Aggadot from Hamivtar Rabbi Yitzchak Blau If you have comments or questions please feel free to e-mail Rabbi Blau at: nyz@netvision.net.il

Why Does Hospitality Override an Encounter With the Divine Presence?

“And God appeared to him in Alone Mamre, and he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day.

He lifted up his eyes and saw, and three men were standing by him, and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door and he bowed to the ground. And he said: ‘My Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes, please do not move away from your servant.’” (Bereishit 18:1-2)

R. Yehudah said in the name of Rav: ”Hosting guests is greater then receiving the Shekhina as it says ‘My Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes, please do not move away etc.’” (Shabbat 127a)

Avraham Avinu interrupts a dialogue with the Ribbono Shel Olam in order to greet three travelers and Rav derives a bold principle from this story. Some commentators understand that Rav means the evaluation literally. If acts of compassion represent the essential purpose of humanity, we can rank them even higher than greeting Hashem. The Alter of Soloboka, R. Nosson Zvi Finkel, suggests such an understanding in his Ohr ha-Zafun (Part 1, pp. 242-244).

R. Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin offers a different explanation in his Haamek Davar (Bereishit 18:2). He contends that Rav does not refer to absolute worth but rather to taking precedence. We do not know that hospitality is greater than greeting the Shekhina but we do know that an opportunity for hospitality demands interrupting a greeting of the Shekhina. Why should this be so? R. Berlin explains that the guests are waiting for help now while the greeting of the Shekhina can be taken care of later. If so, the precedence simply reflects the immediacy of a given need.

Perhaps we can suggest an alternative understanding within R. Berlin’s reading. He suggests an analogy to the mizvah of Talmud Torah. A person is supposed to interrupt Torah study to fulfill a mizvah if no other person can accomplish that mizvah (Moed Katan 9b). The Meiri on Moed Katan explains that this is not truly an interruption of learning. As one important dimension of Talmud Torah is inspiring and improving practice, continuing learning with an indifference to other needs would reveal that a person’s learning lacks a crucial dimension. Thus, interrupting the Torah to help an elderly person is not a break in the learning but rather a furthering and a depending of that learning. [This idea is more fully developed in several pieces in Rav Yizhak Hutner’s Pahad Yizhak on Shavuot and in, yibadel le-hayyim, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein’s essay in Kavod ha-Rav.]

The same idea could apply to greeting the Shekhina. The encounter with Divinity should also inspire us to try to emulate God and act with grater compassion. Thus, interrupting the dialogue to engage in hospitality adds a dimension to that very dialogue. It indicates that the encounter with God is ennobling the entire personality. For that reason, Avraham had to stop his conversation with God in order to take care of the three men. R, Yehezkel Levenstein, the Mashgiah at both Mir and Ponovizh, writes eloquently in a similar vein. “When a person fulfills the attribute of hessed in a complete fashion, and this attribute of hessed is the attribute of haKadosh Barukh Hu, as we have written, if so, that performance of hessed is the same (spiritual) pleasure as greeting the Shekhina as the person is clinging to the attributes of God (Ohr Yehezekel, Middot, p. 157).

Unlike Avraham, most of us are not presented with the chance to directly converse with Hashem. However, we constantly have the opportunity to cling to the attributes of God through engaging in hospitality and other acts of compassion.

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