44 | NOVEMBER 14 • 2024 

T

here is a mystery at the 
heart of the biblical story of 
Abraham, and it has immense 
implications for our understanding 
of Judaism.
Who was Abraham 
and why was he 
chosen? The answer 
is far from obvious. 
Nowhere is he 
described, as was 
Noah, as “a righteous 
man, perfect in his 
generations” (Gen. 6:9). 
We have no portrait of him, like the 
young Moses, physically intervening 
in conflicts as a protest against 
injustice. He was not a soldier like 
David or a visionary like Isaiah. In 
only one place, near the beginning of 
our parshah, does the Torah say why 
God singled him out:
“Then the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide 
from Abraham what I am about to 
do? Abraham is about to become 
a great and mighty nation, and 
through him all the nations on 
earth will be blessed. For I have 
chosen him, so that he will direct 
his children and his household after 
him to keep the way of the Lord by 
doing what is right and just, that 

the Lord may bring about for 
Abraham what He spoke of for him.’” 
Gen. 18:17-19
Abraham was chosen in order 
to be a father. Indeed, Abraham’s 
original name, Avram, means 
“mighty father,” and his enlarged 
name, Avraham, means “father of 
many nations.”
No sooner do we notice this than 
we recall that the first person in 
history to be given a proper name 
was Chava, Eve, because, said Adam, 
“she is the mother of all life.” (Gen. 
3:20) Note that motherhood is drawn 
attention to in the Torah long before 
fatherhood (20 generations to be 
precise, 10 from Adam to Noah, and 
10 from Noah to Abraham). 
The reason is that motherhood 
is a biological phenomenon. It 
is common to almost all forms 
of advanced life. Fatherhood is 
a cultural phenomenon. There 
is little in biology that supports 
pair-bonding, monogamy and 
faithfulness in marriage, and less 
still that connects males with their 
offspring. That is why fatherhood 
always needs reinforcement from the 
moral code operative in a society. 
Absent that and families fragment 

very fast indeed, with the burden 
being overwhelmingly borne by the 
abandoned mother.
This emphasis on parenthood 
— motherhood in the case of Eve, 
fatherhood in that of Abraham 
— is absolutely central to Jewish 
spirituality, because what Abrahamic 
monotheism brought into the 
world was not just a mathematical 
reduction of the number of gods 
from many to one. The God of 
Israel is not primarily the God of 
the scientists who set the universe 
into motion with the Big Bang. It 
is not the God of the philosophers, 
whose necessary being undergirds 
our contingency. Nor is it even the 
God of the mystics, the Ein Sof, the 
Infinity that frames our finitude. The 
God of Israel is the God who loves us 
and cares for us as a parent loves for, 
and cares for, a child.
Sometimes God is described as our 
father: “Have we not all one Father? 
Has not one God created us?” 
Malachi 2:10
Sometimes, especially in the late 
chapters of the book of Isaiah, God 
is described as a mother: “Like one 
whom his mother comforts, so shall 
I comfort you.” (Is. 66:13) “Can a 

woman forget her nursing child and 
have no compassion on the son of 
her womb? Even these may forget, 
but I will not forget you.” (Is. 49:15) 
The primary attribute of God, 
especially whenever the four-
letter name Hashem is used, is 
compassion, the Hebrew word for 
which, rachamim, comes from the 
word rechem, meaning “a womb.”
Thus, our relationship with 
God is deeply connected to our 
relationship with our parents, 
and our understanding of God is 
deepened if we have had the blessing 
of children (I love the remark of a 
young American Jewish mother: 
“Now that I’ve become a parent I find 
that I can relate to God much better: 
now I know what it’s like creating 
something you can’t control.”)

THE SPACE TO BE OURSELVES
All of which makes the story of 
Abraham very hard to understand 
for two reasons. The first is 
that Abraham was the son told by 
God to leave his father: “Go — from 
your land, your birthplace, and your 
father’s house ...” Gen. 12:1
The second is that Abraham was 
the father told by God to sacrifice 

To Bless 
the Space 
Between 
Us

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

