This is the sermon I am giving tonight at Temple Beit HaYam in Stuart, Florida.

How do you treat a perfect stranger? When someone you don’t know and have never met comes walking up to your door, how do you treat them? Do you approach them with polite but visible suspicion and say, “Yes? How can I help you? What is your business here?” Or, do you put on a cheerful smile and a warm demeanor — at least, for the moment — until you find out what they want?

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayera, Abraham went way beyond that approach in welcoming three men who came walking by his tent. When he saw them, Abraham begged them not to pass by until they had come into his home to share his hospitality. He called them “my lords,” and fetched water to wash their feet and to sooth their throats from their journey through the desert. He asked Sarah, his wife, to prepare food for them. Nothing was spared to make the strangers comfortable, even though Abraham did not even know their names.

As it turns out in the story, it was a good thing that Abraham treated them this way. The men were really angels sent from God with a message for Abraham about how his wife, the barren Sarah, would give birth to a child. But Abraham didn’t need to know that they were angels to treat them with the highest level of hospitality. He just treated them the same way he treated everyone — with genuine caring, compassion and decency.

Hospitality is an ancient Jewish value and it is a reflection of one of our most fundamental Jewish ideals. We are the people who taught the world that all human beings are created in the image of God. How, then, could we possibly turn away another human being, created in God's image, who came walking by our door? What could be so important to us that it would outweigh the need to show kindness and love to another person who is, like us, a reflection of the Divine?

So, think about it. What did you do the last time you encountered a stranger? Did you make that person feel welcome? Did you genuinely try to do everything you could to assure that person’s comfort? Did you see them as you might see yourself — a miracle of life and awareness in a world filled with wonders?

I don’t need to tell you that this is not the way that most people treat each other today. Maybe, it was never the way most people treated each other. However, it remains an ideal for us to keep in mind when we make our own choices about how to get along with the people we encounter in life. That is because — beyond being a polite or courteous way to behave — it is a way of living that makes life better for everyone. When we treat others with dignity and respect, we greatly increase the chances that we will be treated the same way. When we aim to create peace between people, our own lives are likely to become more peaceful.

Only, that’s not the way people usually see things in our society. We tend to be skeptical about calls for greater kindness and we are quick to label them as naïve or Pollyannaish. When we think about peace — in the Middle East, for example — we tend to think that resolution of conflict is more likely to come about if we are strong and able to intimidate than it is if we are kind and able to genuinely care about others. What a shame. Again, think about it. When has this been true in your own life? When have you been able to make a situation more genuinely peaceful because of your ability to intimidate or overpower others? When was the last time you found that happiness is achieved by not being kind to the people in your life?

So, forget about the Middle East when we ask the question, “Is peace possible?” Think instead about more immediate situations you face. When the technical support representative puts you on hold for a half hour, or when the teenager working the supermarket register miscalculates your change, think about creating some peace in your life in those moments. Think about the way that Abraham saw the image of God in the face of every stranger who walked by his door. Do you think you'll make yourself a sucker when you treat a person kindly in those situations? Or, rather, do you really do yourself a greater favor by not giving in to the temptation to get angry, upset and self-righteous?

Over the last two weeks, we saw the United States Congress cost the U.S. economy an estimated $24 billion just by refusing to treat each other with basic decency. Five hundred and thirty-five Senators and Representatives acted like a classroom of eight-year-olds who refused to play nicely with each other if they couldn’t get their own way. You may think, “Well, that’s just politics and politics is played a lot tougher than second grade.” But I don’t think so. I think it’s exactly the same. 

Our leaders misbehave in this way as a reflection of a society that often forgets that genuine kindness to others is often the best way to serve your own interests. Aggressive, angry, self-righteous behavior may get the adrenaline pumping in our system, but it doesn't usually result in a better outcome for ourselves or the people around us. 

When we don’t teach our children that it is more important to be kind than it is to get our way, we are not preparing them for success. We are preparing them for a life of bitterness and anger that gets worse every time they choose to treat another person harshly. It sets them up for failure every time they get put on hold for too long, when they get the wrong change, or when they can’t stop pouting until they get their way. We teach our children to be successful in life when we teach them to genuinely get along with others, and to practice sincere patience and forgiveness. We teach them to have happier lives when we encourage them to see each stranger as a being created in the image of God.

Three strangers came walking by Abraham’s tent, and he instantly treated them as the messengers from heaven that they truly were. It is not that Abraham had some weird, saintly ability to know the difference between angels and mortal men. It was much more simple than that. He had the insight to recognize that everyone you meet, every day, has a message for you that comes straight from God. However, you will only hear the message, and you will only be touched by miracles in life, if you are willing to see how the face of each stranger you meet reveals a little bit of God’s presence. When you do, you will know real happiness and you will know real peace.

Shabbat shalom.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Behar: Do Not Wrong One Another
Welcome to the Silly Season

The title of this week's Torah portion, Lech Lecha, comes from God's two-word command to Abram. "Lech lecha" is variously translated as "Get thee out," "You shall surely go," or "Go forth." The opening verse of the portion is God's command to Abram, "Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1, JPS translation).

The uncertainty of translating the expression, Lech lecha, comes from the odd syntax in the Hebrew. Lech is simply the imperative form (masculine singular, if you're keeping score) of the verb that means "to go."  Lech means "Go!"

The second word, lecha, is a bit more tricky. It appears to be a form of the preposition that means "to," "toward," "for," or "belongs to." The preposition has a suffix that makes it masculine, second person singular. 

If you want to skip the grammar lesson, let's say that lecha means something like "to you" or "for you." But that is just the beginning of understanding the phrase.

Most biblical scholars say that adding lecha to lech serves to make the verb more intense. Think of it as God saying, "Get going, Abram! I'm talking to you!" We have an idiom that is something like this in English when a person says, "Get yourself going."

We also notice, though, that lecha sounds a lot like lech. In fact, in Hebrew without the vowel symbols, the two words are spelled identically — "לך לך" — even though they are pronounced differently and are grammatically unrelated. The phrase, lech lecha, has more than a little poetry to it. It begs to be interpreted and to be a source of hidden meanings.

The great medieval commentator Rashi understood lech lechah in absolutely literal terms. He read it as, "Go for you." Rashi wrote that the command means, "Go for your own enjoyment and for your own good." God is telling Abram that this is not just a command to leave home, it is an invitation to adventure, wonder and self-discovery.

Lech lecha is the command that stands at the beginning of Jewish identity. It is the two-word phrase that God uses to set Abram onto the journey toward becoming Abraham and the foundation of God's covenant with the Jewish people. If Rashi is right, it is a journey that does not serve God's purposes alone. It is a journey that serves Abram's own interests, his own enjoyment, and his own good. 

We might recommend lech lecha as the most basic command of Torah, superior even to "You shall love Adonai your God," and, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Lech lecha is the command not to get stuck in life, to move forward, to try new things, to be a better person than you thought you could be — and to do it knowing that it is for your own benefit and enjoyment. 

Abram became a Jew in the moment when he obeyed the command to leave behind the pain of the past, to break away from the familiar, and to embrace an unknown future with an unknown destination. That is the secret of life. None of us knows where life is taking us. Life is richer, more meaningful and more fulfilling when we embrace the unknown and resist the tendency to play it safe, to lay low, or to settle. The journey is what matters. Enjoy it.

Don't wait for life. Don't miss out on the pleasure of reaching higher. Keep alive with adventure, even when life knocks you around. Pick yourself up. Get yourself going.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Lech Lecha: Facing our Fears, Being Ourselves
Lech Lecha: Be Perfect!

Let me start by saying what should be obvious: The U.S. government is shut down right now because of people who are determined to get their way — no matter what — even if it causes terrible harm to everyone. Judaism has something to say about situations like this. The Talmud has a legend about it (B. Bava Metzia 59a-59b).

The story is about Rabbi Eliezer, who knew that he was right and that everyone else was wrong. He knew that the "Oven of Achnai" was a special cooking vessel that would always be kosher, no matter what. The other rabbis disagreed and said the opposite. The Oven of Achnai, according to them, was actually unclean and food cooked in it would never be kosher. They couldn't both be right.

Rabbi Eliezer was a genius of Jewish law, and he knew it. He was said to have tremendous powers because of his deep knowledge of God. He pulled out every possible proof to show that his oven was ritually clean. He caused rivers to run backwards, trees to walk, and buildings to nearly collapse. But the other rabbis still refused to accept his ruling. Eliezer, so certain that he was right, would not submit to the rule of the majority. In the end, it didn't matter. He was simply outvoted.

Having defeated Rabbi Eliezer, and still angry about his arrogant defiance, the other rabbis took a further step. In his absence, they ruled that everything that Rabbi Eliezer had ever ruled to be ritually clean would now be considered ritually unclean. They even expelled him from the Sanhedrin, the council of sages.

Only one man, Rabbi Akiva, understood the danger of insulting Rabbi Eliezer in this way. Akiva knew that Rabbi Eliezer was such a powerful master of Torah that insulting him could bring about a plague that would destroy the world. He went to visit Rabbi Eliezer to tell him what had been done. Akiva broke the news as gently as he could. He even tried to make it sound like the rest of the rabbis had resigned, rather than admit that they had tossed him out. Because of Rabbi Akiva's compassionate approach, the plague was limited. Only a third of the world's olive, wheat and barley crops were destroyed.

When leaders become so certain that they are right, and so determined not to allow others to succeed, bad things can happen. When beating your opponent into the ground becomes more important to you than protecting what is good for all, disaster is not far behind.

Rabbi Eliezer was so obsessed in his determination to be proven right that he lost sight of the greater good. He refused to honor majority rule and, worse, he put his ego above everything else. Eliezer's arrogance, in the end, was the cause of his own downfall and the cause of suffering for many others. 

The other rabbis of the Sanhedrin were not much better. They fell victim to their desire for revenge. They forgot to be humble in victory, and they forgot how much their incivility could come back to haunt them. 

Today in Washington, the government of the most powerful country in the world has been brought to its knees by people who, like Rabbi Eliezer, refuse to see beyond their own egos and agendas. They refuse to let the rule of law prevail. Shame on them. The situation will only get worse, though, if today's stubbornness next turns into angry finger-pointing with calls for revenge. We could be at the beginning, not the end, of a self-fulfilling cycle of recrimination and vengeance. It could get a lot uglier quickly if no one is willing to stop the cycle by backing away from anger and self-righteous certainty.

I'm not a politician and I don't claim to have expertise on healthcare policy, debt limits, or the rules of parliamentary procedure. But I do know something about the human heart, and so did the rabbis of the Talmud. If the fight over defunding Obamacare doesn't end soon, and if members of Congress continue to put more energy into embarrassing each other than into actually governing, we are all doomed. The Talmud's legend of failed olive, wheat and barley harvests will be repeated in a very real calamity to our economy and our ability to have a working government.

And it's not just Congress. Our entire society is being strangled by the disease of pathological certainty. We each watch, read and hear only the media that reinforce our own beliefs. We become convinced that the "other side" is made up entirely of people who are selfish, foolish and evil. We have stopped listening to each other and we have learned to justify any tactic that will attack, embarrass or undermine our opponents, even if the price is wide-scale suffering for all. 

It is time to stop the plague before it gets worse.


Other Posts on This Topic:
The Problem with Certainty
Shoftim: Pursuing Justice Justly