In this week’s Parasha we find Abraham, our first patriarch, in a long conversation with the Hittites, one of the peoples who lived in the land of Canaan. Abraham wants to buy a piece of land in Qiryat Arba, Hebron, to bury Sara, his wife, who recently passed away.
MONOTHEISM AND ANTISEMITISM
In the negotiations between Abraham and the Hittites, we see that the leaders of this pagan and very violent nation treated Abraham with great respect. And what is more: they call Abraham “Nasi Eloqim, “You are a representative of God among us”. This is very weird since pagans were not known for being open-minded about other “gods” . The mythological gods competed with each other to demonstrate their supremacy. And Abraham not only practiced a different religion: his religion was “monotheistic”, which means that excluded the ver claim that other gods exists. In other words, while other people proclaimed: “My gods are more powerful than your gods”, the religion of Abraham implied that: “Your gods, simply, do not exist”. This should have been considered by the Hittites as an offensive cult. And I assume that they knew that Abraham was a “monotheistic activist”, an iconoclast that had destroyed the idols of his own father! For this vert reason, monotheism, Jews were for centuries hated, persecuted and seen as closed minded and exclusivist.
Abraham was different even on the physical realm. Now he had circumcision, which made him different from others.
In those times there was no religious tolerance. We saw for example in the case of Yosef and his brothers in Egypt, that the Egyptians did not eat at the same table of Jews, because they considered their diet something abominable.
How was it then that Abraham, being so different to the Hittites, was respected by them, and surely by other peoples of the region too?
BELIEF or CHARACTER
I think that the Hittites respected Abraham because Abraham was kind, respectful and humble.
1. KINDNESS: Abraham, who was seen by pagans as the representative of God on earth, would have had every reason to act with superiority towards other peoples. Demand, for example, to receive offerings and gifts, as happened with Malqi Tsedq, a priest to whom Abraham gave his tithe. But Abraham, far from expecting others to assist him materially, dedicated himself to serving others. He sat at the entrance of his famous tent waiting to host travelers who needed shade, bread and water.
2. RESPECT: God spoke to Abraham, and promised him and his descendants the land of Canaan. But Abraham never behaved arrogantly in front of the inhabitants of Canaan. His unconditional faith in HaShem could have prompted him to say to the pagans who inhabited the land: “This land will be mine.” Abraham treated them with dignity and honor. Abraham represented the epitome of this type of noblesse oblige, “the closer you are to God, the more you need to respect and show deference to those who are less religious than you”.
3. HUMILITY: The humility of Abraham becomes much more evident when we compare Abraham, as our Sages did, with Bil’am. Bil’am was a pagan prophet. HaShem communicated with Bil’am, as he did with Abraham. But this privilege, instead of making Bil’am more humble, made Bil’am to look down at all other people. Bil’am said to himself: If God spoke to me, who could be compared to me? Bil’am’s arrogance made him behave with disdain toward others. He was not willing to help unless he saw some material gain for it. He was demanding and ambitious and had contempt for others. All this due to his “spiritual superiority”.
IMITATING GOD
Although Abraham had different ideas, which he knew were “superior” to the people who lived around him, Abraham was generous and he was willing to help anyone in need. Abraham even asked God to spare the lives of people who were spiritually and morally inferior to him: the people of Sodoma and Gomorra. Abraham treated everyone with respect and deference, regardless of the faith they professed.
This is why Abraham had no enemies and was never judged negatively for his different beliefs. On the contrary, thanks to his excellent behavior toward others, Abraham became the inspiration for other people: Abraham is really the biggest INFLUENCER ever, who taught the world to identify the true and only God.
