Do we expect too much of Avraham? Plus, Lot as Noah Redux (Parshat Vayera)

We’re all familiar with the contention that Noah was righteous only relative to the iniquities of his contemporaries.

נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו
Noah was a righteous man, complete in his generations
(Bereishit 6:9)

In another time or place he would hardly be an exemplar, merely a middling citizen of no outstanding character.

Perhaps we are receptive to this take on Noah because, after all, he is not one of our Patriarchs. This make it easier to write him off despite there being no Biblical evidence of his shortcomings other than the singular example of his getting drunk and exposing himself.

And yet, with our actual Patriarchs the examples of their questionable behavior are legion, necessitating barrels of midrashic, mystical and Hassidic ink to explain, or rather explain away, their altogether too human peccadilloes.

The fact is that Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov (and Yosef and Moshe and Aharon etc) were men of their times, and could not be expected to live up to standards that evolved over the subsequent 3,000 years.

For Avraham to have discovered the one God is an astonishing breakthrough for a Mesopotamian man of his time. Why must be burden him with additional expectations beyond that? Shouldn’t we leave something for subsequent generations to achieve? Must we shoehorn him into a hagiography that is neither realistic nor necessary?

We think of Avram’s crossing into Canaan as something extraordinary. Yet this was hardly a revolutionary move. His father Terah had planned to do just that – just like so many Jews in Teaneck and the Upper West Side, Golders Green and Prestwich, who keep postponing their Aliyah and then never quite make it.

וַיִּקַּ֨ח תֶּ֜רַח אֶת־אַבְרָ֣ם בְּנ֗וֹ וְאֶת־ל֤וֹט בֶּן־הָרָן֙ בֶּן־בְּנ֔וֹ וְאֵת֙ שָׂרַ֣י כַּלָּת֔וֹ אֵ֖שֶׁת אַבְרָ֣ם בְּנ֑וֹ וַיֵּצְא֨וּ אִתָּ֜ם מֵא֣וּר כַּשְׂדִּ֗ים לָלֶ֙כֶת֙ אַ֣רְצָה כְּנַ֔עַן וַיָּבֹ֥אוּ עַד־חָרָ֖ן וַיֵּ֥שְׁבוּ שָֽׁם׃

And Terah took Avram his son and Lot the son of Haran his grandson and his daughter-in-law Sarai wife of Avram and they departed from Ur Kasdim to go to the Land of Canaan and they reached as far as Haran and settled there .
(Bereishit 11:31)

Indeed, Avram only fulfills his father’s dream after being prodded to do so by God. Yet, even then, he makes sure to go loaded down with all his Persian rugs, custom sofas, mahogany dining room set, and Bohemian chandelier (or the equivalents for that time).

Perhaps back then, like today, material possessions were the great inhibitor for Aliyah. (I know one woman who couldn’t join her only child and grandchildren in Israel because there would be no room in an affordable Jerusalem apartment for her “collection” of dresses.) At least Avram, a no less possession-obsssed bourgeois, had the means to travel with all his accumulated bric-a-brac.

וַיִּקַּ֣ח אַבְרָם֩ אֶת־שָׂרַ֨י אִשְׁתּ֜וֹ וְאֶת־ל֣וֹט בֶּן־אָחִ֗יו וְאֶת־כל־רְכוּשָׁם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר רָכָ֔שׁוּ
And Avram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot and all their possessions they had accumulated
(Bereishit 12:5)

Yet no sooner does he arrive in the Promised Land when he hightails it for Egypt. His excuse for doing the opposite of what God had requested? A famine.

Did the entire population of Canaan decamp to Egypt just because there was a famine? Or was it only the very wealthy who could afford to do so even though they could have easily imported foodstuffs from Egypt?

What’s more, Avram had no illusions about Egyptian morality and knew full well that his emigration FROM THE LAND WHERE GOD TOLD HIM TO SOJOURN would result in his wife being abducted to the seraglio. Regarding this he exhibited no qualms, and was richly rewarded by the prevailing Pharaoh

וּלְאַבְרָ֥ם הֵיטִ֖יב בַּעֲבוּרָ֑הּ וַֽיְהִי־ל֤וֹ צֹאן־וּבָקָר֙ וַחֲמֹרִ֔ים וַעֲבָדִים֙ וּשְׁפָחֹ֔ת וַאֲתֹנֹ֖ת וּגְמַלִּֽים׃
And Avram benefitted because o her, and he had sheep and cattle and donkeys and man slaves and female slaves and asses and camels|
(Bereishit 12:10)

It was only Divine intervention, apparently some time later, that yielded Sarai’s release, thereby enabling a vastly enriched Avram to return to the famished Canaan – where he clearly suffered from no material want.

וַיְנַגַּ֨ע יְהֹוָ֧ה ׀ אֶת־פַּרְעֹ֛ה נְגָעִ֥ים גְּדֹלִ֖ים וְאֶת־בֵּית֑וֹ עַל־דְּבַ֥ר שָׂרַ֖י אֵ֥שֶׁת אַבְרָֽם׃
And God struck Pharaoh and his household with great afflictions on account of Sarai the wife of Avram
(Bereishit 12:13)

וַיַּ֩עַל֩ אַבְרָ֨ם מִמִּצְרַ֜יִם ה֠וּא וְאִשְׁתּ֧וֹ וְכל־אֲשֶׁר־ל֛וֹ וְל֥וֹט עִמּ֖וֹ הַנֶּֽגְבָּה׃ וְאַבְרָ֖ם כָּבֵ֣ד מְאֹ֑ד בַּמִּקְנֶ֕ה בַּכֶּ֖סֶף וּבַזָּהָֽב׃

And Avam came up from Egypt to the Negev, he and his wife and all that was his and Lot’s. And Avram was loaded with cattle and silver and gold.
(Bereishit 13:1-2)

Should we judge Avram for his materialiss? Would we act any differently? Well maybe we wouldn’t so cavalierly hand off our wives in exchange for massive wealth. But things were different in an era of polygamy.

We are all, by and large, guilty of uncritical Torah reading – if we read at all. And I would suggest that Parshat Vayera is perhaps our greatest transgression in this regard.

Most of us only remember Avraham’s unsuccessful plea to spare Sodom, and its subsequent destruction; followed by the miraculous birth of Yitzhak; and culminating in Avraham passing God’s test with flying colors as he hastens to comply with the request to offer up Yitzhak as a whole burnt offering.

But we are no longer six and seven years old, and there is a lot more to Vayera than these simplistic sketches, and, indeed, much more within these narratives themselves.

Parshat Vayera is riddled with nuances, problems, conflicts and questionable actions that should have us clamoring for clarification.

Could it be that there was a serious communication problem between Avraham and Sarah – that theirs, like so many aristocratic marriages, was not exactly a love match? That this was a shidduch God wanted, to which Avraham and Sarah acquiesced for dynastic purposes only?

We already know from

וַיִּפֹּ֧ל אַבְרָהָ֛ם עַל־פָּנָ֖יו וַיִּצְחָ֑ק וַיֹּ֣אמֶר בְּלִבּ֗וֹ הַלְּבֶ֤ן מֵאָֽה־שָׁנָה֙ יִוָּלֵ֔ד וְאִ֨ם־שָׂרָ֔ה הֲבַת־תִּשְׁעִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה תֵּלֵֽד׃|
And Avraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself shall a 100 year old man give birth when his wife gives birth at age 90?
(Bereishit 17:17)

that Avraham was well aware of his coming paternity, at which news he laughed just as his wife would when she overheard the three messengers reiterating the same annunciation some time later (Bereishit 18:!3). Clearly Avraham had earlier failed to communicate the information to his wife.

And when Avraham descends from Moriah after the Akedah ALONE he does not return to Sarah who lives in the Hebron area, but to Beer Sheva  – a great distance away – where his true love Keturah happened to reside. It isn’t until Sarah, the queen in this royal misalliance, dies that Avraham makes his way to Kiriat Arba to provide her with a noble burial.

As for the Akedah itself; was this indeed a test that Avraham passed with flying colors, or was he an abject failure? Clearly he should have, at the very least, shared the information with his wife, and at the most refused God’s request as being fundamentally amoral. Surely that was the response God expected, and not the haste with which Avraham raced to the mountaintop. Maybe this explains why it was not God, but emissary angels who halted – if indeed they did halt – the actual killing of Yitzhak. (There are any number of midrashim which describe Yitzhak’s death atop Moriah. These range from actual slaughter and burning to a more politically correct dying from fright. And they all tell of a resurrecting dew that revived Yitzhak but necessitated his undergoing therapy in the asylum of Shem and Ever, thereby explaining away Avraham’s mysterious solo return to civilization.)

And, of course, after the deed is done, Avraham does not, at the very least, visit his wife, Yitzhak’s mother, to bring her up to date.

Avraham is forever lauded for his readiness to bargain with the Almighty for the sparing of Sodom. Yet, when he runs out of statistical justification, and the verdict is no longer subject to appeal, it never occurs to him to plead for the safety of his nephew Lot. Indeed, Lot is rescued on his own merit (See Rashi on Bereishit 19:29).

Why is it that Avraham seems to care more for the world at large than for blood relatives like Yitzhak and Lot who certainly appears worthy of being spared?.

Indeed, Rashi tells us that Avraham only resided where he did in order to stop wayfarers on their way to Sodom so that he might persuade them to avoid that destination at all costs. Yet he NEVER even attempts to dissuade his own nephew, the righteous Lot, from settling there with his family.

We can readily see that Avraham is never reticent about challenging or second-guessing God’s preferences:  Despite the Almighty having brought him to Canaan, Avraham decamps to Egypt.  Upon returning from Egypt, God asks Avraham to wander the length and breadth of Canaan, yet Avraham has other plans. When God decides to destroy Sodom, Avraham attempts to dissuade Him.

And yet, when it comes to the Akedah, Avraham hastens to do God’s apparent bidding without so much as a request for clarification.  All along Avraham had been a lone voice preaching against human sacrifice and other abominations, yet, when asked to engage in such an abomination himself, he refrains from even the most modest protest?  At the very least he could remind God of His repeated promises and covenants to make him into a great nation from his only child with Sarah. Surely he can question God’s credibility when it comes to ironclad covenants?

How can we accept the Akedah as the consummate story of  Abrahamic heroism and submission to God?  Were such an event to occur today we would consider it the ultimate abomination – and yet our tradition considers this the most glorious act of  faith ever. (Well actually since the times of the Talmud the credit and merit is reassigned to Yitzhak.)

All of this is only troubling if we assume a Christian need to airbrush all the flaws of our saints, and endow them with a superhuman perfection.

The fact is, Avraham was a flawed human being, as are ALL human beings. And he was a man of his generation, just like Noah was a man of his generation, as were Yaakov and his unruly sons, and Moshe and Aharon and all the other greats. As they say:

יפתח בדורו כשמואל בדורו
Yiftach in his generation is like Shmuel in his generation
(B. Rosh Hashanah 25b)

Each hero has to be considered against the contemporary backdrop.  Avraham, in a society of idolators,  discovers God. Let that suffice. After all that was the theological Big Bang of all time.

Unfortunately, more recent Jewish tradition seeks a degree of perfection in our heroes that the Torah seems to deliberately deflect. The “warts and all” narratives that we find in the Torah are re-construed through midrashic legend and medieval commentary to have, if anything, an opposite meaning.  We are conditioned to believe that the literal text is meaningless as such.  And that the human failings of our heroes – be they the patriarchs, prophets, kings, scribes, or even contemporary rabbinic leadership – have to be airbrushed into an absurd perfection and infallibility rather than accepted at face value.

Clearly Avraham was a man of his times.  To have been born into the pagan wasteland of ancient Mesopotamia, surrounded by idolatry, murder, child sacrifice, sodomy and internecine savagery, and be able to unilaterally come to the realization of one supreme, invisible God is an astonishing breakthrough.  To have arrived at an understanding of the beauty and life-enhancing value of  lovingkindness toward strangers – in a climate in which the norm was one of suspicion and ruthless exploitation of both the transient and sojourner – is a breathtaking achievement in its own right.

How dare we expect more of Avraham? Why should he be expected to finish the job that he had only begun? Why do we need to place him on a pedestal so high that subsequent generations can only retreat from his greatness rather than augment it?

Avraham was our progenitor. He made a discovery that dwarfs those of Pythagoras, Galileo and Einstein. He set in motion the ability of humankind to civilize itself and develop a moral and ethical value system that is rooted in the awareness of, and belief in, a single Creator.

He gave us the reason and the impetus to then go beyond where he left things off – to sit on the shoulders of this giant so that we could see things he could not yet see, and do things he could not yet do.

To say this is not to diminish Avraham’s greatness.  He was the spiritual big bang.  But a lot had to happen after that, and did.

This is why redemption did not occur in Avraham’s day. Perfection for our world is not instantly achieved.  There is an evolutionary process that must build on such a breakthrough, and this is our job in every generation.

After Avraham, there ensued large periods of  expansion and contraction, and smaller instances of ebb and flow that saw his descendants ascending to new heights and plummeting to new lows.  At our best, we surely made Avraham proud as any father would be seeing his children going beyond him by building on his legacy.  At our worst, he surely mourned as his descendants became victims of historical snags or their own ineptitude and collective amnesia.

But ultimately we – all the generations past, present and future – hope to make it from point A to point Z by building on Avraham’s breakthrough, which is absolutely necessary but hardly sufficient.  By seeing our ancestor both for what he was, and for what he was not, we can be inspired to do our best. However, to view him as the personification of perfection leaves us with no place to go.

Lot – Noah Redux?

Having escaped by the skin of their teeth to a remote and unpopulated spot, Lot and his daughters believe the entire world has been destroyed and they are the only survivors.  Hence the daughters’ decision to become pregnant by their father. However, for this they need wine in order to intoxicate Lot as he would likely spurn their seductions if he were sober – further proof of his core decency.  But where did the wine come from?  The angels grabbed Lot and his wife and daughters – there was no time to pack any luggage, let alone wine. So what was the source of this alcohol?

We tend to make short shrift of Lot, and yet Avraham’s nephew is very similar to Noah  — a righteous man relative to the universe of utter degeneracy in which he lived.  Like Noah, Lot and his family are the sole survivors following a punitive cataclysm.  Like Noah, Lot experiences a debacle with his offspring involving the sudden availability of wine, inebriation and conduct unbecoming. Surely these similarities are not coincidental. Perhaps Lot deserves a bit more recognition than we give him?