Torah Study Blog

Our Torah portion for this week opens with the words, “The Lord appeared to him (meaning Abraham) … Looking up he saw three men.” (Genesis 18:1-2) Why did Abraham see three men? Over the centuries people have tried to square this incongruence in different ways. Maybe God, like celebrities today, traveled with a posse. Or maybe these were different aspects of God that could not be contained within the image of one man, so he is shown as three; this is an idea the Christians invoke with the Holy Trinity.

Another possibility is that there were three tasks that had to be performed, so God appears as three. The 20^th century philosopher Franz Rosenzweig wrote that perhaps these were just three men, but Abraham felt the presence of God in their visit. Rabbi Jaech told us that her professor, Martin Cohen, taught that our entire religious tradition represents human searching. And the best way for us to wrestle with the magnitude of our searching is to couch it within the human condition.

This week’s story goes that 99-year-old Abraham shows great hospitality to the three men who appeared by welcoming them into his home and providing a meal for them. Then the men announce that 90-year-old Sarah would soon conceive a child. Sarah overhears this prophecy and expresses some doubt. It is the same doubt that Abraham expressed only a chapter earlier when he was told by God that he would have children. God responds to their doubt by saying, “Is anything too wondrous for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14)

Why do we doubt God? The miracles he carries out in the Bible are amazing! But if we already knew that God could get it done, we would come to assume the miracle will happen and to take his efforts for granted. Doubt presents a challenge to God and is also an essential ingredient to ultimately understanding the greatness of God.

The haftarah for this week has a similar story, but it goes one better! After the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, we have the section called the Prophets. In the Torah, God makes the miracles happen directly. In the Prophets, God works through one of his prophets.

Most of us are familiar with the prophet Elijah. Elijah is who we open the door for at Passover. We may be less familiar with Elijah’s disciple, and successor, Elisha. In 2 Kings 4 there is a woman who believes Elisha is a man of God and she treats him hospitably. He wants to give her something in return and he learns that what she truly hopes for is a son, which she thinks may not happen because “her husband is old.” When Elisha tells her she will have a son, she responds by saying, “Please, my lord, man of God, do not delude your maidservant.” (2 Kings 4:14-16) But, sure enough, she conceives and bares a son.

This story has the same hospitality, the same promise of a son, and the same doubt as the Abraham and Sarah story. But then, a new miracle: After the boy has grown, he mysteriously becomes ill and dies. The mother rides to where Elisha is and asks him to come to the boy. Given travel in biblical times, we are led to believe that several hours have passed before Elisha is with the body of the boy who he, miraculously, brings back to life. (2 Kings 4:17-37)

A couple more of the miracles of Elisha are recounted in 2 Kings, including when Elisha received 20 loaves of bread and instructed his servant to feed 100 men with it. The servant responded with disbelief that the bread will be enough, but Elisha said, “For thus said the Lord: They shall eat and have some left over.” (2 Kings 4:43)

Our own history lets us build upon stories to make them even greater and more miraculous, thereby proving the greatness of God. And Christianity has done the same thing. The Jewish tradition has two stories of elderly women bearing children. The Christian tradition goes one better by having a virgin bear a child! And that child, Jesus, in the Christian book of John brings a man named Lazarus back to life. Unlike the Elisha story where the boy was dead for serval hours, Lazarus was dead for four days and his body was starting to rot! But, yes, Jesus brings him back to life.

And all four of the Christian gospels recount the first miracle of Jesus Christ, which is known as the Feeding of the 5000 – far more than the paltry 100 people Elisha fed. The story goes that Jesus gave a sermon with 5000 people in attendance. When the people got hungry the disciples noticed that there were only a few loaves of bread and two fish – clearly not enough to feed 5000 people. But Jesus miraculously makes the food so that it is enough for everyone.

Different people have different stories to tell, and different interpretations to present. The prophets and holy men got authority only if people were willing to follow them. In today’s world, our rabbis have the job of interpreting the Torah and other biblical writings. The authority of the rabbi, similarly, comes from the people who are willing to follow that rabbi.

misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter