This week’s parashah, Vayera, opens with a famous scene: Avraham is sitting at the entrance to his tent, and God appears to him. In the next verse, we learn that Avraham has turned his attention to three men, travellers approaching his tent, standing before him. He runs to greet them, and as he bows low to the ground, he said, “My master (Adonai), if I have now found favor in your eyes, do not leave from before your servant.” Who is Avraham talking to here? This scene leaves us wondering how Avraham, our ancestor with such an intimate understanding of God, could have ignored God standing in front of him to pay attention to the three men.
Commentators, not wanting to insinuate any theological neglect on Avraham’s part, describe the welcoming of guests as an extension of Avraham’s service to God. The distinction between God appearing to Avraham and the guests in front of him (and whoever Avraham is calling his master) is deliberately ambiguous. Can we really create such distinctions between honoring God and honoring each other? Avraham, in honoring his guests, in feeding the travelers, seamlessly weaves together honoring of humans and honoring the Divine.
This past week, I taught a group of seniors at the JCC, and our session focused on different theologies our tradition offers. We studied the theology of Emmanuel Levinas who teaches that the Divine is only experienced through our interactions with other human beings. If that’s the case, then according to Levinas, God appears to Avraham at the entrance of the tent because the three travelers have approached him. They are not different events but they are one in the same, Divine encounter in the form of human interaction. One of the seniors in the group noted how powerful and empowering this theology is, as well as how challenging it is. Empowering because it allows us to view every single human interaction as an opportunity to experience God, and challenging because it prevents us from experiencing certain moments with other people as merely transactional or utilitarian.
May we each be like Avraham, understanding that the way to serve God, indeed, the way for God to appear before us, is to treat other people as Godly. May we seamlessly weave together our service to God and our honoring of humans, knowing that they are really one in the same.
