Vayera

The underlying theme of the Torah portion Vayera is Abraham's relationships with the rest of the world. In fact, it opens with the words, "And G-d appeared to him in the oaks of Mamre." The rabbis ask, why does it say the oaks of Mamre? Because Abraham was concerned with his relationship with the rest of the world, and when G-d told him to circumcize himself he asked his friends what they thought about it, according to the Medrash, and all his friends said not to do it except for Mamre. Therefore, when G-d came to visit him when he was recovering from his operation He visited him at the oaks of Mamre. Even when G-d was visiting him and Abraham spied out three strangers he said, "G-d, wait a minute. I want to go take care of these strangers." He was very concerned about his relationship with the rest of the world.
This is the continual theme throughout this Torah portion. Abraham was very concerned about what happened to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He prayed for them that G-d should please note destroy them, and he bargained with G-d, if there were 50 righteous, 40 righteous, 10 righteous, etc., don't destroy the city.
Then, of course, we learn how later on Lot and his daughters fled the city. His wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt and how Lot had relationships with his own daughters, and how Abraham, too, continued his relationship with Lot. We also learn about how Abraham was forced to go to the Gaza Strip area of the land of Israel which was ruled by Avi Melech and he asked his wife to please tell Avi Melech that she was Abraham's sister and not his wife. Then we learn afterwards about the birth of Isaac and about the Akedah, etc.
We have just this past week heard the terrible news of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. This was a despicable act which has to be totally condemned by any thinking Jew, by every Jew period. We all know that the second Temple was destroyed because Jews were fighting Jews at the same time the Romans were besieging the city. Jews were actually assassinating Jews. There was a word for these assassins called Sicharai,

which actually stands for the Latin word for beggars. We know that assassination never solves anything, that it only leads to total destruction. Why was it, though, that this assassination could even take place? As you all remember, I allowed Rabbi Kahane to speak in our congregation once but the second, third, and fourth time he came to Houston I would not allow him to speak. Originally I approved of Rabbi Kahane's message before he changed his mesage. Originally his message was that of self-defense of Jews. We know that there was the biggest migration that every happened in the United States that is hardly ever reported. From 1950-70 ten million blacks were forced off the plantations of the south. In 1950 one percent of the cotton was picked by machine. By 1970 99% was picked by machine. This meant that the blacks had to have someplace to go. They went to the cities of the south and a decision was made by the bankers and big shots in each community that the neighborhoods that they would be settled in would be Jewish neighborhoods. They had block busters, people who would set fires and beat up a few people, scare the people so that their homes could be bought cheap and then sold over to the blacks. Money was actually made on this. This has all been documented by a very assimilated Jew who told this story to the Boston Jewish community and how the neighborhoods were targeted to be taken over so they could be handed over to the blacks. This was done not by the blacks. They did not have anything to do with this. It was done by the business people in the town. I remember knowing about this and going to the newspapers and asking them to report this incident of Jews being beat up, etc., and they would not do it because they were in cahoots with them. But Meir Kahane tried to organize Jewish defense teams so the Jews would have defense against these bullies and block busters. He also did a wonderful job with Soviet Jewry. I remember how my wife went to Israel in 1979 and we were almost mobbed when people found out that Rabbi Kahane's father and mother were with us on this tour because they admired him so much because of what he did, but he took a wrong turn, and his wrong turn was that he allowed himself to be completely influenced by gentile perceptions of the Holocaust

and especially by criticism of religious Jews. The cry went out that the Jews went to their death like sheep, especially the religious Jews and that they did not fight and that the Jews were sold down the river by the Judenrat, the heads of the Jewish communities in every city, and that this would never happen again. Jews would take up arms and make sure they were never sold down the river again. They would attack their own leaders if this would happen. Meir Kahane even wrote that. He was the first Jew who ever wrote that we have to get rid of our own leaders if they are leading us down the path, if they are like Judas goats, trying to lead us to destruction. The group that Yigal Amir belonged to was Ayal. Ayal was an of’shoot of Meir Kahane's group, and this offshoot broke from Kahane because they thought that Kahane v/as too moderate. We all know that Yigal Amir is a very smart man. In order to get into a law school in Israel you have to be very bright. In the United States any Jew can probably get into some law school, but in Israel there are very few places and you are competing against other Jews. He is a very bright man, but his analysis was wrong. He based his whole conception of who he was and what he was based upon the ideas of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was his frame of reference that this should never happen again. Unfortunately, this idea is not just among extremist groups in Israel but also in mainline groups in the United States. It seems their whole Jewish identity is based upon one idea and the idea is that this will never happen again. I remember attending a Kristallnacht celebration just the other night and the speaker, himself, mentioned Meir Kahane's words, "never again", which seemed to imply that we Jews will do everything to make sure this never happened again no matter what it took. Of course, from Yigal Amir's perspective it looked like Yitzhak Rabin was selling the Jews down the river. One hundred and fifty thousands Jews in Judah and Samaria would be left almost defenseless handed over to Arafat, and how were they going to protect themselves? Here was a Judenrat, a Jew, who was succumbing to the pressures of the world and was selling Jews down the river. Of course, Arafat was not too helpful on this with his big speeches about Jihad.

Even when he mentions the deaths of a lot of his followers to accomplish his goal of taking Jerusalem, so we see that he was overcome with this all-consuming idea of the Holocaust. That, of course, is a fallacy. Israel is not in the same position the Jews were in Europe. Israel has an army and even if Arafat gets the parts of the West Bank and if he does certain things that are threatening, the Israeli army will take care of him. At Rabin's funeral we understand now the pressure that Rabin was under. When 86 heads of state come to a funeral, when the United States President brings all the leadership of the United States, both Republican and Democrat, over 100 people, to the funeral we realize the great pressure that Rabin was under. Rabin could not withstand this pressure. Israel is a small country. When the world unites against powers they crumble and crack. There is no trade. People are cut off. Look what happened to South Africa. Look what happened to Russia. Why did Russian communism eventually fail? Because economically it failed. It had no ties with the rest of the world, Rabin was under terrible pressure, which does not mean that the protests were not necessarily bad. They probably strengthened his hand by letting him see that he had opposition at home. However, once the decision had been made the only way it could be changed was through the next ballot, not through bullets. It was a despicable act because the only way Israel can really right now destroy itself is through civil war. It can destroy itself through one Jew pitting himself against another and we will have a replay of the destruction of the second Temple here in our day as we”. So we see that in Yigal Amir's mind Yitzhak Rabin was nothing more than the head of the Judenrat sending the Jews to their deaths selecting this particular group of Jews over another group of Jews and eventually all the Jews would be slaughtered. This is the way that he worked and, therefore, he was justified in doing what he was doing. He is not a lunatic except that he bought a false conception of the Jewish power in the world. We Jews do not have power in the world. Abraham knew that.

That's why when Abraham came to visit Avi Melech he told his wife to tell him that she was not his wife but his sister. Sometimes Jews have to be Moliafish Jews. I know that was a criticism of Rabin that was echoed and that I heard and I even repeated, that Rabin was acting like a court Jew in the Middle Ages where when the gentiles spit on us we said, "Oh, it's raining today." And when a gentile slapped a Jew we said, "Oh, thank you very much. You just loosened a tooth that was hurting me and I needed to have it pulled." That's one of the reasons why the Israelis are anti-politeness, at least have been in the past, because they could then say whatever they wanted to say. They did not have to be like a diaspora Jew who had to watch what he says all the time and be diplomatic. Even in America we have to watch what we say and how we say it, but Israelis did not have to, but the truth of the matter is that Israel is a ghetto, too. Israel is dependent upon other big powers and if the big powers wanted to they could crush Israel. Israel is not a mighty state and this whole idea about giving back land and halacha says you cannot give back land and so forth is false. First of all, it only applies to the seven nations of Canaan, and even if you wanted to say that it applies to other nations, it only applies to other nations when you can actually get away with it, or even the seven nations of Canaan, but we cannot get away with it. We are a nation with a little power but we are not the most powerful nation in the world, and if the nations of the world put the squeeze on us, as we see that they did when you see all these 86 leaders who came to Rabin's funeral, that Rabin was under terrible pressure. Therefore, Rabin made a mistake. His mistake was vis a vis the people. He should not have told them that we are acting out of strength by giving them back these lands. We were not acting out of strength. We were acting out of weakness, but we have to recognize it. Abraham had to tell Avi Melech that Sarah was his sister and not his wife, and sometimes we Jews, too, have to do that when we relate to the rest of the world. We do not have the power to do what we think we can do. I remember how when Begin annexed the Golan Heights Rabbi Schacht was very angry.

I thought Rabbi Schact was out of his mind to be angry but he said you cannot go against the rest of the world. They will still force you to do what they want you to do. Jews should never endanger themselves in this way. I also remember that there are many Jews who talked as if we were all-powerful but we are not all-powerful. We have to remember that we are still a very small minority of the world and Israel is really nothing more than a glorified ghetto. The question that Israel is also going to ask, why did Abraham start to sacrifice his son? Why did Abraham misread the command of G-d? G-d said lift him up. He did not use the word sacrifice. It is true this word is ambiguous and sometimes means sacrifice. The reason Abraham thought this meant to sacrifice was because he was conditioned by his culture. He was conditioned by what the other nations said about him. The other nations said that he was a coward, that he would not sacrifice his children, and that he was a person whose religiosity was really nothing more than a quivering coward but he pretended just to be religious. So when Abraham got this command, what could he do? The rabbis say he went with two boys, and who were these two boys? The two boys were representatives of the culture of his day. That is why when they went actually to Mount Mori ah it says, "And Abraham said to his boys, 'Stay here. The donkey and I and the boy will go over there."1 The reason for that is that Abraham knew that when it came ultimately to make the decision he had to use his own values. He could not use what the world was saying about him and thinking about him. Eventually he did not sacrifice his son because an angel of G-d appeared to him, and some people say the angel was the Torah, itself. We know we Jews could not do that but because of what the nations of the world were saying about him he almost sacrificed his sons. The rabbis say that Yitzchak was damaged because of this, that either because of his tears or Abraham's tears of the tears of the angels he later went blind. When we take the words of the nations of the world too seriously, when we devise our whole philosophy around them then we are prone to great trouble. When we say that we went to the gas ovens like sheep, we are accepting the goyishe

interpretation of it. Jews fought as much as they could. Who stood up against the Nazis? What happened to those Russian prisoners of war who were mighty soldiers? They died sooner than we did. We have to remember not to accept the lies of the gentiles. We Jews have always done that. If some gentile said, "Oh, if you only changed your services, if you only changed your clothes or change your language, get a better education, make sure within your religious worships men and women sit together, then everything will be fine." We know that it was not fine and it would not be fine. We know, too, that if we accept their interpretation of the Holocaust it is not going to be fine either. The leaders of the Judenrat tried their best. Some even committed suicide because they could not do anything else, but to blame them for the Nazi problem is ridiculous. We know, too, that we modern orthodox bear responsibility for Rabin's assassination because Yigal Amir went to our schools, the same schools we send our own children to. Our schools did not do enough to inculcate into him and into others that Meir Kahane's philosophy was wrong. We do not base Judaism totally on the Holocaust. As I said before, many secular Jews are trying to do that here in America. We base the Jewish concepts on the Torah, itself, and not upon the views of the Holocaust and not on slogans, never again. We should do Teshuva and we have to make sure that the line is never crossed. Jews should never kill Jews. Any Jew who kills another Jew for political reasons is committing suicide for the Jewish people and defaming the Torah. Let us all hope and pray that we have learned our lesson now and that we will forever stay away from these terrible ideas but instead that we will revert to our own conception of things. Abraham said the boys only go up to here but I go further so that we will diverst ourselves from any of the false images that others have tried to put upon us and that we will act true to our own values so the Mashiach will come quickly in our day. Amen.