This lecture takes up the study of chapter 39 of Bereshit Rabbah at the point where the midrash leaves the medallions of the four figures of Israel and turns to the blessing promised to Avram: veheyeh berakhah, “be a blessing.” The question that governs the whole session is the status of this word: is it a reward granted to a deserving man, or a command that hands him a burden? Rav Raphaël Benizri reads it the second way, and draws a consequence from it: the one who receives the covenant is bound first of all toward the nations, before he is bound toward his own. From this the lecture deduces what a conversion truly is, and what a mission without proselytism can be.
The Rav begins by recalling the four medallions studied the previous week — Avram, Yehoshua, David, Mordekhai — and then enters into the word barekh itself, from which he draws an agricultural meaning: layering, the branch that bends down into the ground and reproduces the tree a few meters away. From there he moves on to the letter added to the names of Avram and Sarah, to the verse of the generations of heaven and earth, and to the numerical value that links the blessing to the patriarch’s name.
The second half follows the midrash step by step: blessing as a duty to share, the example of Iyov, the command to bless left to man and the power to curse reserved to G-d, then Haran, the souls “made” in Haran, conversion understood as a re-creation, and finally the altar built in the land and the kinship between shem and mishkan. The questions from the audience then shift the discussion to the status of the nations: extras, or those to whom the message is addressed? The Rav answers with teaching by example and with the refusal to lecture others.
What this lecture teaches
The four medallions recall that every spiritual undertaking demands constant renewal. Avram bears on one face the wisdom of the old and on the other that of the young: one never reaches the end of the road, and without this constant breath of youth one settles into ritual, where the zaken (the elder) is condemned to die. Yehoshua is represented by an animal whose whole strength lies in its horns, but whose correct translation is neither the bull nor the horn: it is the oryx, which commands respect just as much by the beauty of its bearing. No display of strength may eclipse the inner dignity of a being — and the conquest of the land was indeed accompanied by three calls, leaving the choice between leaving with compensation, staying and submitting to the laws, or fighting. David leads the people with a staff and a satchel, as a shepherd, and that is how he builds his city. Mordekhai, finally, is the man of exile who did not abandon his people, who lives at the palace gates under a foreign name, who leaves his post to put on sackcloth and cover himself with ashes, and whose effort is crowned with gold.
To bless is to layer. The letters of the word barekh form a progression — two, twenty, two hundred — a doubling inscribed in the word itself. But the second meaning of the verb belongs to the vocabulary of agriculture: havrakhah designates the operation by which a branch of a tree is bent down until it enters the soil and reproduces, a few meters further on, the same tree. Blessing, then, is not a wish pronounced aloud; it is a capacity to reproduce, a way of extending oneself elsewhere without ceasing to be oneself.
Man’s kindness comes before G-d’s power of life. The midrash has the question asked which of the two blessings must precede the other, G-d’s or man’s, and the liturgy decides: in the Amidah, one says Magen Avraham (Shield of Avraham) before coming to the power to restore life. It is man’s kindness that ensures the continuity of life. The midrash confirms this through the effort of Avram, who sets out in search of G-d and does not wait for G-d to come to him.
The letters of the verse of the generations are those of Avraham. “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth behibar’am” (when they were created): the word carries exactly the letters of the name Avraham, and the heh is written there small, as if suspended, because in the beginning the original name is Avram. What was revealed through him is precisely the close bond between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and the material, between the world above and the world here below. The letter added to his name is the one that demands no effort, since it is nothing but a breath.
The yud is a point, the heh is a breath, and the Name of G-d remains unfinished. The point is that fictitious reality at the crossing of two straight lines, so small in substance that it becomes invisible; this is what man is called to find again in the meeting of the two hehs. The divine Name joins these worlds, but two of its letters as yet say nothing by themselves: they are not intelligible today and will only become so much later, when the Name will be one. The name we give to G-d is therefore truncated, and it is of this incompleteness that Amalek takes advantage — Amalek, who conceives of the world only on the basis of a black point and a hypothesis.
True faith does not dissolve into the divine: it brings the divine back to creation. That was the meaning of Yaakov’s ladder, which had to be seen descending as much as ascending. We ourselves are messengers, with degrees, with attributes that change little by little, and the variety of situations allows us to rethink, to correct, to adjust. One must therefore beware of an error: Judaism is not a philosophy or a school of thought; it is a reality of life. It is this reality that makes G-d dwell in the midst of the children of Israel and in this world, and that is why He is called Makom, the Place — He is the place of this world.
The blessing has the same numerical value as the name Avraham: two hundred and forty-eight. This means that the reality we aspire to embraces the whole body and our whole dimension: nothing remains outside it. If something does remain outside, it is because faith somewhere suffers from a lack of havrakhah — that is, of this capacity to double, to produce, to procreate. Not that procreation ceases: it suffers from a deficiency at one level or another. The spiritual sphere of man must always be seen alongside his physical sphere — failures in the order of procreation exist in the spiritual dimension of the human being as well.
“Be a blessing” is not a reward but a burden. G-d promises Avram nothing: He commands him to be a blessing. The midrash describes what this brings about — the sick man healed by Avram’s very conduct, the woman who could not bear children and became fruitful — and Rabbi Chanina adds that even the ships crossing the open sea were saved by his merit. In other words, the blessing in question here is that the Jewish people should rise to its responsibilities toward the whole of humanity. One cannot see things solely from within one’s own community or one’s own people.
One blesses even what one disapproves of, and the example of Iyov confirms it. The midrash asks how Avram can also bless ships carrying wine destined for idols; the answer is that one must bless in spite of this, and that when others realize we hold no grievance against them, that they enjoy our understanding and remain the object of our prayer, things change in nature. The midrash then cites Iyov, of whom the text says that the work of his hands was blessed: no one ever had to ask him twice for a coin. What he gave, he gave wholeheartedly — not to please, not out of pity, but with the will to sanctify G-d’s Name through this gesture of dignity.
As the ritual pool purifies, the blessed man is called to bring near those who are far. The text draws the comparison: just as the water purifies those who are impure, you too, by your gesture, bring near to their Father in heaven those who are far from Him, and you purify them. The midrash then has G-d say: until now it was I who needed to bless My world, because I created it and must bear responsibility for it; from now on it is for you to bear that same responsibility, and to bless whoever seems to you worthy of it. For that, a national reality is needed — a land from which the blessing spreads throughout the world.
Mordekhai only carried forward what Avram had begun. To the question of how one is to serve others, Rabbi Yehudah answers that he takes his example from the elders: Yaakov blessed Pharaoh, Yosef revealed to him the meaning of his dreams, Daniel interpreted those of Nevukhadnetzar; so when danger threatens the king, Mordekhai steps forward. Rabbi Nechemiah adds that it is not enough to say that all their wealth comes to them through us and that we are there serving them: when they enter into distress, we have the duty to intervene and to warn them. The circle runs from Avram down to this prototype of exile, and that is why we bless the authorities of the country in which we find ourselves.
Beside Avram stands a double, and his descendants will produce Bilam. Avram has a mask, an appendage, an accessory: it is Lot, who accompanies him, but whose way of adhering to the faith remains self-interested in one way or another. Only Avram truly sets out on the road that was shown to him. From Lot’s two sons will come forth, in the course of history, Bilam, who sought to curse and stigmatize Israel, and who hid a curse in the guise of a blessing. Our sages say that he saw with only one eye: one eye turned toward G-d, but the other turned toward himself and not toward others. His service of G-d served only his own interests and his own equilibrium — always to ask, never to give.
Blessing falls to man; cursing is left to G-d. The midrash observes that G-d considered the dignity of the righteous man before His own: of Himself He says that those who honor Him will be honored, and those who despise Him will be disgraced by others; but for the dignity of Avram He writes, “I will bless those who bless you” — and as for those who curse you, I will take charge of them Myself; it is not for you to do it. And the verb used has two meanings: I will curse them, but by opening their eyes, so that it will be for them a blinding light.
Haran is the place where people believe G-d has abandoned His world. Our sages translate Haran as the place where G-d’s anger rages: there people believe in G-d, but believe that He no longer looks upon the world and no longer watches over it. From there come the shepherds whom Yaakov will later ask where they are from, and who will answer: from Haran. The question then put to them concerns peace — are you truly seeking peace, an inner peace and a peace among yourselves? Do you care about establishing harmony among the people of the earth? — and it is at that moment that Rachel appears.
“The souls they made in Haran”: to convert is to re-create. The text does not use a verb of conversion but a verb of making, and where there is making there is creation: each time one brings an idolater near, it is as though one created him anew. The plural is significant: Sarah had the language suited to women, whom she shaped in her own way, and Avram the language suited to men. These are two different languages, and the lesson is that one must always seek the fitting language, rather than put forward a single text that would serve as the reference for every conversion. This re-creation starts from zero and develops only if it is sincere: what must be sought in it above all is authenticity, not a radical change overnight, which usually does not succeed.
We are exiled among the nations only so that others may join us — never in order to proselytize. It is not a matter of going out to fetch people, but that they, of their own accord, seeing our conduct, should draw near little by little. The Rav adds a warning about candidates who change their attitude overnight: these are very hard; they have joined us, but they risk tearing us down from within. Here again, what is needed is authenticity, sincerity and know-how.
The altar is not a place for repairing sins; it is a place of self-giving. Avram passes through the land, and he is told that this land will be given to his descendants; the first altar he builds serves not primarily for worship but for the announcement of this gift. The mizbe’ach (altar) is the place where man inserts himself into the trajectory of G-d’s thought and takes a commitment upon himself. As for the Name he proclaims, it is bound to a place: “In every place where I cause My Name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you.” That is the whole matter — to make one’s place of residence a mishkan, a dwelling where the divine resides, that is, the values we carry in the absolute, in a faith in a Creator who watches over His world.
The nations are neither extras nor pupils: halakhah concerns only us. To a listener who objects that the essential figure would be the Jew, and the non-Jew a mere extra, the Rav answers that without the non-Jews there would be no Jews, and that the world of halakhah (Jewish law) concerns only us, because we need many fences in order to focus our teaching. Of the rest of humanity, only the universal laws are required, the seven Noahide laws; converting others is not the goal, and those who venture to give moral lessons to others have mistaken their object. What is transmitted is conduct: others learn from it as children learn from their parents. That is why there is no need either for a vast territory or for great numbers — and to the question of whether the coming of the Mashiach depends on us, the Rav answers that yes, it always does, because Israel’s vocation is a teaching through self-commitment, not a teaching one repeats because one has studied it.
Full transcript of the lecture
Last week we stopped at those medallions, each one proper to one of four figures in the history of Israel. Avraham, with the wisdom of the old on one side and that of the young on the other face — to say that everything needs renewal. One never reaches the end of the road. A spiritual undertaking demands a constant breath of youth. Otherwise one settles into ritual, and the zaken, the elder, is condemned to die, whether we like it or not. Yehoshua is the one represented by a shor, an ox: he is a man of conquest. We know that the ox can be mu’ad, a habitual gorer — that is, it can gore; all its strength is in its horns, and it can gore a man. But the other face is rather that of a re’em. I told you the translation is difficult: some translate it as “horns,” others as “ox,” but in reality the right translation is the oryx, an animal that commands respect by its horns and by the beauty of its body. That is to say, no strength that one may deploy should in any way eclipse, or disregard, a dignity, an inner beauty of the being.
And this held even in the conquest of the land. You know very well that the conquest of the land was accompanied by three calls: those who wish may leave the country with compensation; those who wish may remain in the country and submit to its laws; and those who wish to fight — very well, they will bear the force of battle. So the possibility of confronting the enemy always remains, but with a hand held out to peace, to understanding. Then comes the medallion of David, who leads the people — he leads it with makel vetarmil, that is, a staff and a satchel, those of a shepherd, a true shepherd — and it is in this way that he managed to build the City of David. And we developed that notion of the migdal, the tower, which is likened to a neck. And then Mordekhai. Let us say that Mordekhai is the man of exile who did not abandon his people at the moment of crisis, a man who lives at the gate of the palace, a man who took a foreign name — for his name is that of Marduk. His niece, or his wife if you like, bears the name Esther, from “star,” but her true name, we are told, is Hadassah. And he knew how to save his people from extermination — beyond that, from the threats of extermination hanging over them. He knew how to take sak va’efer, to put on sackcloth and cover himself with ashes, leaving his post whatever it may have been; and afterward came ateret zahav, a crown of gold: his effort was crowned by the fact that the Jewish people came to be esteemed and appreciated by ordinary people, which then opened the way to a return to the promised land.
Following this comes Rabbi Yudan, who says: “I establish a blessing for you in the Shemoneh Esreh.” And now we come to the blessing. You know what a blessing is. In the letters of barekh — bet, resh, kaf — there is a doubling: bet is two, kaf is twenty, resh is two hundred; there is a progression taking place. But the second meaning, havrakhah, refers in agriculture to layering. This verb means that the branches of a tree manage to enter the soil and to reproduce, a few meters away, the same tree.
Why, then, should the people — should Avraham — become the bearer of the blessing? The Holy One, blessed be He, says to him, as it were: “I do not know whether My blessing should precede yours, or yours precede Mine.” And indeed, in the Amidah, the Shemoneh Esreh, we begin with Magen Avraham. We refer first to the chesed of Avraham, to Avraham’s attribute of kindness, and only afterward to G-d’s power to restore life. It is this kindness of man that ensures the continuity of life. And Rabbi Abahu confirms this by speaking of that effort of Avraham, who sets out in search of G-d and does not wait for G-d to come to man. And it is confirmed by the verse: “Eleh toldot hashamayim veha’aretz behibar’am” — אלה תולדות השמים והארץ בהבראם (Bereshit 2:4) — “These are the generations,” the engenderings, “of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” In the word behibar’am are, as it were, the letters that form the word Avraham — the very same letters — but the heh is written small, as if suspended, because in the beginning Avram is the original name of the one who opened the way to this knowledge of Hashem.
And we said that what Avraham revealed in faith is this close bond between shamayim va’aretz, between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and the material, between the world beyond and the world here below. Now, the letter that was added to his name is a heh. What is a heh? It is the only letter of the alphabet that demands no effort, because it is nothing but a breath. The yud, for its part, is a point. You know, a point is a fiction, found at the crossing of two straight lines. The substance of a point is so infinitely small that it becomes invisible to the naked eye. And this is what man is called to find again at the crossing of the two hehs.
That, moreover, is why the reality of this world — yud, heh, vav, heh: let us say heh, vav and heh — is the junction of these two worlds. And, incidentally, the heh can be spelled out in full either with an alef (ה”א), or with a yud (ה”י), or with another heh (ה”ה). […] These are the letters that govern the completion of the Name of G-d in this world. For Amalek perceives the presence of an absolute power only upon a kes — not a kisse: a throne without its alef. And so, starting from a black point, he can construct a whole hypothesis about the creation of the world.
The vav and the heh are the unrevealed letters of yud-heh-vav-heh. Yud-heh is an attribute of G-d, but vav-heh say nothing by themselves — not at the origin. But in the future, we are told, the yud, the vav and the heh will be transformed into yud-heh: it will be twice yud-heh, yud-heh. “Hashem will be one, and His Name one” (Zekharyah 14:9). Today we give a name to Hashem, but the name we give Him is truncated, because there is a vav in it that is not comprehensible, not intelligible — though it will become so much later. Now — ki beYah Hashem tzur olamim (Yeshayahu 26:4) — with Yah the Holy One, blessed be He, created this world. The world to come, with the yud — that is the point we spoke of a moment ago; and the heh is the letter that relates to this world.
Now, so that the world might start out anew: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth behibar’am” — be-heh bera’am, “with a heh He created them”; it is written with a heh. Do not read behibar’am but be’Avraham. The same letters, I said, are in Avraham: one must read “Avraham.” These are the two letters that were added — to Avraham on the one hand and to Sarah on the other. And indeed the text says: “Look now toward the heavens” — the text does not say hashamayim, “the heavens,” but hashamaymah, “toward the heavens,” with a heh. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: “With a heh I created My world; behold, I am adding a heh to your name, and you will be fruitful and multiply.” I will add this breath of the heh, and you will be assured of fruitfulness. Until then, Avraham could not ensure himself descendants. We will see, moreover, this barrenness proper to the patriarchs at the outset: there is a will to situate the child beyond his natural coming into the world, beyond the physical union — or the merely physical union, if you like — of the masculine and the feminine.
And the text specifies that this heh holds the first breath of the creation of this world. Now, we said that true faith is not one that dissolves itself into the divine, but one that brings the divine back into the reality of creation. That, indeed, was the purpose of Yaakov’s ladder: to see it, and to see [the angels] ascend. For the malakhei Elokim, the angels of G-d — we ourselves are malakhei Elokim, we are messengers of G-d. But among us, of course, there are ranks, there are levels; little by little we change our attributes, and thank G-d we do not live in uniformity — quite the contrary — but in the variety of many situations that allow us to rethink, to correct, to adjust. It means rising in the sense of height, on condition that one agrees to come down — and this in order to apply, in the reality of this world, the values we hold dear. Because — forget the idea that Judaism is a philosophy. It is not a philosophy; it is not a school of thought. It is a reality of life. And it is this reality of life that makes G-d shokhen betokh Benei Yisrael, dwelling in the midst of the children of Israel, dwelling in this world. That is why He is called Makom. Makom is a place: the Holy One, blessed be He, is the place of this world.
When we realize this, we become objects of blessing. I will come back to this again shortly. But the text further states — Rabbi Yudan says — that these letters are the equivalent of va’avarekhekha, “and I will bless you”: the numerical value of its letters totals 248, and that is the value of Avraham. What does this come to say? That this reality of man to which we aspire embraces our whole body, our whole dimension; there is nothing that lies outside this reality. And if that is the case — if something does lie outside — it means that our faith suffers somewhere from a lack of havrakhah. What is havrakhah? The capacity to double, that is, to produce, to procreate.
And indeed, it is not that procreation no longer exists; it is simply that it suffers from a deficiency at some level or other. You know, one must always see the spiritual sphere in which man moves alongside the physical one; and just as we can find failings and deficiencies in the order of procreation, whether physical or mental, these exist in the spiritual dimension of the being as well. And that is why this notion of berakhah is not a reward that G-d guarantees to Avraham. He commands him to be a blessing: veheyeh berakhah. The text of the midrash says […].
[…] In the end, through Avraham’s conduct, a sick man would look at him and be healed; the woman who could not bear children became fruitful. Rabbi Chanina said: even the ships sailing on the great sea were saved by the merit of Avraham. In other words, the blessing in question here is to see the Jewish people rise to its responsibilities toward the whole of humanity. I must not, as it were, see things only within my own community, within my own people.
No — one must see it very broadly, and keep on praying, and not yield to the temptation to curse or to despise, because that brings nothing; it diminishes the dimension, the imprint, of the divine. It is a powerful idea to know that Avraham’s power — or rather his duty — is first of all to bless others, and that others should find themselves blessed through him. Indeed, the midrash goes on to ask how it can be that he blesses ships carrying wine that is not kosher, yayin nesekh, wine offered to idols. The text answers that one must bless — because when things develop at the level of cheap wine, ordinary wine, wine turned to vinegar, then at that moment even the powerful ideas of the Jewish people, even the wine of the Jewish people, ultimately finds an easy outlet. It is within reach; it remains within reach. When others realize that we hold no grievance against them, that they enjoy understanding at various levels, and that they remain the object of our prayer, then by the force of things […]. And indeed the midrash goes on: Rabbi Yitzchak said, Iyov too did the same, as it is said, “the work of his hands You have blessed” (Iyov 1:10). No one who took a coin from Iyov ever had to come back and ask a second time, because what Iyov gave to another was given wholeheartedly — with the will not to please, not out of some notion of compassion, but with the will to consecrate the Name of G-d, the will to sanctify His Name through this gesture of dignity. And therefore the text invites us to say that this berakhah is a source of blessing: just as the pool, the mikveh, purifies those who are impure, so you bring near those who are far.
You too, by your gesture, are called to bring near those who are far and to purify them — to bring them near to their Father in heaven, to purify them. Rabbi Berekhiah said: it has already been said, va’avarekhekha, “and I will bless you” — why then does the text need to say veheyeh berakhah, “and be a blessing,” a blessing for everyone? He said to him: ad kan hayiti zakuk levarekh et olami, until now I needed to bless My world — to bless My world because I created it; I must bear My responsibilities toward this world. Now it is for you to bear these same responsibilities. […] And for this we need to situate ourselves within a national reality, if you like — a land through which this blessing is spread throughout the world.
And then: mikan ve’eilakh harei haberakhot mesurot lakh, “from here on, the blessings are entrusted to you”; man dechazei lakh levarekha barekh, “whoever seems to you fit to be blessed, bless him.” Whoever deserves the blessing in your eyes — bless. But then, if it is whoever deserves the blessing: you must bless him, since Avraham is the attribute of chesed, and this attribute of chesed, this attribute of kindness, makes no distinctions. We will see that Avraham, in the end, has a mask, he has a double — and this double is the other one, the one who accompanies him, because the other’s way of adhering to Avraham’s faith is self-interested in one way or another. Whereas as for Esther and Mordekhai — and always, in the end, this circle that closes from Avraham down to this prototype of exile, Mordekhai and Esther — this is brought in parallel to say that what Avraham was, starting from the land of Israel, is what later continued in Paras, in the exile of Paras and Madai, in the person of Mordekhai, with this will to remain and to serve other countries. And indeed we do this by blessing the authorities of the country when we are in galut, in exile. Why? Quite simply because we believe that wherever we are, we must distinguish ourselves by this will to give, to consecrate the Name of G-d — the Name we have, the one that was revealed to us, the one we have revealed — because that is the case of Avraham. And that is why, says the text, only Avraham undertakes this road, this movement of lekh lekha, as G-d told him, while the other remained an accessory, his appendage, isn’t that so? — But here there is a passage that was somewhat passed over; wait a minute, let us go back a little, because in your text — excuse me.
Yes, yes. Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Nechemiah — pardon me. Yes, there it is. How can we, in the end, go about serving all the others, when one is mahul, circumcised, and the other arel, uncircumcised — understanding by this that the one has the circumcision of the heart, of speech, of thought? Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Nechemiah. Rabbi Yehudah says: “Mizekenim etbonan” — “From the elders I gain understanding” — I take my example from the sages of Israel — “ki fikudekha natzarti,” “for I have kept Your precepts” (Tehillim 119:100). Yaakov blessed Pharaoh, as it is said, “And Yaakov blessed Pharaoh” (Bereshit 47:7). Yosef revealed to him; Daniel revealed to Nevukhadnetzar. Yosef revealed Pharaoh’s dreams to him; Daniel likewise interpreted the dreams of Nevukhadnetzar — “I too do the same.” […] So when a danger threatens King Achashverosh, Mordekhai steps forward.
Rabbi Nechemiah said […]. And when they enter into tzarah, into distress, we intervene, and we will intervene. It is not enough merely to say that all the wealth they have, they have thanks to us, and that we are here serving them. When they enter into tzarah, when they find themselves in a state of distress, we have the duty to warn them. So what emerges from this midrash is, first of all, the close bond that exists between this covenant that Avraham undertakes with G-d and that he commits, paradoxically, first and foremost toward all the nations — which means that the blessing is not a reward but a duty to share, a duty of sharing with others.
This is an essential idea. Now, I said a moment ago that the other one is indeed the other. That other, you know, gave birth in history, through his two sons, to Bilam. Bilam sought to curse Israel, to stigmatize Israel — as people seek to do today at the UN, don’t they? In full view of everyone, in the form of a blessing, he would hide a curse for the people. And that is why, concerning Bilam, our sages said — why was he shetum ha’ayin (Bamidbar 24:3)? He saw with only one eye, isn’t that so? One eye he kept toward G-d, he turned it toward G-d; but the other eye he turned toward himself, not toward others.
That is to say, this service of G-d was there only to serve his own interests, his own equilibrium: it is always in order to ask, never in order to give. Now, this heh is first of all a way of sharing even the bread of affliction with another. Yosef says to the Egyptians: “Heh lakhem zera” — here is seed for you (Bereshit 47:23); in this famine ravaging the land, here, I give you grain. That is the secret of this heh. I have already spoken to you of this distortion of the service of G-d. Now we must move on down the text. Rabbi Nechemiah says that the Holy One, blessed be He, considered the dignity of the righteous man more than His own dignity. For regarding Himself He said: “Those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me yekalu” (Shmuel I 2:30) — they will be disgraced, at the hands of other people.
But regarding the honor of the righteous man — regarding the kavod, the dignity, of the tzaddik — it is written, va’avarekhah mevarekhekha, “I will bless those who bless you.” Umekallelkha — those who treat you lightly, those who curse you — a’or: it is I who take charge of that; it is not for you to do it; you leave that to Me. And a’or has two meanings: I will curse them, but I will curse them by opening their eyes, so that it will be a blinding light for them. And now: “ve’et hanefesh asher asu beCharan,” “and the souls they had made in Haran” (Bereshit 12:5). It is in this way, we are told, that Avraham succeeded in drawing many people to himself. Haran — our sages translate it as the place where G-d’s anger rages.
Haran is the place where people believe in G-d but believe that G-d has abandoned His world, that He no longer looks upon it, that He no longer watches over it. That is Haran: the anger of G-d. But he managed to convert those very people. Me’ayin atem? “Where are you from?” — that is what Yaakov asks the shepherds, and they answer: “MeCharan anachnu,” “we are from Haran” (Bereshit 29:4). Then he says to them: hashalom lo? — are you truly seeking peace? Are you seeking an inner peace, and peace among yourselves? Do you care about establishing harmony among the people of the earth, the peoples of the earth? And then: “veRachel bito ba’ah,” and Rachel his daughter is coming (Bereshit 29:6). It is at that moment that Rachel springs forth before Yaakov — the idea in Yaakov derives from there. Rabbi Elazar ben Zimra said: if all the people of the world gathered together […]
If all the people of the world joined together to create even a small insect, they could not put a soul into it. And yet you speak of hanefesh asher asu, “the souls they made.” Now, we have said that where there is asiyah, making, there is creation. And you say that they made people? It means gerim — these are the converts they managed to draw to themselves. And why does the text not say “the souls they converted”? Had it said “that they converted,” it would be a reality to which they had, as it were, simply given another orientation. It says no. Why is the verb asu, “made,” used? To tell you that each time one brings an idolater near and converts him, it is as though one created him anew.
Now, why does the text speak in the plural rather than the singular? Rav Huna said: Avraham converted the men and Sarah the women. These are two different languages, and consequently: Sarah had the language suited to women, whom she shaped in her own way, and Avraham had the language fitting for men. That is the lesson: one must always seek to find the fitting language, and not venture to put forward a single text or book that would, in the end, be the reference for all conversions. Conversion is a re-creation, but one must know that this re-creation starts from zero, and it is called to develop to the degree that it is sincere. What must be sought in this conversion is first and foremost authenticity.
But one should not try to see in this creation a radical change overnight. That is difficult to obtain, and when it does happen, it generally does not succeed. That is why — for that reason — there is a double language in conversion. “Israel was exiled among the nations only so that converts might be added to them” — not so that we might practice proselytism, no: so that they be added of themselves, that of their own accord, seeing our conduct, they be added. They will draw near little by little — gerim, those who little by little adopt our way of life. But beware of those converts who change their attitude overnight […]: “kashim gerim leYisrael kesapachat,” converts are as hard for Israel as a skin affliction. They are truly hard; they have joined us, but in the end what they risk is tearing us down from within. One must take care.
And that too is the way to give […]: to give it with authenticity and sincerity on the one hand, and know-how on the other. “Vaya’avor Avram ba’aretz,” and Avram passed through the land (Bereshit 12:6). Avram passed through the land, and until then they still needed a right — a right of ownership over the land. “Vayera Hashem el Avram vayomer lezar’akha etten et ha’aretz hazot” (Bereshit 12:7): the Eternal reveals Himself to Avraham and says to him: to your descendants I promise this land. “Vayiven sham mizbe’ach,” and he built there an altar (Bereshit 12:7): this is the first altar that was built and dedicated to G-d. It is not, in the first place, in order to serve the Holy One, blessed be He. Rather — al besorat Eretz Yisrael, for the tidings of the land of Israel.
First of all for the announcement of the ownership of the land of Israel, of this gift of the land of Israel. Indeed, of those who built altars — Avraham built three altars; Yitzchak too built an altar, and Yaakov also built one — but always an altar. A mizbe’ach is the place of self-giving, the place where man inserts himself into the trajectory of G-d’s thought and takes the commitment upon himself. The mizbe’ach is not there to correct sins, because when one looks a little at what happened with the patriarchs, who began with places of divine residence — and we will speak about this next week, because I feel that time is running out — the place itself was converted, because that place is Beit El.
And indeed, the shem — what is the shem? “And he called upon the Name of G-d.” What is the shem? “Bekhol hamakom asher azkir et shemi avo elekha uverakhtikha,” “In every place where I cause My Name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you” (Shemot 20:21). The shem, the Name, is bound to a makom, to a place: that is what the shem is. It is to make of this place of residence a mishkan — and this is the identity between shem and sham. Sham, “there,” is the place that has been cut off from this divine presence: over there, a lost corner. The mishkan is the place where the divine resides. And the divine resides — these are the values we carry in the absolute, in a faith in a Creator of the universe who watches over His world.
“Mereshit hashanah ve’ad acharit shanah,” “from the beginning of the year to the end of the year” (Devarim 11:12). Well, I will stop here; if you have questions, with pleasure. — What about the relationship to the goyim, the nations? You present things a little as though we were shepherds and they a kind of flock; we would be there to bless them, to give to them, to bring them abundance. Yet I have always had the impression, in halakhah, when I studied, that they are rather the extras in the film. The actors are the Jews — and I would say this somewhat provocatively — but they are there, in fact, to be our test, in quotation marks. When one looks at the level of Shabbat, of eruvin, of all the laws, in fact, all the laws of our traditions, they have very different values, in quotation marks, and the essential, in fact, lies with us; and when we must behave positively toward non-Jews, it is above all in order to improve ourselves.
It is because we must be like Moshe with regard to the water: he was not to strike the water, in order to elevate himself and to respect himself. In the same way, we as Jews must elevate ourselves by behaving well toward non-Jews — but rather for the sake of another value than the value of the non-Jews in themselves. When you present things in your lecture on the berakhah, I have the impression that it is a somewhat different vision. We would be — this is the vision I learned when I was younger — the scouts of the world, in quotation marks, the people who bring blessing to the world and who enlighten the world. But I always had the impression that there is rather another vision — let’s stay with halakhah — which is that the essential is the Jew, and the non-Jew is there, in fact, in quotation marks, as an extra: important, of course, but as an extra.
— No. Without the non-Jews, there would be no Jews. And when you refer to the world of halakhah, it concerns only us, because we need many fences in order to focus our teaching. Halakhah relates only to us. Likro beshem Hashem, to call upon the Name of Hashem — to spread faith in G-d and to make this world remain a mishkan. That is our task. That is to say, in the same way, the demands you make of yourself you will not make of others. They concern only you. Others you must look at through other — I would say — other glasses, because they are never in the same movement of thought as you. There is an approximation, but this approximation is itself a level of thought, and I accept it, because there is a maturity that the other has not reached, or that I have not reached.
There is a development, and I must take this development into account. I have already told you that from the rest of the world, from the rest of humanity, we demand only the universal laws, that is, the seven Noahide laws. We are not obliged to convert them to Judaism. That is not the goal. The laws we observe are, in the end, proper to us alone. They do not bind the non-Jew; that is why he may turn things off on Shabbat, and he may do certain tasks for us if they were requested well in advance. That is a fact. If he is working for us, he is not bound by the same restrictions that we are obliged to respect.
And as for the expression “scouts of the world” — scouts in what sense? Are we going to give them lessons? Certainly not. Certainly not. There are people who venture to go and give lessons in the Noahide laws to others — and in what way is that the goal of the people of Israel? No: it is through our conduct that this must be transmitted. As I said a moment ago, I do not teach Judaism as a philosophy or a theory, as a way for others to be. Others draw the lesson through me — from what I respect, what I do, what I hold in regard. Your children do not understand everything, but by watching their parents, little by little, they absorb teachings from their conduct, good or bad.
So it is the same thing — the commitment of the people of Israel is the same thing, and that is why we do not need a very vast territory; we do not need to be numerically great. Goy gadol, “a great nation” — this is a gedulah, a greatness, proper to Hashem: “Gadol Hashem umehulal me’od,” “Great is Hashem and highly praised” (Tehillim 48:2). It is a greatness worthy of praise, and that is the greatness we are speaking of. And this is important in the very way one practices one’s Judaism: knowing that every act I perform is not devoid of meaning; it is meant to be an example — and that is important; it will awaken something. — May I ask you one more small question, please? There is something I don’t understand: the Mashiach, the coming of the Mashiach — we came very close several times in Jewish history, and it always depends on us, in fact; it always depends on us.
So if I speak from that point of view — if the essential thing is to reach the world to come and that depends on us — aren’t we the essential, in fact, as far as changing the world is concerned? And so, once again, I come back a little to my earlier question, I’m sorry, but… — It is we who bear the responsibility. — Pardon? — “Ein ben David ba ela bedor shekulo zakai o bedor shekulo chayav”: the son of David comes only to a generation that is entirely meritorious, or to a generation entirely guilty. Now, entirely guilty — then he will come like a firefighter into the middle of a fire. That is to say, then it is we who will suffer. That is why Rabbi Yochanan said: I do not want to witness the coming of the Messiah — because I don’t know whether I will be put in the hot seat and have to render an account, and I will not be able to, because I have not done my duty.
Now, if the generation is entirely meritorious, what will he come to do? — The generation of the Jews, or the generation of the whole world, entirely meritorious — doesn’t it depend on us all the time? — It depends on us all the time. It depends on us all the time. That is the choice of the people of Israel: to be kohanim. We were given a vocation of teachers, a vocation of priests if you like — though I do not like that word — but this for ourselves. It is teaching by example, teaching through the commitment of the self. It is a teaching that commits me; it is not a teaching that I repeat because I have learned my lesson and am going to pass it on. No: what I do not have, what I do not manage to do, what I have not attained by myself, I must not teach, because that is a teaching that makes me ridiculous.
It is a teaching that puts me into question, that calls me back into question. Todah rabbah, thank you very much. Another question? — Thank you, Mr. Benizri — thank you for this cure of rejuvenation. I remember that at school, when you taught us, you often spoke about conversions. You always told us — and your words today reminded me of it — that the only conversions accepted from the standpoint of the Jewish religion were not conversions out of love but out of philosophy. That is why converting to the Jewish religion was so difficult: one had to become so steeped in, so integrated into, all this thought, all these berakhot, all this philosophy, all these ways of conduct.
— Yes, but careful: out of this mode of action, this mode of commitment — not out of philosophy. Out of commitment. — Yes, precisely. — Judaism — or rather the revelation of G-d at Sinai — came to put an end to all philosophies, to all beliefs. There are many beliefs. Mind you, other civilizations are not devoid of values; they carry values. Of course. They carry values, but what is lacking is this application here below, rather than leaving it simply at the level of an ideal of life, of a philosophical thought. […] A commitment that speaks — excuse me. However many lessons one gives a child at home, if he does not see, through his parents, things being done in reality, he will not believe at all; he will take nothing in. It is the parents’ commitment that marks the child deeply in his development and challenges him to go forward, and beyond what his parents did for him. And it is not because he has chosen a career that is far more esteemed or far more visible from outside that he is the successful child of the family. The child’s success does not lie in the diplomas he has managed to gather, to obtain, but above all in the values he carries within him — in the way he becomes worthy of all that he has learned.
— Thank you for these beautiful words. — Thank you very much. I leave you. — Thank you infinitely. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much. Thank you, goodbye. Until next time. Until next time. — Thank you for these words that give us food for thought and stay with us every day. — Shavua tov. Shavua tov. Shavua tov.
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