אברהם אבינו

Before there was a people of Israel, there was one man who stood alone against a whole world. Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees to Terach, in a generation wholly sunk in idolatry. The Sages relate that already as a youth he smashed his father's idols, and by tradition he was cast into a fiery furnace for his faith and saved (Bereishit Rabbah 38). No prophet came to him first; he sought his Creator by contemplating the world, until the world took notice of him.

At seventy-five God called to him: 'go forth from your land, your birthplace and your father's house, to the land that I will show you' (Genesis 12). Not knowing where, he left everything. At once a famine met him, he went down to Egypt, and his wife Sarah was taken to Pharaoh's house and returned, a first taste of 'the deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children': exile and redemption already folded into the father's life.

When his nephew Lot was captured in the war of the four kings, Abraham went out with his three hundred and eighteen men, struck the kings and rescued him (Genesis 14). In victory, when the king of Sodom offered him all the spoils, Abraham refused to take 'from a thread to a shoelace,' so none could say he had made Abram rich. A warrior with no hunger for gain.

In the Covenant Between the Pieces God made an eternal covenant with him, foretelling both the descent into exile and the redemption from it (Genesis 15). At ninety-nine he circumcised himself and his household (Genesis 17), and even while sick and in pain from the circumcision he ran toward three passing strangers, because kindness was his nature and not merely his duty (Genesis 18).

In that very passage, hearing that God was about to destroy Sodom, he did not stay silent but stood and pleaded for the wicked of the city: 'will You sweep away the righteous with the wicked?' (Genesis 18). This is Abraham: a warrior when he must be, yet begging mercy even for those who do not deserve it.

He was tested with ten trials (Pirkei Avot 5:3), the last and hardest being the binding of Isaac. God asked for his only son, and Abraham rose early in the morning (Genesis 22). The moment he stretched out his hand an eternal merit was bound to his children, for it was not the blood that was asked but the willingness, and that merit rises before us every Rosh Hashanah.

Abraham was the first to call out in God's name in the world, the father of all who believe and of every convert who joins the people, and the pillar of kindness on which the nation stands. To this day we open the central prayer with 'God of Abraham' and lean on his merit. From him we learned that a single person, by one choice, can turn the course of history.