Perashat Vayera 5779

Perashat Vayera 5779

Abraham is promised that his children will be like the stars in the heavens and like the sand on the seashore. Yet, as we are all too well aware, we Jews are amongst the smallest of nations. What happened to God's promise?

Henny Machlis left this world three years ago, but her impact on the way we see the mitzvah of Hachnasat Orchim, inviting guests, is still with us to this day.
 
I will never forget taking an entire group of students to the Machlis home all those years ago. There were so many people there that it felt like you needed a shoe horn to squeeze us all in! There were probably around 150 people tightly packed into their dining/living room. Rabbi Mordechai Machlis told us to wash Netila before Kiddush, because once we sat down, it would be impossible to get up again! Industrial sized pots of food simmered quietly in the kitchen as her many kids directed an army of volunteers who passed out the never-ending trays of food to the far corners of the room. EVERYONE was welcome here, religious boys from yeshiva, girls from the IDF, random Birthrighters the Rabbi picked up at the Wall, a trip I was running for guys and girls to check out yeshivot and seminaries in Israel, a guy with his whole face covered in tatoos. I even saw a priest eating Kugel! MAD.

How could there be so much room in a person's heart? The walls seemed to expand so much it was as if they weren't there. As I sat there watching this beautiful chaotic scene of two special people's love for the world, it struck me. I'd seen these walls before, in our books.

This family were superhumans, no doubt. But they had inherited that gene. 
You see, before there was Henny and Mordechai, there was Abraham and Sarah. They taught us what a Jewish home was supposed to look like. We are taught that their tent was open on all four sides, a home without walls, so that any person could access their love and hospitality without deviating from their own path. They were accepted and loved as they were, and it was only after there was food in their stomachs and love in their hearts that Abraham and Sarah would speak to them of a higher purpose and a divine plan. That message and credo has reverberated through 3500 years of parents and their children, until it was picked up by Henny and Mordechai. I was looking at the legacy of the first Jews to walk the earth.

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." 

I remember hearing that quote attributed to Teddy Roosevelt, John Maxwell and many others, but people also don't care who said these things. They care more about who did them. I doubt that anyone thinks that Henny A"H and her righteous husband Mordechai Yblt"a said those words. They were too busy fulfilling them. 

The commentators express a beautiful idea, the blessing here was not in quantity but in quality. Abraham was told that his children would shine like the stars. Nice. 
But if that's the case the sand on the seashore is a less than glamorous follow-up, isn't it? I wonder if Henny and her magnanimous home might answer this one for us. 

You see, the blessing was to be like the sand on the seashore specifically and not like all of the sand in the world, because there is one difference between a grain of sand elsewhere and by the water. The sand at the sea's edge is stuck together. The water ensures that no grain stands by itself. Abraham's children would shine like the stars when they would be like that sand; together, loving, accepting and encouraging one another and tearing down walls.

Henny, you were and always will be a star. Each of us has the genetic material within us to emulate the greatness of our forefathers, the great Tzadikim of years gone by. It's in our blood, and in our mother's milk. We just need to stand together and shoot for the stars.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Shlomo Farhi