What Do I Know?
“On October 6 I knew so much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Rabbi Shira Stutman said on a recent episode of her podcast Chutzpod!, “…and now what I feel at my core is that I just. don’t. know.”
In an awful synchronicity, Jews have been processing Hamas’s pogrom against Israelis and the resulting war through reading chapter by chapter from the beginning of the Torah. October 7 was Simchat Torah, the “joy of the Torah”, which marks the moment we finish our sacred book only to start reading it all over again, even as this year we felt the world had changed forever.
Each parashah holds lessons - the origins of violence when Cain kills his brother Abel, the lonely isolation of Noah’s ark, the moment when God tells Abraham to journey to his new home, what will be known as the land of Israel.
There are many possible lessons in this week’s parashah, Vayera, but what caught my heart’s attention as I read through it was the repetition of the Hebrew word yada, “to know.” It appears ten (10) times, yet each time it seems to mean something slightly different. As if “knowing” isn’t so precise, or perhaps there are many ways of knowing, many practices of knowing.
I want to focus on the first and last instance of knowing in this Torah portion, because they are both about God knowing Abraham, but in very different ways.
The very first instance of “knowing” is strange. God is about to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gemorrah, but first shares the plan with Abraham, to test how he would react. God muses, “For I have known him, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of God by doing what is just and right, in order that God may bring about for Abraham what has been promised him” (Genesis 18:19).
What does it mean that God knows Abraham? Of course God knows Abraham! God and Abraham have been talking for quite a while by now!
Rashi clarifies: “This is an expression denoting "affection"... Still the primary meaning of these terms connected with the root yada is really that of knowing, for whoever holds a person in affection attaches them to himself, so that he knows him well and is familiar with him.”
God knowing Abraham isn’t about facts first, but about the primacy of relationship. God cares about Abraham, and therefore gets to know him better. Caring about someone precedes knowing or understanding them.
When knowing precedes relationship, however, we don’t encounter a human being but just a data point.
The final appearance of knowing comes after Abraham follows God’s directive to sacrifice his son Isaac. At the last moment, a ram is substituted for the child, yet the story leaves a horrifying aftertaste. God sums up the results of this test by saying, “Now I know that you fear God” (Genesis 22:12).
Rashi again offers a fascinating perspective: “From now I have a reply to give to… the nations who wonder at the love I bear you: I have an opening of the mouth (i.e. I have an excuse, a reason to give them) now that they see that you are a God-fearing man.”
God knows Abraham, meaning God has a particular affection for him. By the end of our story, God knows that Abraham is God-fearing, which is a useful excuse to explain why God has affection for him. Here’s the thing: if Rashi is right, God’s affection for Abraham is not actually tied primarily to his “worthy” character!
Many of us are furiously working on knowing more right now, about the history of Israel-Palestine, about how to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza or how to protest them, how to define antisemitism and fight against it, how to see hope for the return of hostages, how to acknowledge the suffering of so many Palestinians who have no love for Hamas, how to find a path forward for safety and sovereignty for all peoples living there.
All of that is very important, and I’m engaged in it too. But I feel like quite often this form of knowing is focused on finding “worthy” reasons to support what you already hope to be true.
I want to follow God’s example here, and prioritize love over knowing. The world will change when we know our people, not about our people. The world will change when we dedicate our time to affectionate love for them (whoever they may be) and practice that love ferociously. When we send care packages and have conversations. When we listen for stories and not for statistics.
Practicing love creates more capacity for love. Practicing love creates more capacity for love. So love your people ferociously. And then start to ask if there are others you can bring into your heart.
Let me be clear. I think there are people deserving of our hate right now. But I think that number is smaller than our first instinct might assume. Yehuda Amichai once wrote in a poem, “The place where we are right / is hard and trampled / like a yard. / But doubts and loves / dig up the world / like a mold, a plow.”
What do I know? I know a hope that enough of us will turn to love, and cultivate humble uncertainty out of which something new and unexpected might grow.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jay LeVine
