Avraham’s War Against the Four Kings: Messianism and the Kingship of Heaven

The repetition of the parashiyot, the weekly Torah portions, corresponds to taking up once more a perspective on the history of man as Israel, and of Israel among all the nations. The Torah has presented to us the history of the Patriarchs: individuals whose lives marked an important stretch of history, with long-term repercussions that remain burning realities today. That is to say, the story of Avraham did not happen once; it happens again, it is relived era after era, in our own century. The same is true of the story of Yitzchak, of Yaakov, of Yosef. The whole book of Bereshit is called Sefer HaYashar, the Book of Uprightness, but in truth it should be rendered as the mirror of history — not only of the Jewish people, but of humanity as a whole.

For what are we in reality within the history of humanity? We are Avraham, we are Yitzchak, we are Yaakov, we are Yosef, we are the shevatim, the tribes, and nothing more than that. And yet it seems as though the whole history of humanity revolves around our own reality. And one wonders: are we ourselves ultimately aware of this participation in history, or is it imposed upon us, in a way that goes beyond the framework of any voluntary commitment on our part? This is why the whole journey of the Patriarchs within humanity, in its first stammering beginnings, speaks to us. It speaks to us because at times we have the impression that we are the actors of this history.

But in the end there are events that truly escape our grasp, that are independent of our will, and that make us, in spite of ourselves, participants in a history we did not want; and precisely because it was imposed upon us, we have been obliged to take our responsibility within it and afterwards to claim it as our own. Let me explain. We are now analyzing the chapter of the war — the first war after two thousand years of human history, the first war in which Avraham is involved. In reality, it is not he who starts the war. It is not he who mobilizes his followers, his disciples, his soldiers to wage war against the other nations. No: it is the nations who dispute among themselves the monopoly over the history of humanity, those who truly want to give that history a direction according to their ideology, their outlook, their beliefs — and Avraham is drawn in indirectly.

Thus Avraham resolved to follow his thinking through to the end and not to bow his head before the current then emerging within humanity, which consisted in truly isolating spiritual life from material life, from national life, from economic life — in ensuring that there would be a migdal va’ir, a tower and a city, that would not be governed by any outside power at all, but would be the work of man alone. This is a constant in the history of humanity: nations that fight over empires and want to stamp their history with their own way of seeing things, independently of any religious belief — “one must not mix them, one must separate religion and state.” And the author, the leader of this ideology, is Nimrod.

Nimrod, as his name indicates, is aware that there is a Creator, that this world as it was conceived obeys a consciousness, a supreme universal consciousness — but it is not that consciousness, he holds, that should hold the keys to the history of humanity. Man must take his destiny in hand and forge it by himself. These are notions we still face today: must religion truly be separated from the state? Is it possible? It might truly have been possible, were it not for events that exceed our predictions and sometimes thwart all our plans. When it comes to wars, […] it seems as though someone is pulling the strings from one side and from the other, and we are caught in the middle of this situation. In this race for power, for kingship, for control over the destiny of humanity, the sovereignty of the Creator of the universe would have to be recognized.

That is Malchut Shamayim, the Kingship of Heaven. The Kingship of Heaven is that which brings back to itself the entire project of creation as it was conceived, yet leaves in the hands of man the power to choose: to be the partner of the Kingship of Heaven or, heaven forbid, its challenger. That is why I say that Nimrod, who had manipulated the whole society of his time, was aware of this divine presence that governs the world — and yet, in spite of this, he claims power, his own power. You see, there is no confirmed kingship unless there is a choice by the people, unless there is free will. So free will is precisely the ability to contest the kingship of G-d — and this ability the Holy One, blessed be He, left in the hands of man.

Nimrod knew how to make use of it. For this purpose he used the first garment that man made — that G-d made for man — after the sin of Adam: kotnot or, garments of skin, spelled with an ayin. It is an opaque tunic, a tunic that creates, as it were, a screen between man, the creature of G-d, and the Creator. Yet it was meant to reach a certain transparency, to become kotnot or with an aleph, garments of light, as Rabbi Meir said. This screen had to be worked upon until it became transparent like a rakia, like the sky. But man, unfortunately, uses this free will above all to assert himself — with regard to himself, with regard to society, and even more so with regard to us. He knows he is incapable of managing everything; he knows there are black holes in his own life; he knows his limits, and in spite of that…

Now take note: this is not only a matter between the Jewish people and the nations; it is a matter within the people of Israel itself. Listen to what is taught […] on the war waged by Avraham against the four kings, which, as we have seen, has a messianic character. Why? Because it brings us face to face with peoples who deny us. Babel condemns us to exile: we have no right to be. Then we must face Persia — the Iran of that time — which does not recognize our very existence: we must be removed entirely from the stage of history, physically. That is the story of Haman, the story of Amalek. Then you have Yavan: we have left traces in history, we have contributed something to it on which they themselves feed, but the root must be cut off — that is the case of Yavan, of Greece. And finally Edom, which is the sum of them all: it is Edom that denies us the right to a land, the right to our existence as Jews, as descendants of Avraham; it contests our heritage and wants to substitute something else for it. Now tell me: are these three currents not found, to some extent, even within the body of the Jewish people itself?

There are those for whom, in the end, the idea of a national land is secondary; theirs is the very apology of exile, of life in exile. For others, asserting oneself as a Jew has also become something that perhaps ought to be erased, replaced by a nationality pure and simple. Others dismiss the history of the Jewish people — what it has given, its legacy, its heritage. Unfortunately, there are many people whom this does not interest at all. On this the Likutei Moharan said something wonderful. You know the four sons of the Pesach Haggadah: they are these very four kings who fight against Avraham. Yitzchak is the wise son, Yishmael is the wicked son, the simple son is Yaakov, and Esav is the one who does not know how to ask.

You find them as well in the four-fold unfolding of the festivals, for in each great festival there are fours. There are the four cups of the Pesach Haggadah, the four stages of liberation. On Shavuot there are the four modes of reading and interpreting the Torah: you may adopt a literal reading, an allusive one, a mystical one. And on Sukkot you have the four species, which represent the four tendencies within society itself. What this means is that messianism — which is, in a sense, the object of this war — is a war inside the Jewish people as well as outside it: inside, among the disciples of Avraham, and also with those who, like Lot, have broken away from him. So the question arises: what war is this? Here there are four kings waging war against five kings whom they seek to subjugate. But these four kings in themselves form a league set against the very existence of Avraham as such. But Avraham — behibar’am: “Eleh toldot hashamayim veha’aretz behibar’am,” “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created” (Bereshit 2:4).

What does behibar’am mean? “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, behibar’am” — at the moment of creation? No. It means: in creating themselves, in bringing themselves into being. Avraham is someone who recreates himself, who remakes himself. He is cast into the fiery furnace; he can come back to life, rise again from his own ashes and remake history once more, because the power he holds is not in the weapon — “ve’al charbecha tichyeh,” “by your sword you shall live” (Bereshit 27:40). It is not the sword. No: it lies in speech, in language. At the level of language: the generation of the Tower of Babel wanted to build a city and a tower. And the city, it has been said, is the Ir David, the City of David.

And the tower — the migdal — is the migdal of “kemigdal David tzavarech,” “your neck is like the tower of David” (Shir HaShirim 4:4). The tower, take note, is the Sanctuary, which forms the junction between heaven and earth, between spirit and body — between heaven and earth. It is what allows, as it were, this passage, and makes it possible to establish that the body is one, with all its four components. Four components: […]. The yechidah and the chayah are something that goes beyond this. But if we let these four levels function separately, it is a catastrophe. Then there is no “venahar yotze me’Eden,” “a river went out of Eden” (Bereshit 2:10) […] within us.

There is no longer that river flowing out of Eden. There is no longer that light which… One must be able to gather things together in a single impulse, in a single movement of thought; to realize their unity. And we do not do it. And that is the problem of Lot. Of course we run the risk of being a distorted identity of Avraham. Lot is a false identity of Avraham: he resembles him, but he has already set up limits and separations. And this too is the isolation one can practice on many levels, in our way of living, in our way of conducting ourselves: when we limit ourselves to one aspect of things and forget to see everything as a whole, in its unity.

Then the nations can attack this. For what is Christianity? It is an aspect that was amputated from the body of Jewish thought. The same holds for each of the religions: they take one current of Judaism itself and place a particular emphasis upon it, pushing everything else, so to speak, into second place. It is an aborted messianism. For messianism unfolds in different stages, on the personal plane and on the collective plane. Enough of thinking of a messiah who will come from outside! The messiah — we bring him ourselves, we make him come. But to make him come, we must learn to use […]. Even when “hayadayim yedei Esav,” when the hands are the hands of Esav, the voice must be joined to the voice: “hakol kol Yaakov,” the voice must be the voice of Yaakov (Bereshit 27:22) — the voice of study, the voice of prayer, the voice of communication among all the components […], so that a shirah, a song, emanates from the whole.

It is not a reduction of all forces or all currents to a single current. It is the subordination of all ideologies, of all currents of thought, to Malchut Shamayim, the sovereignty of Heaven, the sovereignty of G-d. That is what characterizes the one war Avraham waged: to recover the hostages, the hostages that had been taken. Yes, we are being held hostage — not only physically: we are held hostage intellectually, we are held hostage spiritually, […] because we have lost the ease of communicating with all those who once formed one body with us and who, little by little, have distanced themselves, drifting away until they reached the point of Sedom. Lot’s choice is no accident. For Sedom is sought after: it stands for justice, for each man realizing himself by his own means and developing his own faculties, so that he does not live at the expense of another; if he wishes to live on charity, there is no place for him. He must work at all costs and eat the fruit of his labor. It is a system. But by pushing the reasoning all the way, one ends up facing hard necessities oneself, because at a certain moment we lose our ability to work, we lose our ability to fulfill our lives. Not everyone has the same abilities, and however much one wants to secure one’s future, one will always depend either on society or on one’s own children.

[…] and that love must enter into justice. But the justice of Sedom is also a shevi, a captivity — it too is a hostage. For we consider: yes, but if Avraham intervenes on behalf of Sedom, it is because he considers that Sedom can be defended — there may be tzaddikim, righteous people, in Sedom; there may be tzaddikim. Well, provided that one opens windows here and there. But when one shuts oneself off from life and refuses to move, then one ends up at the other extreme of love — and the other extreme of love is incestuous love, which led Lot’s daughters to seek to conceive with their father in a state of semi-consciousness or complete unconsciousness. That is what happens each time messianism loses its own substance.

So to reassemble the whole and to wage the battle for its reassembly — this too is something to which the Holy One, blessed be He, has obligated us. For Avraham finds himself in this war even though it is the kings who are fighting one another, and in the end he becomes its principal actor. The principal actor, because nothing that happens in the world is foreign to the destiny of the Jewish people. We must get this into our heads: we are directly and indirectly involved in everything that befalls humanity. To confine ourselves to silence, to want to withdraw behind purely national borders, or purely spiritual borders, or purely intellectual borders, is to condemn the Jewish people to permanent persecution, in an exile that passes from one stage to another and forces each new generation to resize itself, to recreate itself, to regenerate itself.

This is the theme […] of this chapter 15: in the end, from the battle he waged, there is nothing to expect. Nothing to expect. They want to give gifts, they want to give recognition to Avraham, and Avraham says no. Admittedly, one cannot demand this of everyone. What do people want? There are those who use faith to improve their situation, to meet this need or that one. That may be a favor one asks for; it cannot be the foundation of a reality of its own. He gave — gave and gave: He gave a world, He gave a Garden of Eden, the way a father gives, ready to give everything to his child.

A world founded on giving kindness at every level, with nothing in return. “Im michut ve’ad sroch na’al” — “not a thread nor a sandal strap” (Bereshit 14:23). […] “El Elyon koneh shamayim va’aretz,” “G-d Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth” (Bereshit 14:19) […]. “Vayiten lo ma’aser mikol,” “and he gave him a tenth of everything” (Bereshit 14:20): the question has been asked: who gave to whom? Was it the son of Shem who gave to Avraham? There are commentators who say: no, it was Avraham who gave — Avraham gave. And he does not do so in order to assert himself further over others. No — it is above all to serve the sovereignty, Malchut Shamayim, the sovereignty of G-d.

It is to teach people — “vayikra beshem Hashem,” “and he called in the Name of Hashem” — to teach people, the world, to lay claim to the Name of G-d, to lay claim to His presence, to associate Him with the destiny of His creation. That is the messianism at issue in this chapter, whose thread we try to follow at every turn, for there are different messianisms, which always present the same characteristics, so to speak, but at different levels. And little by little: in that era, humanity had a safah achat, a single language, whereas the promise is that one day He will give the nations a safah berurah, a clear language that makes communication easy — “likro chulam beshem Hashem,” “that they may all call on the Name of Hashem” (Tzefaniah 3:9) — so that all will call by the same Name, the kingdom of G-d.

I will stop here; if you have questions, you may send them in writing.