“Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.” Up front, the Torah gives us Noah’s qualifications and makes it clear why God wanted him and his family to go into the ark. Not so with Abraham. Initially, we learn neither why Abraham is singled out nor the purpose behind his necessary relocation to Canaan. We are told only of the promises or consequences that will come to Abraham if he is faithful to God’s call – he will become the famous father of a great nation, and a blessing to boot – but we don’t know why God wants him or anyone else for that matter to go or why Abraham specifically was selected for the mission.
The answers to these questions may be found seven chapters later, in this week’s Torah portion, in the context of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
God plans the destruction of the two wicked cities, but says, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? For I have selected him, so that he may instruct his children and those after him to keep the way of the Eternal, doing what is right and just, so that the Eternal may fulfill all that has been promised him.” It follows from this that perhaps it was Abraham’s aptitude for or skill as a teacher that caught the attention of his God. God, it seems, has a fondness for teachers. Notice also that it is “justice and right” that constitute the curriculum to be taught and the “doing and keeping” that will be the skill set to be learned. And, of course, the harder the subject the more skilled the teacher must be.
I would be willing to bet that everyone has had three, maybe with luck five truly great teachers in his or her lifetime. The teachers whose names you can remember to this very day, the ones who helped you to see and think in entirely new ways, the ones who mentored you into the skills and talents that you needed to succeed in life. Sometimes it wasn’t even what they taught as much as how they taught it. How somehow they embodied the very subject they were attempting to convey. Sometimes the best teachers we studied under were not even those who had been to University to get credentialed. Parents, friends, family and colleagues are often the ones who instruct us most skillfully in the values and essentials of living.
In a graduate course on helping clergy to increase their effectiveness in practice, my class was brilliantly instructed on how sustained advocacy of your position without inquiry into the thinking or reasoning of the other person will often lead to a far from optimal outcome. In one case study presentation after the other, the professor would point out again and again “Advocacy. No Inquiry” on the part of the student. When the professor presented a problematic case from her own practice, I was bold to offer that in failing to inquire into the other person’s reasoning she had done the very thing that she had so often inveighed against. Far from being offended by the presumption, the professor was delighted. “Ah,” she said. “The student has become the teacher. How marvelous is that.”
If Abraham was chosen for his ability to teach, then in this week’s portion he takes on the most challenging student of all when he dares to teach the “way of the Eternal” to Divinity Itself. If God chose Abraham to instruct in “what is right and just” then the lesson is turned back on the One who chose him to do so as Abraham argues for the potentially innocent people of Sodom and Gomorrah. “Far be it from You to destroy the innocent with the guilty,” says Abraham; and adds, “Shall not the Judge of all the world deal justly.” Here, when the student becomes the teacher I hear God saying, “How marvelous is that.”
Abraham embodies the teaching he was chosen to impart – a lesson that continues to instruct his descendents throughout the generations: the way of the Eternal is found in the acts of justice and the practice of what is right.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Whiman