A Taste Of Shabbos – Parashat Vayeira

What can we learn from this week’s parasha about the holiness of having guests for Shabbos? Talk about serious pain! Our patriarch Avraham was circumcised (don’t ask me how) at the age of ninety-nine and was sitting in the opening of his tent on such a scorching day that no travelers dared venture in any of the four directions that the doors of his tent were open to. His favorite mitzvah of how to imitate the Divine was welcoming guests but to his dismay, no one was in sight. Suddenly, perhaps through a holy breeze, G-d came to make a healing visit, as we are also commanded to do. The bliss was indescribable; maybe it was the winds of Gan Eden that swept him up to a higher and higher exalted state.

Then came sounds that interrupted that bliss. Footsteps of three men were heard passing by. Shaken from his euphoria, Avraham had to make a split second decision: to ignore the static or to get up and rush out to the men before they moved too far away. He chose the latter, and from this choice, the rabbis of the Talmud declared: ‘Greater is welcoming guests than receiving the face of the Shechina, the divine Presence!’ But of course dozens of commentators ask, ‘We learn that from Avraham, but from whom did Avraham learn it?’

One rather obvious response is one that a second grader guessed, that when Avraham says to Hashem, ‘don’t go away,’ he is pointing out that if the strangers leave, he will lose the chance to be hospitable, whereas Hashem can stay around as long as he wants. And, even if Hashem has ‘better things to do,’ Avraham will have chosen an option of being of help to others, even over receiving pleasure from his proximity to Hashem’s open communication.

Another dilemma comes up from a law that one can run to do a mitzvah even on Shabbos, but one should not flee from a mitzvah. Now even the Torah hadn’t been given yet, the sages say that Avraham trained his body to such an extent that it would conform to the mitzvot of the future.  The fact that the Torah says that Avraham ran after the three men shows that the mitzvah of welcoming guests was greater than communion with the divine Presence.

At any rate, regarding Shabbos, we see that welcoming guests and being in community is a very significant way to enhance the power of Shabbat. Furthermore, if one is not able to host guests, one should realize that accepting an invitation for a meal is also part of the mitzvah. There is a story about the famous Reb Zusia of Anipoli, who was very poor and a sought-after guest. He was once seen kissing his own hands after being hosted for a meal! When asked for an explanation, he countered, ‘I realized how valuable my own body is, because how else could I have shared in the mitzvah of welcoming guests?’ Finally, one could say that Avraham was not ‘abandoning’ G-d when he went out to the strangers; he was able to see the divine image of G-d in each person, and so was actually doing both at the same time: he was welcoming guests AND receiving the face of the Shechina simultaneously! If we could have that thought, either as a host or a guest in someone’s home on Shabbat, how elevated an experience that could be!