16. Giving Back

Life is full of give and take. But where is the emphasis? Do we give in order to get? Or get in order to give?

Abraham was a giver. Whatever he had, he shared. So when it came to the things he valued most, his hard earned truths about the existence of G-d and the importance of acknowledging Him, his sharing knew no bounds.

As a child, his father had him help in the family business, the sale of idols. Of course, Abraham had no use for such foolishness but being a dutiful son, he brought the merchandise to market, calling out “Who wants a useless statue that cannot help anyone?” Of course business was not brisk on the days he worked, but even when customers came of their own accord he dissuaded them. “Madam, you are an elderly woman and this idol was made only yesterday. How could it have power over the world and your life?” “Good thinking lad, thank you.” And so it went throughout the day. Of course, upon returning home with all his stock and no cash, dad was not thrilled, but for Abraham, truth was an asset not to be sold. And everyone had the right to know.

As Abraham aged, his prioritites did not change, although his methods did. Upon arriving in the promised land, he set up a free hostel in the midst of the Negev desert, not exactly the most hospitable of environments. Soon all the nomads and caravan drivers were stopping by because the welcome was warm, the lodgings superb, and the menu lavish. Despite the arid desolation all around, Abraham’s table always featured the best delicacies including dairy, baked goods, meat, wine and fruits, all in abundance for anyone who happened by.

When his guests would rise to bless him, Abraham would respond, “Do you think the food was mine? Thank the true owner, the one G-d, Creator of heaven and earth.” If they thanked the Creator for the food, the meal was on the house, but if not, he would present them with an itemized bill for hundreds of shekels. “How can things cost so much?” they would ask. But Abraham's reply was irrefutable. “Where else will you find meat, wine and all delicacies in a desert wilderness? Of course it’s expensive. But if you will praise the Almighty, it’s yours for free.”

But rarely would he have to resort to billing. Typically it was enough to share his reasoning. He explained the error of believing that the Creator abandoned the cosmos and relegated its control to various forces. He explained how things don’t make themselves and that Divine creation is not like man’s. When people create things, they just alter the form. Divine creation is something from nothing and as such, requires constant investment of creative energy. It all made sense to them and they said Grace happily.

But why did he go through all the hassle? If the point was to teach, why bother with an inn, with lodgings, with cuisine and all the work and expense it entailed? Wouldn’t public lectures achieve the same result, maybe even better?

But Abraham knew his customers. Not everyone is an intellectual. Just as the human head comprises about 7% of the body’s mass, so too brainy types make up about 7% of the body of humanity. That leaves a whole lot of people that need a connect to G-d at a totally different level.

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and I bet women are no different (Chocolates, anyone?). Abraham fed the people, spent his hard-earned money for the physical well-being and comfort of absolute strangers, and then shared all kinds of theological, philosophical and common-sense insights with them as if they were all old college chums. Those that understood, accepted it at that level. Those that didn’t, resonated with his passion and sincerity and appreciated his love and care. A G-d of love is a G-d people can relate to and that was the G- d of Abraham.

His gift of monotheism was given from the heart. And the proof was in the pudding.

Sefer Maamarim - Rebbe Rayyatz - Vayera 5701.

15. Living the Message

Abraham took inventory, but not in the usual sense.

He reviewed all those hard-won ideas he had come to about nature and whatever it is beyond it that makes it tick, viz:

• Things don't make themselves; they work by cause and effect.
• Nature is orderly and intelligible; so its cause must be organized and intelligent.
• Causes are external to their effects and have power over them; the world's cause must be some external, greater power.
• Cause-and-effect itself depends on some First Cause.
• All bodies are limited. The First Cause, being unlimited, has no body.
• Being unlimited, the First Cause must be beyond and within the world equally.
• If this Big Being[1] is here and I am too, then He is somehow hiding right here.
• The BB's presence is hidden so we will feel independent.
• This impression of independence grants us free will.
• Free will and the ability to think abstractly enable us to 'discover' the BB.
• This 'BB discoverability' is itself a creation, begging the question of why it exists;
• The BB gave us the ability to discover Him so that we would.
• Consciously living with the BB is the purpose of mankind.

Wow.

Imagine all humanity contemplating the greatness of G-d together. How would the Creator react to such a scenario? He would say to Him/Her/It-self: "Wow. They did it. I hid and they found me. I guess it's time to come out of hiding and reveal myself to the whole world while not blowing them away.[2]"

Until here we got with brain power. From here on in, it's something else. All the philosophy in the world isn't worth a hill of beans unless you're as ready to walk the walk as much as talk the talk. Abraham understood this, as indeed we all should.

To exemplify this, we fast forward to a story of a sage who was visited by two colleagues who were to stay the night in his home. Upon their arrival, he summoned his son and told him to prepare a davar Torah (literally 'word of Torah', a lesson in its teachings) in honor of the guests. The boy took his leave while the men discussed matters and some time later returned to the room.

"What did you prepare?" his father asked. Without a word, the child motioned the men to follow him through the house to a guest room where beds were freshly made and the customary washbasins and towels were set up in preparation for their stay.

"What do you think?" the father asked his guests. "Is this not an excellent davar Torah on the subject of welcoming guests?"

What faced Abraham at this point, was a life-defining decision. Do I take this mandate wholeheartedly and dedicate the rest of my life on this world to promoting the knowledge of G-d to each and every person I encounter, or not? It's a tough world out there, a world dominated by idolatry, violence, bluff, and power-tripping. Why not just be happy that I found a little truth and meaning for myself and my family? Live and let live. No need to be a fanatic, and go around bursting everyone's bubble, even if those bubbles are as meaningless as they are hollow.

Abraham was one. The world, millions. What hope did he have of making any impact at all? He wasn't rich or powerful and he had no media contacts or PR agencies working for him. And he wasn't even selling anything that tastes good, looks pretty, or fixes your wagon wheel. Plus there was no resale value. Whatever friends he did have must have all given him the same message. Chill. There's no point burning yourself out trying to save the world. Just take care of number one.

So he did. But he decided to take care of Number One, rather than number one. He figured its up to Number One to take care of number one so that number one could take care of Number One.

In short Abraham chose the first option. Live a purposeful life. Spread the word. Share the wisdom. Bring people together in the knowledge of G-d.

A daunting task to be sure, but Abraham was up to it. And since there was a will, he would surely find a way.

[1] Not to be confused with the Big Bang, the Big Being being the being that banged the Big Bang, assuming for the time being that the Big Bang bung. Note that Big is here not a spatial term, just like First is not temporal. Alas at this level all descriptive language fails.

[2] How to pull that particular rabbit out of His divine hat is another conundrum, fortunately G-d's problem and not ours. See "Are We or Aren't We" for an inkling of a solution.

14. The Present

History is a mystery.

The future is unknown.
Today is a gift.
That’s why it’s called
The present.

Do you recall your elementary school teacher taking attendance? She’d call your name and you would have to call back, “Present.” That meant you were there. There in space, there in time. That was you, nobody else.

Not that we thought about it much back then, but if we would have stopped and thought about it for even a minute, we would have been so appreciative about that little fact called existence, being present. Today is a gift. I don’t have to be here. I’ve been given existence in this world. There’s plenty of things I can do, but make myself exist is not one of them. Somebody else needs credit for that one.

But what exactly am I being grateful for here? That I can see and walk and talk? That I’ve got all my body parts, my mind and whatever comforts and pleasures I’ve got? Yes, that’s plenty to be grateful for, but there is something much more basic then even that. Because whether or not yesterday ever happened or tomorrow ever will, you have your today. You’ve been given existence right now. And now. And now.

Applying the Abraham Principle led us to continuous creation and that includes continuous creation of you. What an astounding thought! That great big, amazing, all powerful, all knowing, omnipresent First Cause not only notices the likes of a pipsqueak like you, but decides that you’re not so bad after all, because having seen all your frailties and weaknesses, he still decided to create you again. And again. And again.

Does that mean that your existence has meaning and purpose? To Somebody, yes. Continuous creation means G-d cares. . . about you. Because why else would he bother to make you out of nothing at all unless there was some Divine purpose in it. What that purpose is, is another question. But if your whole body, with all it’s organs and cells and molecules and atoms, were not important, why would you be emerging in full regalia from something to nothing right now? And now? And now?

The previous moment of my existence does not force the next moment’s existence any more than the previous moment’s image on a TV screen forces the next moment’s repeat of the same image. It’s there because it was programmed to be there. It was conceived and produced and directed and recorded and encoded and broadcast and received and decoded and now its pumping pulses of inifinitesimal electrons racing across the screen recreating far away scences with a refresh rate faster than any eye can detect.

My existence is a byproduct of a process I cannot see. We will ‘see’ later how and why that’s the case, but for now suffice it to say that the process is not visible to the eye. The mind’s eye could envision the process but not the physical eye. This invisible code, like the algorithm that informs the TV image, is the information content of reality, or in the language of kabbalah, the Word of G-d.

And next, a Word from our Sponsor.

13. G-d is a Verb

Normally people think of G-d as a constant, like a rocky refuge on the stormy seas of time. Something solid you can count on, an absolute to which everything else is relative. This is all true, but it’s only part of the picture. Once we see G-d as a creative dynamic within the flow of time, the whole concept comes to life. The waves on the beach, birth and death, seasons and songs, all take on a divine quality.

Applying pure logic systematically and consistently to his study of nature, Abraham recognized the divine creative dynamic in the cosmos. And his conclusions were confirmed by the Torah itself, for of the many names by which G-d is known in the Hebrew Bible, the most essential name is the one associated with time. In English, this name is translated as “The Eternal” which has a static implication, like the earth under your feet. But in the original Hebrew, this name is a verb, a dynamic, referring to all of existence continuously coming into being ex nihilo, from nothing to something. The very letters of that Hebrew name, /Yud/, /heh/, /vav/ and /heh/, spell out four forms of the verb to be: Was, is, will be, and continuous coming to be.

This is the notion of G-d being above time, within time, creating time at all times.

Today we have an advantage over the ancients. When they tried to envision continuous creation of diverse beings from a single source, they had to think hard, meditate, and imagine things totally outside their range of experience. Not so you and me. We have modern technology to provide vivid analogies of how continuous creation works.

For instance, a tv image of a tree, as static as it looks, is being refreshed by a new set of scanning electrons some 60 times per second. It’s a new picture every moment. That was Abraham’s view of reality as well, a new world every moment. And in recent years, physics has come to accept this view of reality as well.

Bringing creation out of the dusty past and projecting it into the eternal now is about as radical a shift in thinking as you could get. Suddenly the Creator was no longer the great-grandfather god who politely exited the universe for bigger and better things after so kindly fashioning it in the first place. Instead of just being reverently acknowledged as a prehistoric First Cause, the Creator is now seen as an intimately present Current Event.

In a world of change, yes He is the constant. But also the change.

12. Gestalt

ge·stalt (guh-shtält') n.
A configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.

Abraham was an ecosystems analyst par excellence. One of ecology’s key concepts is that there is a harmony and balance to ecosystems. It’s a holistic notion where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Abraham, observing nature, recognized that there’s more to nature than it’s parts, and in this way came to recognize the Creator of all.

Birds too see ecosystems. Most songbirds, rather than homing in on one species of tree or shrub, will respond to the overall look of a habitat consisting of many different vegetation variables, like tree size, structure, canopy cover, shrub density, ground cover, and proximity to woodland edge. In short they form a gestalt, or overall impression, that is pretty much independent of this or that detail.

The difference is this. A bird sees a nature-gestalt and understands whether it’s a place to make its home.

Abraham saw a nature-gestalt, and recognizing the unity behind it, resolved to make it a home for its Creator.