Parshas Vayera
Chesed at the Source1
We meet up in our parshah with several displays of the breadth and depth
of Avraham’s chesed. We see him at the beginning of the parshah, running
to wait on his decidedly unremarkable guests, as if they were royalty.
Throughout, he runs and rushes, never mindful of his infirmity three days
after his bris. He slaughters three animals, so that he can present each
of his guests with the choice cut of tongue. Moreover, he places his
ministering to the guests ahead of receiving the Shechinah, asking Hashem
Himself to wait while he tends to them!
The outpouring of chesed does not end with this incident. Avraham
earnestly prays for the wicked inhabitants of Sodom, despite their
representing every value that he opposed. Avraham began the process of
world tikun through tapping into Hashem’s midah of chesed. Inevitably,
the spiritual balance of the world required a great counterforce to his
unleashing this torrent of good. The opposing force came in the form of
the culture of Sodom and Amorah, rooted in a cruelty that was the polar
opposite of Avraham’s chesed. Chazal graphically portray their
institutionalized evil, including forbidding hachnasas orchim – the very
activity through which Avraham’s chesed is showcased. We would have
imagined Avraham approving of the fate of Sodom, satisfied with the
apparent victory of good over their evil, and relieved to see an end to
their corrupting influence. Yet Avraham’s chesed rose above such
considerations. Instead of being pleased with their just fate, he turns
to daven, importune, beg of HKBH to spare them.
We see Avraham establish his eshel, which according to Chazal was an inn
to offer food, drink and lodging to strangers, or a vehicle through which
Avraham could act on his chesed-impulse to perform yet more acts of
kindness for people.
Chesed of this sterling caliber did not appear in a vacuum. Surely
Avraham was well practiced in his chesed by the time we observe it in our
parshah! So why is it that a window to his chesed opens up specifically
here, on the heels of his performance of the mitzvah of milah?
We can understand by building on the work of the Divrei Moshe, a talmid of
the Besht. Anyone familiar with the deeper aspects of Torah knows that the
performance of any mitzvah – even one seemingly preoccupied with concrete,
physical objects – draws down supernal holiness from the Heavenly source
of that mitzvah. Honoring one’s parents taps into the sefiros of Chochmah
and Binah (also known as Abba and Eema) – provided that one acts for the
purpose of responding to a Divine command. Should a person somehow honor
his parents without having been so instructed, he will have done something
valuable, but he will not draw from this Heavenly font of kedushah. (We
express this thought each time we preface the performance of a mitzvah
with the beracha “Who sanctified us with His mitzvos, and commanded us...”
The mitzvos are 613 source-points of sanctification, of kedushah. Each
mitzvah allows us to draw kedushah from the root of that mitzvah Above.)
Avraham was introduced to the mitzvah of milah by these words: “Walk
before Me, and be perfect.” Chazal explain that Hashem conveyed to Avraham
that he needed to rid himself of his inner dross, which blocked their
union from achieving its fullness. Only by removing the orlah, the part
that stopped up the full expression of Avraham’s capacity for holiness,
did he perfect himself enough to allow an unencumbered relationship with
Hashem, so that he became indeed a portion of Hashem from Above. (Before
the bris, Avraham would be so overcome by any prophetic episode that he
would fall to the ground, as was common with other prophets. After the
bris, says the Tanchuma, Avraham was able to converse with Hashem while
standing. The meaning of this is that the bris enabled Avraham to attain
this perfected relationship, becoming a portion of Hashem, and thereby
allowing him perfect connection with Him.
Avraham’s unique avodah was to begin the process of world tikkun. This
process would necessitate reintroducing the different midos of Hashem2), and needed to begin with the midah of
chesed, the most basic and primary of the active midos. His work would be
followed by the remainder of the Seven Shepherds; the fulfillment of the
remaining three would remain the task of Moshiach.
We see in our parshah that this avodah of tikun could only begin after
Avraham’s bris. The rectification of the world required chesed that
flowed from its pristine source, and this could not take place until
Avraham achieved the perfection Hashem told him about. Once so perfected,
once he was able to establish a freely-flowing connection with Hashem,
Avraham’s chesed took on a completely different – and more significant –
nature. It is for this reason that we are dropped willy-nilly into
multiple examples of Avraham’s chesed in our parshah, without the Torah
mentioning any earlier instances. All of his earlier chesed lacked a
level of perfection. This level was achieved only after his performance
of the mitzvah of milah. The earlier chesed did not contribute to the
process of tikun. Moreover, it is quite possible that the incredible
quality of Avraham’s chasadim shown in this parshah would not have been
within his grasp before he reaped the fruits of the mitzvah of milah.
We ought to wonder about the Akeidah. Nisyonos in the Torah usually test
the mettle of their target by clarifying the quality of a person’s key
midah (Think of Yosef, for example.) If Avraham was to be tested,
shouldn’t Hashem have devised a way of testing his chesed, which was his
signature midah? Instead, the Akeidah seems to evaluate his capacity for
the very opposite of what Avraham stood for!
Chazal tell us in Avos that the upshot of the Akeidah was indeed to
demonstrate love – Avraham’s love for HKBH. The holy seforim teach us
what happened when Hashem called to Avraham, asking him to take his son,
his only son, the son he loved. The Divine mention of his love for his
son set off an explosion of that love that knew no limit. (This was
prefigured in the account of the creation of the rakia on the second day.
Having been instructed by Hashem to “spread out,” the rakia did just that,
expanding without limit. It would have continued to do so, were it not
for the constraint of the Name Shakai – meaning He Who said “dai” –
enough – to His creation.)
Where does this love come from? Love is at the very shoresh, the very core
of the higher, perfected form of chesed we have been talking about. Our
practice of chesed, our positive feelings of love, such as love of Torah
and love of Klal Yisrael – all these are pathways to the ultimate goal of
love for Hashem. Avraham showed this identity in its purest form. He
showed that the immeasurable love he had for Yitzchak did not detract
from, did not interfere with, indeed was not separate from his love of
Hashem. To the contrary, he showed that his superabundant love for
Yitzchok was but a manifestation of his love for Hashem, desirable because
Hashem wanted him to love his son. At the moment that Hashem instructed
otherwise – as soon as Hashem shifted the relationship with Yitzchok to a
requirement to slaughter him – Avraham perceived that command as an
exercise of his love for his Creator!
The bottom line of all of this is that it all carries over to our own
development, to our own lives. The tikun of the world began with chesed,
with the pure chesed Avraham was capable of after the bris. Each of us
spends a lifetime in our own tikun. That tikun as well must begin with
chesed! We take the first steps specifically with outpourings of love to
our brethren. That, in turn, can become love of Torah, and ultimately get
us to our destination of love of Hashem.
1Based on Nesivos Shalom pgs. 105-107
2These midos are the ten sefiros. The lower seven
are “active;” they relate to the world of performance, and they are headed
by chesed. Above them stand the top three, aloof from the coarseness of
activity, and existing as more refined “intellects.”
Text Copyright © 2007 by Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein and Torah.org
