Parshat Vayeira is dear to my heart. Over the years, I have noticed that this Torah portion is often one of the first I speak about as a rabbinic presence in a community. At this time of year, I am usually a newcomer.
Newcomers, strangers, and guests, all need hospitality. We arrive at new places, unsure of how we fit into the community or how to behave. We might show up sick of our travel companions or stuck in our heads from traveling solo. Encountering strange new places can cause feelings of loneliness that may make the journey much harder. Hospitality - the hosting and welcoming people - is an antidote to loneliness and leaves long-lasting impressions on people's lives.
As much as a person may benefit from our hosting them or serving them, that same experience and relationship can profoundly affect the host. In our parashah, Abraham’s guests reward his hospitality with a prophecy of children, a new legacy. One guest tells Abraham, "Shuv Ashuv eilekha ka'eith Chayah v'hinei-ven l' Sarah ishtekha. I will return at this time next year, and by then, Sarah will have a son."
That is quite the compliment to a meal! In our story, food changes from a temporary thing - nourishment, a source of calories - into the basis of a legacy.
I want to share two lessons with you:
1) Food is a potent way to make and transmit memory. Many of us have decades-old family recipe collections. In the lines of ingredients and instructions, and on our plates, there are memories of people, relationships, and shared time. Consider the cakes Abraham asks Sarah to make. Sarah's cakes may have been delicious in any setting, but serving a cake of refined flour to a tired traveler in a desert elevates the meal to something of greater significance. When eating any other cake of fine flour later on in his travels, the traveler can recall Sarah's cake. He might remember not just the cake’s flavors, but also Abraham's compassion for bringing strangers into his tent. He may recall the zeal and care Sarah and Abraham showed in quickly preparing a proper meal for three travel-weary guests. He may remember that decent human beings exist in the world when it might feel easier to find a needle in a haystack. The traveler may remember that he met two such people and that they have a child now. Maybe that child will also grow to be a good person who welcomes the stranger. It is fair for Sarah and Abraham to think that they will never look at that cake recipe the same way again. Now, that cake is associated with laughter, and anticipation, and the gift of raising children.
All of that can be - and is - recalled through eating. The legacy is one of human connection, as much as one of flavor and sustenance.
2) You sit under an oak tree, alone on a hot day when three strangers walked by looking tired. You know that you are one of the only people around for miles. What is your legacy if you choose to host them or not? Here, I do not mean legacy in terms of children and grandchildren. I mean the legacy of how other people remember you. Had Abraham chosen not to serve them some food and get them out of the sun, his legacy would have been one of seeing people but not seeing them. We would know him as the person who could have done something but did not.
But Abraham is a doer. He walked through the furnace. He left his childhood home out of material need but rebooted his journey with a higher purpose. To paraphrase the Hebrew, Abraham went "for himself" to become a blessing. And Abraham does not passively accept the promise to become a great nation and a blessing. We learn from Abraham's greeting of the strangers and the meal he serves that we become a blessing by serving others. Service is active, is intentional, and takes great care. Done well, the effects last a lifetime and can be the seeds of a great legacy.
Connecting to people through food is one of my life's greatest joys. Like Abraham, feeding people, serving people, hosting them is for me about more than making sure that we meet a person's physical need for sustenance. We are trying to make them feel something. We are trying to give over an experience.
Hospitality is essential to me. Before starting rabbinical school, I worked as a chef in several high-end restaurants. There are so many parallels between the two fields, and at their cores, the chef’s work and the rabbi’s work are both lifestyles in service.
The way to the heart is through the stomach, yes. But then we only arrive at the heart. What about entering the heart? We open each other’s hearts by all the other little things we do to make a person feel special when eating our food. Service is a deeply intimate act that is characteristic of Abraham's ability to connect not just to other people but to G-d. Throughout the Torah, such connections are expressed in terms of service – avodah.
In Genesis 12, when Abraham arrives in the desert where he serves this famous meal, he builds an altar to serve – la’avod – G-d. Abraham also characterizes himself as a servant – an eved – in our reading. In Genesis 18 verse 3, he says, "Adonai, im matzati chen b'einekha, al na ta'avor me' al avdekha. My lords, if I have found grace in your eyes, please do not pass your servant by." Here, Adonai refers to the travelers, not G-d, but I think the wordplay is deliberate. Abraham wants to bring people - my masters, adon-ai into his tent. But we hear a prayer to G-d, adonai. In seeking to serve other people, there is an opportunity to let the divine into our lives, too. We do not know much about what Abraham’s altar looks like, but I often imagine something that looks a lot like a table. The next time you find yourself at a table, as host or guest, notice the opportunity the table provides for intimate and holy connections to other people and G-d.
We are a part of Abraham and Sarah's legacy - our Tradition's first hosts. May we model our legacies after them. May our legacies always be marked by holiness. And may we define that holiness by our ability to bring people close to us, to serve G-d through serving other people.