#  Vayera (Genesis 18:1-22:24; 2 Kings 4:1-37) Look Up! 

 





November 07, 2014

 

 

In a world of ideas – and a university is such a world, as is a religion – it is vital to look up from time to time, and to see *each other.* “And he lifted up his eyes,” our Torah-reading says of our father Abraham, “and saw – and behold, three people standing nearby him.” He saw angels, our rabbinic ancestors say, he saw the Divine Presence! – and back we are in the realm of philosophical imaginings. The real glory of Judaism, however, is its teaching that the pathway of exalted spiritual experiences and insights is not an off-ramp or an escape-route from the road of human life that we travel with one another. The Jewish mystical tradition takes the other story that we see this week, in which a woman of Shunem and her husband make room in their home for a visiting prophet, and spins each element into a transcendent, even otherworldly ideal – but the makings of the tale are basic and earthy: a table, a lamp, a bed. If Abraham, or the Shunamite couple, glimpse or reflect divinity in the stories we read this week, it is because they look at the human need around them, and act accordingly.



 

 

 



 

 

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