Understanding Abraham’s Decisions, Understanding Our Own

When we read the stories of Genesis it is often difficult to relate to the circumstances that our ancestors encountered. As a rabbi I tell people to try and relate to the characters, but this is really just another way of posing the same difficulty. The stories are not relevant to the kind of life we live.  Last week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, is a great example. In it Avraham faces numerous challenges, crises really, and not one of them is something any of us are likely to face today.

The first crisis, caused by a famine that sweeps him down to Egypt, sees Avraham faced with a terrible choice. He tells Sarah, his wife, to pretend to be his sister so that he will not be killed when Pharaoh sees how beautiful she is and desires her for his own. I don’t know about you, but this sort of thing never happens to me. I have never had to decide between pawning off my wife to a foreign ruler and the equally distasteful choice of the gun to the head. As moderns, we may be quick to criticize Avraham for such a callous act. It strikes us as horrible that he actually benefits from the encounter and becomes wealthy after subjecting Sarah to what must have been a forcible degradation at Pharaoh’s hand. How could he do such a thing? And how can I ever really relate?

Though never in such a position, most of us will, in time, find ourselves in a crisis that is defined by two equally terrible choices – lose/lose. Lie and give up your wife to another, brutal man, or die and have her taken anyway. What kind of choice is that? Seen this way, as a choice between the proverbial rock and hard place, perhaps we can relate to such a crisis even thought the particular details of our own dilemma will be more historically real for us. Have you ever faced a crisis where you had to choose between two terrible options? Would you not be compelled by such circumstances to choose the lesser of two evils?

Avraham’s second crisis is similarly distant from my experience, but also reveals a paradigm for decision making. When Avraham and Sarah emerge from the lose/lose of Egypt, they return to Canaan with renewed and new-found wealth. There, Avraham is confronted by another crisis when his herdsmen and the herdsmen of his nephew Lot get into a dispute over grazing rights. As a rabbi, I have a flock, but not THAT kind of flock, and I must admit that very few congregants I counsel are struggling with such a conflict. But, just as we will likely face a lose/lose moment, we will also likely face a conflict that can be resolved with a win/win choice. Avraham does not get into a fight with Lot, instead he recognizes that the best choice here is to give the choice to Lot, and to be happy when everyone prospers. He tells Lot there is enough for everyone and “if you go left, I will go right, and if you go right, I will go left.” Problem solved. Everyone is  happy.

Crisis number three comes when, again compelled by circumstances beyond his control, Avraham joins an alliance in a battle between Canaanite kings. As a tribal leader and clan chieftain, Avraham can’t easily sit on the sidelines and not take a side. But as a result of his alliance, his nephew Lot is taken captive and held prisoner far to the north. (That Lot sure does cause a lot of problems.) Again Avraham must make a choice, and this one is different from each of the previous two. Now the choice is not lose/lose, or even win/win, but rather whether or not. There is really only one choice, will Avraham rescue his nephew or not. It is the choice between action and inaction, and Avraham rightly chooses action. He forms a private militia of men, journeys rapidly into the conflict, and decisively acts to rescue Lot. Even at great risk to himself and his people, Avraham knows that he really has no choice. Lot is his family and must be rescued.

I’ve never been threatened by Pharaoh, or challenged to grazing rights, or had my nephew kidnapped, but like you, I have faced all three of these kinds of choices. There have been times when I had to choose between the lesser of two losing positions, times when I could humbly accept winning positions for everyone involved, and times when all that was really required was swift and decisive action. Avraham’s example helps us to understand our own choices and hopefully, whatever the situation, to make the right ones.