ONE CREATOR
Abraham Abinu discovered God by observing Creation. “There must be an Intelligent Creator,” Abraham reasoned, Someone who brought this wonderful world into existence (יש אדון לבירה). This idea, already very innovative, was followed by another revolutionary declaration by Abraham: “There is only one God.” Against all his contemporary logic, Abraham affirmed that opposing natural forces are not a reflection of gods fighting against each other. In Abraham’s view, light and darkness, health and disease, and birth and death came from the same Source. Believing in only one God was insane! Perhaps blasphemy and a lack of respect for the other gods because Abraham’s God demanded exclusivity.
GOD IS INVISIBLE
And as if this was not enough, Abraham also claimed that idols were false representations of God. “The true God cannot be seen. He does not have a body. He is invisible,” Abraham affirmed. This statement was the most dramatic one. Today in 2022, we understand God’s invisibility without any problems. We know, for example, that radio waves, microwaves, WiFi, cellular technology, etc, are invisible to our eyes. Many things we don’t see exist in a dimension that we cannot perceive with our eyes. But 4,000 years ago, who would believe in something that cannot be seen, touched, or represented? Who would believe that something or someone invisible is responsible for the existence of everything visible? I would say that this was the most spectacular innovation of Abraham’s monotheism and the most difficult idea to explain to others.
HE CARES, AND HE LISTENS TO US
But there is an aspect of Jewish monotheism (or Jewish theology) that, according to the literal reading of the biblical text (peshat) Abraham Abinu only discovered over time. That the Creator “cares” about human beings, and He intervenes in our lives and might even change the natural course of events when we ask Him to do so. It seems that at the beginning, Abraham was not fully aware of this and that is why Abraham did not pray to God when he needed His intervention. For example, Abraham leaves the comfortable life of Haran. He emigrates to Israel, and when he arrives, the land suffers a severe drought, and he decides to emigrate to Egypt, and once there, his wife Sarah is kidnapped. Now, in both instances, Abraham did not pray. Abraham did not ask God to grant him the blessing of the rain, nor did he implore God to help him get his wife Sara back. Why?
SUFFERING WITHOUT PRAYING
The text’s silence indicates that Abraham did not fathom that a human being could ask God for His intervention to change a natural or a personal event. If we put ourselves in the context of Abraham’s generation, pagans did not expect the gods to care about humans. First, the gods always demanded gifts and sacrifices from men and had no empathy, love, or concern for human beings. These mythological gods were very busy fighting against each other and had no interest in helping men. On the contrary, they sometimes competed with humans for natural resources such as rain, light, or women. Amid a pagan society, praying must have been entirely counterintuitive And something that Abraham could not deduce from his intelligence or observation. Abraham had to be instructed by God to pray.
THE BEGINNING OF THE PRAYER
Following the literal sense of the text strictly, it is God who first mentions the concept of prayer (lehitpalel). When Sara was kidnapped a second time by the monarch of Gerar, Abimelekh God punished the king with severe afflictions and appeared to Abimelekh in his dream. God reveals to the king that Sara is a married woman. Abimelekh says that he did not know that, and then God tells him what to do (Genesis 20: 7) “Now, return the woman to her husband, who is a prophet, and [ask him] to pray for you and you will not die” Genesis 20:17: “Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelekh.” This is the first formal prayer in the Tora. Previously, Abraham invoked God’s name (vayqra beshem HaShem; nebarekh sheakhalnu mishelo, tiquen tefilat Shacharit, etc.) to recognize Him and to announce His existence to the rest of the world. And he also intervened in Sodom and Gomorrah, questioning Divine justice and negotiating the salvation of the righteous, but technically he did not pray. It seems God taught Abraham to pray (as He did with Moshe and the 13 middot). Abraham then learned that it is possible to pray to God and expect, for example, that He would change the natural course of a disease and cure a human being, like Abimelekh, thanks to his prayer.
APPRECIATING PRAYER
We are familiar with prayer, and it seems natural that God would care about and listen to us. But listening to prayers is not something we should naturally expect from the Creator of the universe. Prayer is an incredible privilege and a gift given to us because HaShem loves us as a parent loves his children. Abraham and his followers learned this lesson very quickly. In this week’s Parasha, Chaye Sare, we find Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, praying and asking the Creator’s assistance to find a suitable wife for Yitschaq. Later, we find Yitschaq praying for a son. And Yaaqob praying for Divine protection. And the rest is history…
