48 | NOVEMBER 10 • 2022 

T

he early history of humanity is set 
out in the Torah as a series of disap-
pointments. God gave human beings 
freedom, which they then misused. Adam 
and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Cain mur-
dered Abel. Within a relatively 
short time, the world before 
the Flood became dominated 
by violence. All flesh pervert-
ed its way on the earth. God 
created order, but humans 
created chaos. Even after the 
Flood, humanity, in the form 
of the builders of Babel, were 
guilty of hubris, thinking that people could 
build a tower that “reaches heaven” (Gen. 
11:4).
Humans failed to respond to God, which 
is where Abraham enters the picture. We 
are not quite sure, at the beginning, what 
it is that Abraham is summoned to do. We 
know he is commanded to leave his land, 
birthplace and father’s house and travel “to 
the land I will show you,
” (Gen. 12:1) but 
what he is to do when he gets there, we do 
not know. On this the Torah is silent. What 
is Abraham’s mission? What makes him 
special? What makes him more than a good 
man in a bad age, as was Noah? What makes 
him a leader and the father of a nation of 
leaders?
To decode the mystery, we have to recall 
what the Torah has been signaling prior to 
this point. Perhaps a key theme is a failure of 
responsibility. Adam and Eve lack personal 
responsibility. Adam says, “It wasn’t me; it 
was the woman.
” Eve says, “It wasn’t me; it 
was the serpent.
” It is as if they deny being 

the authors of their own stories — as if they 
do not understand either freedom or the 
responsibility it entails.
Cain does not deny personal responsi-
bility. He does not say, “It wasn’t me. It was 
Abel’s fault for provoking me.
” Instead, he 
denies moral responsibility: “
Am I my broth-
er’s keeper?”
Noah fails the test of collective responsi-
bility. He is a man of virtue in an age of vice, 
but he makes no impact on his contempo-
raries. He saves his family (and the animals) 
but no one else. According to the plain read-

ing of the text, he does not even try.
If we understand this, we understand 
Abraham. He exercises personal responsibil-

ity. In parshat Lech Lecha, a quarrel breaks 
out between Abraham’s herdsmen and those 
of his nephew Lot. Seeing that this was no 
random occurrence but the result of their 
having too many cattle to be able to graze 
together, Abraham immediately proposes 
a solution: Abram said to Lot, “Let there 
not be a quarrel between you and me, or 
between your herders and mine, for we are 
brothers. Is not the whole land before you? 
Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I 
will go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll 
go to the left.
” Gen. 13:8-9
Note that Abraham passes no judgment. 
He does not ask whose fault the argument 
was. He does not ask who will gain from any 
particular outcome. He gives Lot the choice. 
He sees the problem and acts.
In the next chapter of Bereishit, we are 
told about a local war, as a result of which 
Lot is among the people taken captive. 
Immediately Abraham gathers a force, pur-
sues the invaders, rescues Lot and with him, 
all the other captives. He returns these cap-
tives safely to their homes, refusing to take 
any of the spoils of victory that he is offered 
by the grateful king of Sodom.
This is a strange passage — it depicts 
Abraham very differently from the nomadic 
shepherd we see elsewhere. The passage is 
best understood in the context of the story 
of Cain. Abraham shows he is his brother’s 
(or brother’s son’s) keeper. He immediately 
understands the nature of moral respon-
sibility. Despite the fact that Lot chose to 
live where he did with its attendant risks, 
Abraham does not say, “His safety is his 
responsibility, not mine.
”

ABRAHAM CHALLENGES GOD
Then, in this week’s parshah of Vayera, 
comes the great moment: a human being 
challenges God Himself for the very first 
time. God is about to pass judgment on 
Sodom. Abraham, fearing that this will 
mean that the city will be destroyed, says:
“Will you sweep away the righteous with 
the wicked? What if there are 50 righteous 
people in the city? Will you really sweep it 
away and not spare the place for the sake of 
the 50 righteous people in it? Far be it from 
you to do such a thing — to kill the righ-
teous with the wicked, treating the righteous 
and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! 
Will not the Judge of all the earth do jus-
tice?” Gen. 18:23–25

Answering the Call 

 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION

• What could Adam, Eve, Cain 
and Noah have said or done 
differently, to face up to their 
various responsibilities?
• What was Abraham’s greatest 
quality?
• How can we continue Abraham’s 
legacy today?

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

continued on page 49

