Lech Lecha 2017/5778: Warrior Teachers

Avram – Abraham is many things to many people.  He is an ancestor of the Jewish people as well as Christians and Muslims.  He was the first to accept the idea of the One God and to follow the voice of the One God to go toward the Holy Land.  He’s the first to plead with God, to intercede on behalf of others at Sodom and Gomorrah.  He was the first of our three ancient ancestral fathers and along with Sarai, the first to bring converts to their newfound faith.  He is a father to Isaac and Ishmael.

This week, we read about Avram the warrior, the lesser-known Abraham persona.  The one that the Rabbis of the past sought to diminish.  Some didn’t want to see him that way. 

When invaders enter the region, they kidnap Lot, his family and possessions, and carry them away on their way north.  A fugitive finds Avram, tells him what happened to Lot, and Avram collects a group of men to pursue them.  They pursue, overtake, and fight against them until they free Lot and his family.

The Rabbis say, he wasn’t mustering soldiers, he was mustering students of Torah.  But we know that like the Maccabees and the Israelis, we have to fight, even students of Torah must take up arms when there is a threat, but the fight is not always won with weapons.  Words spoken, even softly, are also powerful.

Two days ago, Tal Flicker, an Israeli judo athlete, won the Judo Grand Slam competition in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.  All Israeli athletes at the competition could not participate under the Israeli flag.  And when Tal Flicker won gold, they did not raise the Israeli flag nor play Hatikvah.  Instead, they raised the international judo flag and played the international judo federation anthem. 

While the flag went up and the oriental melody played, Flicker mouthed the words to Hatikvah, quietly to himself, in an act of what writer Yair Rosenberg calls ‘a moment of dignified defiance’. 

Our ancient Sages wished to make Abraham the warrior into a Torah teacher and scholar.  They even said ‘there was no one who observed the mitzvot like Abraham our ancestor’ (Nedarim 32a) even though he of course lived long before God gives us the Torah.  They said he didn’t even carry weapons when he left to go after Lot.  He took some dust and wheat that miraculously turned into weapons at the necessary time.

This past Thursday in Abu Dhabi, Tal Flicker, the warrior, made himself into a teacher of Torah.  Who is a warrior hero our ancestors ask?  Ayzehu gibor?  Ha’kovesh et’yitzro, the one who conquers his evil inclination.  Tal Flicker and his teammates could easily have lodged formal protests, banded together to sing the anthem out loud, even held up the Israeli flag, but they did not, nor did he.  Like our ancestor Channah, who prays fervently in a soft voice, moving her lips in prayer but not speaking it, Tal Flicker fights back against the enormous pressures in the same way because that’s the way to victory in this type of fight.  Patience, vision, self-confidence, and faith. 

Our Sages describe prayer as avodat ha’lev, the work of the heart, and again, Tal Flicker communicates this message in his own way, quote, “Israel is my country”, he said to Israel’s channel 2, “The anthem that they played of the world federation was just background noise.   I was singing Hatikvah from my heart.”

The prayers of the heart are powerful.  They come from a place that is unscripted, raw, and honest because they are unfiltered.  This Shabbat, as we continue in our service, let’s listen to those prayers and give quiet, dignified voice to them as much as to the prayers we sing out loud together. 

Avram was a teacher and a warrior though the Sages wished to diminish this aspect of his story.  Tal Flicker was a warrior and he became a teacher too, showing us how quiet and determined words can help us to hear and follow up on our prayers that come from the inside, that, with God’s help, we can believe in our own strength, our own ability, and our own faith to confront and overcome our challenges. 

Amen.