Avraham’s household. The Torah does not say that Hagar worshipped idols, but rather than she was lost. However, Rashi understood that if a person has lost his way, if a person feels directionless in life, then this means he has lost his Judaism. If a person follows the Torah, he is never truly “lost,” because he always realizes – as this woman taught me – that he is on a journey and path that Hashem has charted especially for him. This journey might not always be smooth or pleasant, but we always know that we are following the right direction. What can be more beautiful than that?
The Gemara in Masechet Sukkah describes a unique seating system that was used by the synagogue of Alexandria. It was a very large synagogue, and the seating was arranged by profession. All the goldsmiths sat together in one section, the silversmiths sat together in a different section, and so on. The Gemara explains that this was done in order to help people earn a living. When somebody moved into town, he would sit with people of his own profession, and he would get to know them. This helped him learn the ins and outs of that local industry, make some connections, get some ideas, and so on.
This account reminds us of something we so often overlook – the beauty of synagogue and community life. We take for granted the great blessing of coming to the synagogue every day, where we not only pray and commune with Hashem, but we meet people, connect with people, bond with people, and get to know people. The shul is a place where we pray, but it is also an avenue for bonding and networking. It is where we turn to one another for companionship, friendship, support, encouragement, advice, information, guidance and inspiration. How beautiful is that? Regularly attending shul does not guarantee that we won’t have problems in life. But it does all but guarantee that when we do have problems in life, we have a strong, vibrant network of support and friendship to help us get through it. How incredible is that? What an amazing blessing this is!
This, I believe, is the proper answer to the problem of “disillusionment” that affects so many people in our communities. People are disillusioned because they have been given a completely false picture of what Judaism is, and what they can expect from it. Our message must be not that Judaism makes our lives perfect, but rather than it makes our lives beautiful even when they are very far from perfect. If this is our expectation, then nobody will ever be disillusioned – because this is precisely what Torah life is all about.