Ziv Parashat VaYera

Please turn aside to your servant’s house

One of the main themes of our parasha is that of hospitality and it relates the acts of hospitality of Abraham and of his nephew Lot. We read that Abraham was sitting outside his tent at the “heat of the day” (Genesis 18:1) and that the Lord appeared to him there. According to Jewish tradition, Abraham was recovering from the circumcision he underwent in chapter 17. Rashi claims that God went “to visit the sick” and claims that the fact that this was a circumcision is the “Pshat” (the simplest reading of text). However, there is a difficulty here, since this is not mentioned explicitly in the text and therefore he quotes Rabbi Chama Ben Chanina, who claims that “It was the third day from his circumcision, and the Holy One, blessed be He, came and inquired about his welfare”). Rashi’s claim rests on the difficulty that the verse begins with “And the Lord appeared to him”. Everywhere where God appeared to Abram previously it is said “And the Lord appeared to Abram..” (for example Genesis 12:7) and when it says “to him” (for example to Isaac in Genesis 26:2) the text refers back to its immediate precedent, which in this case would be the circumcision. God, therefore, came to visit the sick. And as He was standing there, Abraham lifts up his eyes and sees three men standing in front of him (Genesis 18:2). He runs to the men and says “O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant...”. The difficulty is now compounded as the question becomes: who is “Lord” here? Is it God or the most important person among the travellers? According to some interpreters, Abraham’s hospitality was so great that he made God wait until he served his guests and only then spoke to God (who continued to speak to Abraham after the guests left). For his dedication to the commandment of hospitality, Abraham receives the promise that Isaac will be born precisely one year after this visit - which according to Rashi is the Passover of the following year.

When the visitors come to Sodom, Lot is sitting at the Gates of Sodom (Genesis 19:1) seeing that he was a judge in the city (judges in Scripture are typically sitting at the city gate). He immediately greets them and invites them to his home to join him for a feast. This feast (Genesis 19:3) is the first time we meet the word “unleavened bread” in Scripture, which is why Rashi claims that this was Passover, meaning that we are intended to understand that both the destruction of Sodom and Issac’s birth happened on Passover. Lot’s hospitality is extreme - he leaves his duties as a judge to offer his guests a feast and, when they are threatened by the people of Sodom (Genesis 19:4-9) he shockingly even offers his virgin daughters to the crowd rather than be inhospitable to his guests. Neither case depicts “ordinary” hospitality. For Abraham, God Himself appears with the intent of bringing good news to Abraham and raining judgement on Sodom. For Lot, it is the celebration of Passover with righteous guests in the midst of wicked persecution. In both cases the dedication and self-sacrifice for the sake of hospitality is remarkable. This teaches us that hospitality always involves a level of self-sacrifice - even if not to the extent of Lot and Abraham. But that true self-giving hospitality, even in the most difficult circumstances, is ultimately service to God. Shabbat Shalom.