Rabbis For Human Rights - North America

Divrei Torah

“A certain non-Jew came before Shammai and said to him, ‘I will convert to Judaism, on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.’ Shammai chased him away... He came before Hillel and said to him, ‘Convert me.’ Hillel said to him, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn it.” (Shabbat 31A)

Welcoming in the Stranger

D'var Torah on Parshat Vayera
By Rabbi Marc Soloway, Boulder, CO

When I think back to the times that I have been really welcomed in and embraced as a stranger, it has, truthfully, been the moments with people from other religions and cultures that have had the strongest impact; the desperately poor families in Ghana when I was there this summer with American Jewish World Service; the Jahalin Bedouin outside Male Adumim with whom I spent time as a Rabbis for Human Rights volunteer when I was a rabbinic student; the Palestinian family who hosted me when I was on an Encounter trip last November; drinking tea and eating cheese with my friend Tink Tinker, a Native American Chief of the Osage Nation.  All of these were enriching experiences that opened my heart.

 

Our hero Abraham is sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day, squinting into the bright sun, as he sees the hazy shadows of three people approaching.  He doesn’t wait until he knows who they are, which tribe they belong to, but at ninety-nine years old and three days after his own circumcision, he jumps up to welcome them into his and Sarah’s tent.  These ‘people’ turn out to be angels and it is from this story that the rabbis of the Talmud (Shabbat 127a) state that “hospitality to strangers is greater than an encounter with the Shechinah (the Divine presence).”

 

In our world, we are suspicious, sometimes for good reasons and often not, rather than welcoming to the stranger. We too often define “the other” as a threat than as a potential new friend.  The irony of this is that Middle Eastern cultures have always had a deep connection to hachnassat orachim, hospitality at their core.  The saddest part of my experiences across the Green Line in Bethlehem and Walaje was the sense that people who live so close to each other have no opportunity to meet each other, to drink tea and to share stories.  

 

Parshat Vayera is, according to Nachmanides, all a prophetic vision of some kind.  Abraham lifts his eyes several times, Hagar lifts her eyes and each time something different, unexpected is seen.  One of the Torah’s invitations here might be to allow ourselves to lift our eyes and hearts to a different vision where enemies can be friends and walls that separate can be replaced by open tents that embrace and nourish.  The Talmudic statement reminds us that we cannot have a spiritual life without serving people, which includes welcoming the stranger, sharing our humanity through stories.  In the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

The message of the Hebrew Bible is that serving God and serving our fellow human beings are inseparably linked, and the split between the two impoverishes both.  Unless the holy leads us outward toward the good, and the good leads us back to the holy, the creative energies of faith run dry. Lord Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World.

In the Osage tradition, storytelling is known as “breath medicine.”  There is such healing power in hearing the story of those we have defined as other; in welcoming in strangers into our homes and our hearts.