Abraham

by Bruce Feiler

  Abraham is no longer just an individual, with individual needs. He has become God’s proxy on earth. This symbolism is so profound that it reverberates down through the centuries, growing louder with each generation, until it echoes in billions of daily prayers to this day: Abraham was chosen not for his sake but for the sake of the world.

  This is the ultimate power of the Call: It’s a summons to the world to devote itself to God. God once again sends out an olive branch to humanity. If you put your life in my hands, he suggests, you will be rewarded. Since humans have flouted this branch in the past, God now requires a down payment: Do this today so you can get that tomorrow.

  This demand for proof introduces a terrifying gap. In God’s beckoning, the sacrifice is known, even the reward is known, but the route, the location, even the deliverer of the message are unknown. To be a descendant of Abraham is to live in that gap—to glance back at your native land, to peer ahead to your nameless destination, and to wonder, Do I have the courage to make the leap?

  ABRAHAM MAKES THE LEAP and thus secures his reputation for all time. The text is so matter-of-fact it almost masks the significance: “Abram went forth as the Lord had commanded him.” He does so silently, joining the covenant with his feet, not his words. The wandering man does what he does best, he walks. Only now he walks with God. And by doing so, Abraham leaves an indelible set of footprints: He doesn’t believe in God; he believes God. He doesn’t ask for proof; he provides the proof.

  Abraham’s unspoken covenant with God is so majestic it forms a central plank in all three Abrahamic faiths. Jews’ relationship with the Call is the most complex. Did God initiate the relationship, interpreters wonder, or did Abraham? The latter books of the Hebrew Bible seem to place the glory with God. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah talks about God “redeeming” Abraham; the prophet Nehemiah praises God for “choosing” Abraham and bringing him forth out of Ur.

  Traditionally, the Call is seen as initiating a process of migration that will culminate in Abraham being promised the land itself. As Nehemiah adds, “Finding his heart true to you, you made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite,” and others. “And you kept your word.”

  Later, when Jews were exiled from the Promised Land, Jewish interpreters began to emphasize that Abraham’s going forth represented a more internal, spiritual journey. Abraham now becomes the suitor of God. Medieval rabbis, for example, said lech-lecha should be interpreted, “Go to yourself,” as in go to your roots, find your true potential. As David Willna explained to me at the Wall: “As Jews we have to be committed to movement and growth, but it has to be for the right reasons. God doesn’t need our help. We have to be doing it for ourselves.”

  Islam, meanwhile, stresses Abraham’s submission to God and views the Call as a reward for his devotion. “Abraham was a paragon of piety,” sura 16 says, “an upright man obedient to God.” The word muslim actually means “one who submits to God,” and the text says Abraham was of such exemplary morality that even as a boy in Babylon he was a hanif, one who practices pure monotheism.

  The Koran suggests that it was in recognition of these traits that God chose Abraham and made him the leader of a great nation. As sura 2 says: “When the Lord put Abraham to the proof by enjoining on him certain commandments and Abraham fulfilled them, he said: ‘I have appointed you a leader of mankind.’ ” The text calls this moment a covenant, and considers it the start of a nation of muslims that reaches fruition in Muhammad.

  “Abraham is regarded as the founder of Islam as we understand it,” said Sheikh Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam of Masjid al-Farah Mosque in New York City and an international lecturer on Islam. A supremely serene man, Sheikh Abdul Rauf has receding white hair, a closely cropped beard, and a quiet but mesmerizing speaking style that deftly mixes an Oxonian English accent with the occasional Americanism for effect. He welcomed me into his Manhattan living room, covered with maroon-tinted bedouin rugs, and sat cross-legged and stocking-footed on a chair.

  “I consider Abraham’s covenant with God to be not so much a personal one,” he continued. “It’s the idea that Abraham will ensure that the belief in one God does not die with him. That he will pass this message along to his progeny and build a nation of people whose collective consciousness is defined by the surrender to God. Abraham’s idea is the same as that of the U.S. Constitution, ‘one nation under God.’ ”

  Because Abraham surrendered so totally, God chose Abraham and set him on the straight path, taking him out of Babylon and delivering him into Syria, the geographic territory that includes Canaan. The Koran calls his destination the land “blessed for all mankind” and suggests Abraham agreed to go in order to worship God as he knew he must.

  Like Judaism, Islam sees this as being as much of an inner journey as an outer one. “All spiritual-minded Muslims say that when we pray we should try to be in an Abrahamic state,” said Sheikh Abdul Rauf. “We should take Abraham’s viewpoint toward the world. We should try to be Abrahamic in our being.”

  And how would he describe being Abrahamic?

  “First, complete devotion to God, even if it involves leaving your family and leaving your town. On another level, making our own contractual agreement with God. Each of us has a covenant to make with God, ‘I will worship you as my God and you will take care of me.’

  “And finally, knowing yourself on the deepest level. The prime objective of religion is to know God, but the only way to do that is to discover God within our own consciousness. This happened to Abraham, and it can happen to us. And anybody that happens to will choose to live a life in accordance with God’s practice.”

  IF JEWS AND MUSLIMS consider the Call important, Christians view it as the defining act of Abraham’s life. Before leaving for Jerusalem, I went to visit some old family friends in my hometown. The first person I went to see was John Lyons, who lived across the street from the house where I grew up. John, the oldest of nine Irish Catholic children, decided after lengthy deliberation to enter the priesthood. My mother was an important sounding board in his decision-making process, and a painting she made depicting his struggle hung on our dining room wall when I was a child.

  “The Call of Abraham is critical for all God’s children,” Father John said. Approaching fifty with thinning red hair, he was dressed in a flannel shirt that made him look more like a lumberjack than like a priest. “Accepting that Call is what made him the Father of Faith.”

  I had come to talk about this notion of faith in Christian ity, which I had read about but didn’t quite understand. For many early Christians, faith was rooted in the story of Abraham’s going forth. This connection was initially made by Paul, the first-century Jew who changed from being a persecutor of Christians to a missionary. For Paul, the primacy of Abraham was that his covenant with God was founded on faith, especially his “hoping against hope” in God’s promise that he would have progeny despite his age. Abraham, Paul writes in Romans, “did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead.”

  Gentiles were capable of such faith, Paul stressed, and thus could be drawn into the arena of divine salvation. To be a child of Abraham is to respond to God’s Call, to start a voyage, to become a stranger. As easy as it is to forget today—when Christianity is the dominant religion in half the world—early Christians felt a powerful sense of being alien. Departure is paramount to Christian identity.

  “The lesson of Abraham,” Father John explained, his voice plain and unornamented by years on the pulpit, “is you have to be willing to risk it all. You have to give up everything for God. Even in the New Testament, Jesus says unless you are willing to give up husband, wife, mother, father, and children, for the Kingdom of God, you are not worthy to follow me. The bottom line is if you’re too comfortable, or too secure, or too into having control, then you won’t be willing to trust God.

  “And the Bible says, ‘I want you to have total trust in me, Abraham.’ You’re not going to know
where your next meal is coming from. You’re not going to know where your next home is. If you’re going to be in covenant with me, you have to trust me with every cell in your body. And if you do that, I will bless you.’ ”

  As for Jews and Muslims, for Christians the Call involves an internal journey. As Father John said, “Most of us will never be called to take such a risk, but we have to be willing. We have to say, ‘If you’re calling me, God, I have to pray for the grace to accept.’ You may not physically have to do it, but on the spiritual level you have to say to God, ‘By following you I will find the peace of knowing that my life makes a difference.’

  “It’s like the Lord’s Prayer. When I preach, I tell people this is a very scary prayer. Because when you pray that ‘God’s will be done,’ you’re saying, ‘All right, God, I’m prepared to do your will.’ Yet most of us want to do our will, because most of us are control freaks. We want the security of knowing that we have a house, we have a job, our children are protected, we’ve got a savings account. And God says that’s not going to bring the security you really need in your life.”

  “But how do you know when God is really calling you?” I asked.

  “It would be nice to get e-mails from God that say, ‘I want you to be a rabbi, a writer, a priest.’ I try to tell young people that if you want to understand what God is saying to you, you need to be quiet and focus on your life. The other day I drove my niece Mali into town. She’s a sophomore in high school and didn’t like the CDs I had in my car. I said, ‘We can have silence.’ She said, ‘Oh, no, silence is boring!’

  “Most of us are not comfortable with silence. We come into the house, we click on the stereo, we wake up to the TV, we fall asleep to the TV, we’re always bombarded with music and words. Jesus, Abraham, they went out in the desert. They got away from all the distractions.

  “I had a lady come to me recently and say, ‘I need help deciding whether to have a heart transplant.’ I said, ‘I cannot give you any advice. The only thing I can tell you is you need to get away for a weekend, silence yourself, and pray. You should talk to people—your doctor, your husband. But in the final analysis, the only way you will find peace with your decision—the only way you’ll find peace with God—is in silence.”

  “So the message of Abraham is to go away?”

  “The message of Abraham is to be alone, to be quiet, and to listen. If you never hear the Call in the first place, you’ll never know which way to go.”

  AFTER LEAVING Father John, I stopped by Mickve Israel, the third oldest synagogue in the country and one of the defining places of my life. Arnie Belzer was not the rabbi of my childhood, but in the years he’s been in Savannah he’s conducted my sister’s wedding, eulogized my grandmother, and memorialized my uncle. He’s an amiable, articulate man, with a penchant for nice cars and wing-fin silver sideburns. We sat in the sanctuary, as warm as I remember, and now with felt cushions in the pews. The Gothic arches were newly painted in almond. We opened to Genesis 12.

  “What I see here, always, is Abraham answering this call from a God that’s never been mentioned to him. And he doesn’t question. Show me something! Anything! What’s your name? Even Moses asks him that question. It’s very powerful—an example of extraordinary trust. But it doesn’t seem terribly Jewish. We put more emphasis on the Abraham who later argues with God. But what a great model for Islam, which admires acquiescence. And what a great model for Christianity, which puts primacy on faith.”

  “I’m wondering if it’s a good model for life,” I said. “Breaking away from his family brings him to his family.”

  “Until you break away, you’re not grown up,” Rabbi Belzer said, his New Jersey accent creeping through his adopted southern charm. “When I was in rabbinical school, a shrink told me that the minute you grow up is the minute it doesn’t matter to you what your parents think. It was such a revelation to me. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you love your parents, you’re always going to love your parents, but it’s okay if they don’t approve of what you’re doing. It’s okay if you leave your father’s house and go someplace else. They might be disappointed. They might miss you a lot. But now you’re grown up.’

  “I know someone today who is fifty years old and hasn’t gotten there yet. Fine. Abraham waited until late in his life to grow up and finally mature. But we all have to break away from our parents, even metaphorically. I don’t want to tell this person, ‘Soon, it won’t matter, your parents are getting on.’ But somehow he needs someone to say, ‘lech-lecha.’ ”

  “So Abraham is a model.”

  “ ‘I will bless those who bless you, and curse him that curses you. And all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.’ Clearly the blessing of monotheism is the blessing that’s being talked about here. God says, ‘Because of you, Abraham, the knowledge of me is going to the entire world.’ I feel they were writing these words for me, for you, for anyone to look back and understand, ‘I am part of this continuum. I’m still a blessing to the rest of the world.’ ”

  I asked him if he thought Abraham’s God was monotheistic, or perhaps something else.

  “It doesn’t matter. I always put together an invisible god and a monotheistic God. The significance of an invisible god is that it’s not tied to a particular place; it’s totally and completely portable. It allows you to go anyplace in the world. You’re not leaving him. You’ll always have him with you. We were building a completely portable religion.”

  “And that religion is?”

  “Abrahamism. He’s saying it’s okay not to be in your native land, not to have land at all. He left his father’s house, knowing his father would always be in his heart. I’ll go someplace and try something new. I’ll cast my lot with a portable god—the God of everyone, everywhere.”

  “So if what you’re saying is true,” I said, “then the Call is the most universal passage in the entire Abraham story.”

  “It is. The Call is saying that the relationship with God is not a relationship of belonging, it’s a relationship of strangeness. We’re all aliens. Abraham is blessed—the nations of the world are blessed—because he had the courage to go to another place and make himself a stranger. Because, believe me, at some time in our lives, all of us have to go to another place, too, and make ourselves strangers.”

  As he finished, my eyes began to roam around the room. They lit on the light above the ark, a shaft of pink from the stained glass, the line of plaques on the wall with the names of my family members who have died. My mom still likes to sit near that memorial.

  I thought back to my Bar Mitzvah. Of all the events that weekend, one stands out in my mind. Saturday evening, after the ceremony, my parents invited about seventy friends and family to our house. I wore a brown corduroy suit, with a vest. About halfway through the party my father called me over to the bar that was set up near the kitchen. He ordered a gin and tonic. When it was ready, he put his arm around me, put the drink in my hand, and said, “Son, you’re a man now. You’re responsible for your own actions.”

  Sitting in the synagogue again, remembering that moment, thinking back on my childhood, I suddenly began to appreciate the grounding power of this room, the resonance of that Torah portion, the meaning of my father’s words. Part of the inheritance of Abraham, I was discovering, was coming from a cozy place but also being prepared to leave that place. The only way to achieve your own family someday is first to depart the family you grew up with, which invariably brings you closer to the family you left behind. For me at least, the shock of separation helped me to appreciate the feeling of attachment that might otherwise have seemed smothering. The ache of being alone obliged me to discover the inheritance of home I carried around within me. And being apart from my parents allowed me to realize that being parented is a blessing—and that feeling independent is not incompatible with feeling protected.

  Not until I reread the story of Abraham as an adult did I understand all the layers of mission in the narrative, or its pur
pose in my life. Fortunately, my parents had understood it first. I was a boy once in this place, and it was my dad himself who insisted, “Go forth.”

  3

  * * *

  ISHMAEL

  * * *

  THE DESERT IS GREEN this morning. The color startles the eye. A line of camels strolls by unawares. A hawk circles, unimpressed. But down in the rocky riverbed, caked from half a year in the sun but now starting to puddle, the verdure is comfort to a thirsty ground: Winter has come. Water is here.

  “This is the desert of Beer-sheba,” said Rami Harubi. “This is the desert of Abraham.”

  Rami Harubi is of that international breed, particularly common in the Middle East: someone prone to exclamations of natural poesy, literate in the language of sand, and often covered in dust. A desert person. Part eco-developer, part philosopher, and an old friend, Rami lives in the Negev and dreams of a paradise of perpetual wilderness. He is tall, graying, grand.

  “You can see Abraham walking, just like those bedouin,” he said, pointing to a shepherd leading a huddle of sheep. “Today we are three weeks after the first rain. Smell it.” He lifted a tuft of barely germinated grass, as short as a crew cut. It smelled like a picnic. “I have a special name for it, virgin down. From now, we start to feel the earth wake up. The earth is moist enough for the seeds to pop. It’s wet enough for the ants to put their eggs into the ground. The bugs are waiting for this moment—and so are we. For the next six months we are happy.”

  Rami has brought me to the desert near Beer-sheba, where Abraham settles during much of his sojourn in the region, to show me what happens during a flash flood. He also wants to talk about the questions at the heart of Abraham’s life: Will he have a son? Will he have more than one? If so, who will be his heir? The attempt to answer those questions will dominate Abraham’s life for the rest of the Hebrew Bible, as well as the New Testament and the Koran. How these matters are resolved will lay the foundation for how Abraham’s descendants will relate to one another for eternity.