Parashat Vayera
Parsha Overview
Three days after performing brit mila on himself, Avraham is visited by Hashem. When three angels appear in human form, Avraham rushes to show them hospitality by bringing them into his tent, despite this being the most painful time after the operation. Sarah laughs when she hears from them that she will bear a son next year. Hashem reveals to Avraham that He will destroy Sodom, and Avraham pleads for Sodom to be spared. Hashem agrees that if there are fifty righteous people in Sodom He will not destroy it. Avraham "bargains" Hashem down to ten righteous people. However, not even ten can be found. Lot, his wife and two daughters are rescued just before sulfur and fire rain down on Sodom and her sister cities. Lot’s wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. Lot’s daughters fear that as a result of the destruction there will be no husbands for them. They decide to get their father drunk and through him to perpetuate the human race. From the elder daughter, Moav is born, and from the younger, Ammon.
Avraham moves to Gerar where Avimelech abducts Sarah. After Hashem appears to Avimelech in a dream, he releases Sarah and appeases Avraham. As promised, a son, Yitzchak, is born to Sarah and Avraham. On the eighth day after the birth, Avraham circumcises him as commanded. Avraham makes a feast the day Yitzchak is weaned. Sarah tells Avraham to banish Hagar and Hagar's son Yishmael because she sees in him signs of degeneracy. Avraham is distressed at the prospect of banishing his son, but Hashem tells him to listen to whatever Sarah tells him to do. After nearly dying of thirst in the desert, Yishmael is rescued by an angel, and Hashem promises that he will be the progenitor of a mighty nation.
Avimelech enters into an alliance with Avraham when he sees that Hashem is with him. In a tenth and final test of Avraham, Hashem instructs Avraham to take Yitzchak, who is now 37, and to offer him as a sacrifice. Avraham does this, in spite of ostensibly aborting Jewish nationhood and contradicting his life-long preaching against human sacrifice. At the last moment, Hashem sends an angel to stop Avraham. Because of Avraham’s unquestioning obedience, Hashem promises him that even if the Jewish People sin, they will never be completely dominated by their foes. The Torah portion concludes with the genealogy and birth of Rivka.Parsha Insights
The Window of Mercy
“And Hashem appeared to him..." (18:1)
The Torah opens: “Vayeira eilav Hashem b’Eilonei Mamrei — Hashem appeared to him in the plains of Mamrei.” Avraham Avinu, three days after his bris milah, sits at the entrance of his tent “k’chom hayom” — in the heat of the day. Why does the Torah choose this moment to describe the highest level of Divine revelation?
The Almighty reveals Himself not in moments of strength, but in the surrender of the self — in the openness where nothing exists apart from His Will.
Avraham’s tent becomes the model of that openness. The walls of self must become windows. The Midrash says that the Holy One came to ‘visit the sick’ — Bikur Cholim. Here, say the Sages, is the Torah teaches us the mitzvah of visiting the ill. More deeply, it teaches that the Divine visits wherever man becomes transparent enough for Him to enter. The sickbed of Avraham becomes the gateway to revelation.
At that very moment, Avraham lifts his eyes and sees three strangers approaching. Here the Torah presents one of its most subtle miracles: the meeting of Heaven and Earth in one continuous gesture. Avraham turns from the Shechinah to attend to human guests. The Gemara says, “Greater is hospitality to guests than greeting the Divine Presence.” Because Avraham understood that to serve man in the image of God is not to turn away from Hashem — it is to serve Him. The two revelations, Divine and human, are one continuum.
Avraham’s greatness was not that he saw angels, but that he saw men and recognized angels within them. The test of holiness is not retreat from the world but vision within the world. Avraham’s tent, glowing in the desert sun, becomes the prototype of Torah itself — a shelter open to all sides, where the Infinite speaks through the finite act of kindness.
In the story of Sodom, the same pattern repeats: Avraham pleads for a city steeped in corruption, because once a person has seen that the Infinite can enter the finite, he can never abandon even the most fallen corner of creation. Avraham argues, not because he doubts Divine justice, but because he has glimpsed Divine mercy as the root of all existence.
At Sinai, the heavens will open; in Vayeira, the tent opens. Both are revelations of Oneness. Avraham teaches that to make space for the Other — whether the stranger, the sick, or the sinner — is to make space for Hashem Himself. When a Jew performs chesed without limit, he restores the world to its original clarity, where the human and the Divine are no longer two, but one radiant vision.
