Vayera
Genesis 18:1-22:24
II Kings 4:1-37
Ask any scientist and they will tell you that the law of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics and the other laws of physics are what keep the world spinning. Our religious tradition, which provides the spiritual meaning and purpose of creation rather than any scientific explanation of reality, teaches that there is a different law that holds the cosmos together: the law of justice.
Take, for example, Psalm 33, in which the poet envisions tzedakah u’mishpat, righteousness and justice, as the principle of creation: “God loves what is righteous and just, the earth is full of God’s faithful care. By the word of Adonai the heavens were made” (Psalm 33:4-7; for other examples, see Psalms 89 and 146). The world and all its fullness could not survive except for the principle of justice with which God orders the world.
It is this insistence on justice as the necessary foundation of life that informs God’s most precious gift to us, the Covenant. The covenantal idea in the Torah elevates humanity to a partnership with God in the ongoing amelioration of the world.
The essence of the Covenant and its purpose are revealed by God in a self-reflective soliloquy in this week’s parashah: “For I have singled him [Avraham] out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of Adonai by doing what is just and right” (Gen. 18:19). God must decide to inform Avraham of the intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah in advance, because Avraham is God’s covenantal partner in the project of applying justice to the world. The theology suggested here is that the God of the Covenant will no longer act alone. Even more startling is the assumption that God, too, must behave according to agreed standards of justice, even though God is also capable of violating them.
It is this assumption that leads Avraham to a most eloquent challenge to God: “Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? … Far be it for You to do such a thing … Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Gen. 18:23-25). The world’s need for justice, and the covenantal mandate to enforce justice, point to one of the most revolutionary ideas of the Torah, which remains throughout Jewish thought, that people can argue with God and win!
In the Torah, to be God’s partner is to pursue justice and righteousness and to minimize human suffering. In my congregation, as in many other congregations across the country, we are learning to take this obligation seriously by joining with other faith-based and civic organizations in a broad-based grassroots organizing effort, the Marin Organizing Committee. We are expanding our efforts beyond the once-a-year mitzvah day and enlarging our vision of social justice to include not just giving tzedakah or feeding the homeless, but also engaging in political action for the betterment of all citizens of the community.
Along with blacks and Latinos, Christians and Buddhists, union members and parents associations, we are banding together to discover our mutual concerns and to work for the improvement of our families and our neighborhoods. In the process, we are learning to listen to each other’s life stories and to build strong, trusting relationships across barriers that normally keep people apart.
Faith-based community organizing has the potential for involving synagogues in the pursuit of social justice in the real world and becoming a significant force for positive change and renewed democracy. At the same time, this organizing effort can help synagogues demonstrate why Judaism remains relevant today, as a way to partner with God to bring about a just world in which God’s presence can be felt.
To pursue justice is, as organizer Ed Chambers writes, “to struggle in the arena of “the world-as-it-is” while guided by the values of “the world-as-it-should-be.” From Avraham we learn that it is not only God’s role to act justly; it is ours.
Rabbi Lavey Derby is the senior rabbi of Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon.