Avraham and three Angels by Phillip Ratner
Noah and his children were still alive while Abram heard this Divine call. This is the call that everyone who acknowledges the Creator as the One and only G-d, and who also rejects idolatry, should hear every moment. It is his/her most treasured awareness that he/she has, because it is the lot that makes anyone happy in this world; and this Divine call is an invitation to keep this awareness permanently in our consciousness: go to yourself, to the portion of your lot that makes you truly happy, truly fulfilled. And we achieve that permanency in a special Land that the Creator wants to give us, the children of the Covenant, the ones who recognize His Oneness.
The Promised Land is both the physical and spiritual place where we can achieve permanent awareness of our connection with the Creator, a Land that we have to conquer in order to live peacefully and harmonically in it: “And I will make you a great Nation; I will bless you, and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.” (12:2). When we walk in Love’s ways and attributes, we indeed become a blessing, because Love is a blessing. Abram, later named Abraham by G-d, is considered the epitome of loving kindness (chesed in Hebrew) which is one of G-d’s attributes (Exodus 34:6-7); and as we said in the previous commentary on parshat Noach, in this context Abraham’s Love met G-d’s Love. Abraham’s loving kindness was a blessing for those around him, and we also must manifest this attribute because it is what makes us G-d’s image and likeness. In the book “God as Love” we say that Divine Love created us, and it is through our awareness of Love that we are able to know the Creator. For Abraham, this fundamental principle was so clear that he was able to overcome all the trials throughout his lifetime: “Fear not, Abram, I am a shield for you; your reward is very great” (Genesis 15:1), hence if G-d, Love, is our shield, who could be against? Love is the Light with which we clear the darkness in the material world, and while we are and manifest His ways and attributes there is no better reward: “I am El Shaddai, walk before Me and be wholehearted. I will set My Covenant between Me and you, and I will increase you most exceedingly.” (17:1-2).
The Torah and the Hebrew scriptures are, in their entirety, a divine manifesto that proclaims the Oneness of the Creator and constantly warns us about the consequences of idolatry. Since the transgression in the Garden of Eden down to our current exile, idolatry has been the cause of humankind’s ills. The saga of our Forefathers and Prophets has been a permanent battle against what separate us from our Creator, the “enemies” of G-d which also are the enemies of Israel. Our Sages single out Abraham as the true father of humankind, and not Adam or Noah, because he and Sarah were the first persons who truly walked before G-d and were truly wholehearted in His eyes. From these two exceptional human beings we have to learn how to conceive our Creator and how to relate to Him.
The person most mentioned in our oral tradition is Abraham, more than any other biblical character, because one of his qualities was his inflexible stance against idolatry. His loyalty to the Creator was faultless, and his commitment to His ways was unconditional. Interestingly, this is the same unconditional Love that G-d has for all His Creation, like the air that we breathe, like the sun that shines every day, and like the rain that never asks when, where or to whom. G-d loves all His Creation and He also expects a similar Love from us, His creatures; and this does not mean that He needs our Love. He gave us free will so we can choose His Love and not the illusions and fantasies of the material world; and His Love, which is also our Love, is the One that increases us and multiply us as the stars in the sky and the dust in the earth. That is the expansion that the Creator wants us to be through His ways and attributes. Abraham knew that G-d’s blessings for him and his descendants were not about numbers but about the traits and qualities that make us grow as Light bearers to the world.
We can understand that the Land of Canaan is life itself, but in order to be true life we have to conquer and subjugate the “nations” that occupy it; the lower character traits that we have to elevate in order to make them subservient to the higher purpose that Love is. We have to be like Abraham and never compromise to anything that is not G-d’s loving kindness, by being loving kindness constantly in every aspect of our consciousness. The way to succeed with this is by trusting G-d’s Love, and also in our own awareness of Love, as Abraham did. Abraham was afraid of the fate that his descendants would face during their period of servitude in Egypt as well as in their other exiles, because we are not as strong as he was against ego’s materialistic fantasies. He prayed for us, so we don’t perish in the darkness of the material world; but it is our responsibility and our choice to cleave to our Creator as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did. This is the true legacy from our Patriarchs, a legacy that we must honor and fulfill.
Let’s go to our self, our true identity, into the Land that G-d’s Love shows us. This is the same Love that cries out to Him, so that we once again may dwell in its green pastures.
Ariel Ben Avraham
Safed, Northern Galilee, Israel
Born in Cartagena, Colombia in 1958. After studying Cultural Anthropology in Bogota, moved to Chicago in 1984, where I worked as a writer, reporter and producer for WSNS/Telemundo for 18 years. Produced video documentaries related to art, music, history and culture, such as “Latin American Trails: Guatemala”, distributed by Facets.org. For more than thirty years studied spiritual traditions from all over the world, and the mysticism of major religions, understanding the mystic experience as the personal means to connect with Divinity. Since 2004 study and write about Jewish mysticism and spirituality, mainly derived from the Chassidic tradition, and the practical philosophy of the teachings of Jewish mystic Sages from the last 2000 years. The book “God as Love” is the compilation of my last three years studying and learning Jewish mysticism, and the messages of the book are part of the content, exercises and processes of a series of seminars, lectures and retreats that I facilitate in several locations in Israel.
