By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
Avrohom was sitting at the entrance of his tent, in the heat of the day, recovering from a painful procedure at an advanced age. He could have been forgiven for remaining inside, resting and tending to himself. Instead, the Torah tells us, “Vayisa einov vayar.” Avrohom sat outside, lifted his eyes, and looked outward. When he saw three strangers approaching, he ran toward them, welcomed them, offered them food and drink, and concerned himself with their needs.
The image that the Torah uses to depict Avrohom Avinu is that of a person who is always looking beyond himself.
Chazal tell us that Avrohom’s home had openings on all four sides to make it easier for guests to feel welcome and to enter. Avrohom’s tent was not a fortress into which he sought retreat from the world. Avrohom understood that the service of Hashem does not mean withdrawing from responsibility for the people around him.
That message becomes even more powerful later in the parsha, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Avrohom what is about to happen to Sedom.
Avrohom could have responded with silence. Sedom was the antithesis of everything he represented. It was a society built on cruelty and corruption, a place whose very name became synonymous with moral depravity. Avrohom had no personal responsibility for its inhabitants, and he certainly had no reason to defend their way of life.
Yet, when he hears that Sedom is destined for destruction, he immediately begins to plead with Hashem not to destroy the city.
Avrohom cannot stand quietly when other human beings are at risk. He pleads. He bargains. He asks whether fifty tzadikim can save the city, then forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and finally ten.
Avrohom did not know the people he was advocating for, and it is very likely that he knew they were totally unlike him. He was advocating for human beings simply because they were human beings.
Avrohom’s greatness was not simply that he was a righteous tzaddik. His greatness was that he understood that righteousness carries responsibility. A person who knows the derech Hashem cannot live only within the boundaries of his own private life. He must look outward and ask what kind of world he is helping to create.
The work of refining middos requires a person to accustom himself to caring about others, so that the needs of another person become as important to him as his own needs.
Rav Moshe Braverman of Yerushalayim was invited to attend a gathering in a nearby neighborhood to raise funds for a young almanah who needed financial assistance.
Rav Braverman stood up and said, “Whoever wishes to help this young almanah should leave.”
The people who had gathered to raise funds for the young woman looked at him in amazement and didn’t understand what he wanted from them.
When the hubbub calmed down, he continued. He said, “Those who should remain here are those who feel the pain of the young woman and her children as if it were their own pain and their own problem. I don’t want you here if you think that how this almanah should go on is her problem, but I’ll help her. You should only be here if you feel her problem as if it were your own, if you feel the children’s pain as if it were your pain.”
Rav Yisroel Salanter would say that, in our generation, a person cannot be a tzaddik nistar, a hidden tzaddik. There is simply too much to do, too much to accomplish, too many people who need help, and too many opportunities to bring Torah and kedusha into a world that desperately needs them. How can a person close himself within his own daled amos, devote himself exclusively to his private avodah, and still consider himself a complete tzaddik when there is so much good left undone?
Rav Yisroel did not merely preach this idea. He lived it. He left the familiar confines of Lita and traveled through Germany, Prussia, and Paris to reach Jews who needed guidance, strengthen their connection to Torah, and spread kedusha wherever he could. He understood that the responsibility of a Yid requires him to be concerned about the world around him and to reach out to others to make them and the world a better place.
This is one of the great differences between Avrohom Avinu and Noach, and why there are opinions in Chazal that if Noach had been in Avrohom’s generation, he would not have been considered a tzaddik.
Noach was a tzaddik who survived a corrupt generation. When the world around him descended into depravity, he was able to preserve himself and his family, to maintain his integrity amid a society that had abandoned its moral foundations. He remained a tzaddik tomim in a world of rishus and tumah. Hashem commanded him to build a teivah, enter it with his family and every type of creature, and remain inside it while the Mabul destroyed the world outside.
Avrohom was the av hamon goyim, the father of a multitude of nations. He did not only seek to protect his holiness from the world. He sought to bring holiness to the world, to teach humanity about Hashem, and to demonstrate through his own life what it means to live with chesed, righteousness, and moral responsibility.
Noach built a teivah. Avrohom built a tent.
The teivah had to be closed off from the world outside. Its walls were necessary for survival; they protected those inside from the destruction raging beyond them. Avrohom’s tent, by contrast, was open on all four sides. It was designed to welcome the stranger, to offer shelter to the traveler, and to create opportunities for people to encounter the goodness and truth that Avrohom embodied.
Noach’s greatness was that he remained a tzaddik despite the corruption surrounding him. Avrohom’s greatness was that he could not be satisfied with his own tzidkus while the world around him remained in darkness. It wasn’t enough for him that he discovered Hashem. He wanted to share that knowledge with as many people as he could. He dedicated his life to bringing others closer to Hashem.
The lesson is not that we should abandon the walls that protect our families, our communities, and our mesorah. Those walls are vital. The lesson is that they must not become the limits of our concern. We build strong Jewish homes and institutions so that Torah can flourish, but we need to care about the wellbeing of the world. We should have something to contribute to it, something to teach, something to share, and something to offer those who might otherwise never encounter the light of Torah.
A person can spend a lifetime perfecting his own daled amos and his home. But Avrohom Avinu teaches us that the ultimate test is what happens when someone approaches the entrance. Do we turn inward, satisfied with the spiritual world we have constructed for ourselves, or do we lift our eyes, recognize the needs of another human being, and make room for him in our lives?
The teivah saved Noach and his family from the Mabul and was necessary for that time. But following the Mabul, Avrohom’s tent became a model for a life devoted to bringing brocha to others.
Torah Jews know that we must guard our values, our homes, and our children. We cannot allow the culture outside our doors to dictate who we are. There is also a danger in believing that because we have built strong Jewish homes, nothing outside those homes matters. In fact, it does matter. The society in which we live affects our children. It affects our communities. It affects the safety and security of our families. It affects the ability of Torah institutions to function and of Jewish life to flourish. We may not control everything that happens around us, but we are not exempt from caring about it simply because we have our own private world.
Obviously, we are not responsible for everything that goes on, and we are not obligated to involve ourselves in every argument, but when we are given the ability to participate in helping the society in which Hashem has placed us, we must take advantage of the opportunity.
Avrohom’s tent had an entrance in every direction because wherever he looked, he saw another opportunity to do chesed, another person whose needs mattered, another responsibility that could not simply be pushed aside.
We, too, have our tents. We have our families, our shuls, our yeshivos, our schools, and our communities. We work hard to build walls that protect the values we hold dear.
But while we build those walls, we must have doors, because there are times we have to look out, reach out, and go out.
The society in which our children will grow up makes a difference, and to the degree that we can impact it, we should. The culture in which we live makes a difference, and if we can influence it and help improve it, then we should.
Avrohom Avinu teaches us that a life devoted to Hashem cannot be confined to our own spiritual growth and the welfare of our own families. We must do what we can to uphold the values of morality, decency, and responsibility that make a society better.
We have been blessed to live in a country where we can build shuls and yeshivos, educate our children in Torah as we choose, and practice our faith openly. These are extraordinary blessings, and we must never assume that they will always be taken for granted or that the conditions that have allowed Jewish life to flourish will continue without the efforts of those who cherish them. The future of our communities depends not only on what we accomplish within our own walls, but also on whether we take seriously our responsibility for the world beyond them.
We are already witnessing cracks in the very fabric of the freedom we have long cherished. The rising tide of antisemitism, the open hostility directed at Jewish communities, and the increasingly strident public condemnation of Israel are warning signs that we cannot afford to dismiss.
When hatred of Jews is normalized, when Israel is singled out for condemnation and the threats and violence directed against it are minimized or ignored, and when Jewish students and families must question whether they can live openly and safely as Jews, we must recognize that something fundamental is being eroded.
The flag of freedom still flies, but we cannot assume that the freedoms we have enjoyed will endure on their own. Preserving them requires vigilance, courage, and a willingness to stand up before the cracks grow into something far more difficult to repair.
That responsibility requires us to act. On Election Day, we must go out and vote, supporting candidates and policies that uphold the moral foundations of society, respect religious freedom, and help preserve an America in which Torah Jews can continue to live, learn, raise families, and transmit our mesorah to the next generation.
We cannot control every outcome, and we certainly cannot determine the course of history. But we are responsible for doing our part, using the opportunities available to us to protect what is precious and strengthen the society in which we have been privileged to live.
When we see one party stray and become home to antisemites, and welcoming to socialists and communists who despise us and what we stand for, we should seriously consider whether supporting its candidates is prudent.
When a party nominates and supports candidates who are hostile to the Jewish state and advances policies that conflict with our most deeply held values, we must be prepared to withhold our support. When a party opposes efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring the nuclear weapons it seeks to use against Israel, we must have the courage and conviction to vote accordingly. And when candidates promote positions that undermine traditional family values and the moral principles upon which a healthy society depends, they should not expect to receive our votes.
Avrohom Avinu did not regard the condition of the world as someone else’s concern. Neither can we. We must remain steadfast in our commitment to Torah and avodas Hashem, while recognizing that this commitment carries with it an obligation to help shape the world around us. We must educate our children, strengthen our communities, stand up for our values, and exercise the civic responsibilities that are ours.
We must carry on perfecting our homes, yeshivos, schools, and shuls, and doing what we can to make the world a safer and better place, doing what we can to enhance the kochos of kedusha and preparing the world for Moshiach Tzidkeinu.
