Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Hayley Skuy Bat Mitzvah
October 19, 2002
Do What Is Right Because It Is Right
At the very beginning of this week’s Torah portion, God declares an important promise to Abram. “I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.”(Gen. 12:2-3) It is a promise that has proved prophetically true. Those who have treated the descendants of Abraham and Sarah respectfully have generally faired much better than those who have done the opposite.
But why would anyone curse Abraham? “Those who curse you, I will curse.” Abraham was known as a tsadik, a truly righteous person. We have learned hospitality from the example of Abraham and Sarah. We recall the argument that Abraham makes with God to save the righteous inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even though these were strangers to him, Abraham does not think that good people should perish along with the evil.
And then, as Hayley read to us this morning, we understand that Abraham is the patriarch. His nephew Lot’s herdsmen are quarreling with the herdsmen of Abram. Now all the senior member of this family had to do was say: Lot, you move on, you and your cattle. But this is not what Abraham did. He said, “let there be no strife between you and me, between my herdsmen and yours, for we are kinsmen . . . Let us separate. If you go north, I will go south; if you go south, I will go north.” He gives the younger man the choice. If this is the character of Abram, why would anybody curse him?
Well, evidently not everyone appreciates being taught about God. It implies that the gods they have been worshiping up to now are fakes. Other people resent the demands that God makes – do not steal, do not murder, do not commit adultery, show compassion to people who need your help. And some people will dislike us for absolutely no reason, for nothing we have done. This is the sin of sinat chinam, senseless hatred.
You remember the Oscar Wilde quote: “One of the hardest things in life is to forgive someone who did you a favor.” So Abraham counseled his followers: some people will resent your help. It will call attention to their ignorance or their powerlessness, so they will curse you. But when they curse you, do not curse them back; leave them to God. Your role is heyay b’rachah – be a blessing. Do what is good because it is good, not for the applause or for the thanks – those things may or may not come. That is a very important lesson for all of us to learn.
Charles Krauthammer published an opinion essay in Time Magazine around the time of the United States Army expedition to Haiti. His essay was titled “To the Rescue of Ingrates.” He began by quoting Prince Schwartzenberg of Austria. In the aftermath of Russia’s help to Austria, in keeping Hungary within the Austrian Empire, the prince was asked whether he felt indebted. He replied: “Austria will astound the world with the magnitude of her ingratitude.”
Krauthammer continues. “A foreign policy carried out in our country’s own national interest will justify itself. Gratitude is nice; we appreciate the appreciation of the Grenadians, Panamanians and Kuwaitis, but it is a bonus. America fled Somalia after 18 Army Rangers died because the cost of the
operation became apparent. But there was a more visceral reaction propelling our retreat – a sense of betrayal. Here we are doing this for the Somalis, for no benefit to ourselves, and this is how they repay us.”
We have such an example within our own American Jewish community. For probably two decades now, many Jews have been nursing a sense of hurt as we’ve witnessed a growing hostility toward Jews in the African-American community, emerging as full-blown anti-Semitism in the Nation of Islam and on many university campuses.
Jews have said: after all those years of our support for the civil rights movement, the Jewish students who died in voter registration activity in Mississippi, and the Jewish financial support for Black organizations, is this how they treat us?
Now it is proper to oppose anti-semitism wherever it arises. Bigotry is to be defied no matter what color it wears. But let us remember what Abraham was taught – do not do what is right for the gratitude or the applause; and, if the recipients of your goodness curse you, leave them to God.
There is a verse in the Bible which many of you here today know by heart, yet very few of us could explain its meaning. In the content of this morning’s lesson, I would like to suggest two different explanations for that perplexing – “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” Now I do not know how you visualize that verse, but some people have a mental image of ourselves sitting at a banquet table with all our favorite foods, and off in the distance are the people who do not like us looking on and not having any. But we would be hard pressed to explain the meaning of that mental picture.
The late professor Cyrus Gordon explained it this way. He speculated that the word “table” had come to mean a shield or a defense. “You prepare a shield for me against my enemies.” Now I happen to be a western movie buff. Do you remember the common saloon gunfight scene? It almost always starts when they throw over the tables, crouch behind them and shoot at each other.
We may think that is a relatively modern picture, but Professor Gordon points out that it was present in one of the final scenes of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus returns home and enters the banquet hall where his enemies are feasting. Odysseus and his son lock the doors and the battle begins. In that scene, the fighters shoot at each other from behind overturned tables. So Professor Gordon suggests that the word “table” came to have a military meaning as a shield, the way the kitchen implement, “chopper,” came to mean a helicopter, or a “pineapple” came to be a hand grenade.
Well, that may be a pretty good scholarly interpretation of “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,” but Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi gives a more beautiful one. He says: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” means that once every ten years or so you should give a dinner party and invite those people who have hurt you, to thank them!
Now that sounds pretty puzzling. Reb Zalman explained by telling a story about himself. At the beginning of his career he was a young rabbi in a small congregation in southeastern Massachusetts. One morning a young man came to the morning minyan; he was saying Kaddish for his father. When they asked the young man to put on tefillin he refused, saying “I don’t believe in it.”
Reb Zalman thought to himself: very often when someone says he does not believe in putting on tefillin, it is because he does not know how. What he does not believe in is making a fool of himself in public. So Reb Zalman called the young man and offered to teach him privately. The offer was accepted and he went on to learn about services, davening, studied other things in Judaism, joined the congregation, was elected to the board and became president of the synagogue. As president, his first act was to fire Rabbi Schachter.
Reb Zalman was deeply hurt by that betrayal. If you and I were psychiatrists, we might speculate that the man felt embarrassed in the presence of the rabbi who knew him when he had no knowledge about Judaism, and he probably did not want the rabbi around to stir up memories of when he was ignorant and insecure.
But Reb Zalman went on to do graduate studies at Boston University, earned a Ph.D. from the Hebrew Union College, was a member of the faculty of Temple University and became the grandfather of the Chavurah Movement and the father of the Jewish Renewal Movement – leader of a Jewish community today called P’nai Or, which is on the cutting edge of the creative recovery of Jewish mysticism for modern Jews. Suffice it to say that Rabbi Schachter has had an illustrious career which he continues at the age of 78.
And, he says, “I owe it all to that man. If it were not for him, I would still be the rabbi of that small shul in southeastern Massachusetts.”
People have told me how their lives were pointed in a new direction by someone who hurt them. “That person who played with my feelings, led me on, laughed at me behind my back and rejected me – I might have wound up married to that horrible person.” “That boss who made my working life hell and then fired me; I am indebted to him for my moving on to a better job in another corporation. Or otherwise, I might never have gone into business on my own and wound up with my current success.”
“So,”, Reb Zalman says, “throw them a party and thank them.”
I told you I am a western fan. In westerns, who turns out to be the spiritual descendent of Abraham? Those of you who are old enough to remember the Lone Ranger series know the answer. How did every episode end? “Who was that masked man? He didn’t wait around for us to thank him . . .”
That’s right, he did not wait, expecting thanks; he just rode off to the next adventure.
At the very beginning of Jewish history, God gave us, through Abraham, some very wise advice: heyay b’rachah – your role is to be a blessing, to do what is right because it is right. If people bless you, great; but if they do not, leave them to God. And who knows? You might even owe them an expression of thanks for your life of blessing. Amen
In preparing this message, I have utilized the writings of Rabbi Shamai Kanter
and I am happy to acknowledge his help
