Toledot 5773: A Friend is Someone Who Likes You

Friendship is so hard to define.  When I was a little boy and had a fight with the next door neighbor – Joey Skemp – my mother gave me the book “A Friend is Someone Who Likes You.”  Do you know the tiny book?

My favorite passages include:

• A friend is someone who likes you

• Sometimes you don't know who are your friends. Sometimes they are there all the time, but you walk right past them and don't notice that they like you in a special way.

• Some people have lots and lots of friends . . . and some people have quite a few friends

• And when you think you don't have any friends. Then you must stop hurrying and rushing so fast . . . and move very slowly, and look around carefully, to see someone who smiles at you in a special way

• But everyone . . . Everyone in the whole world has at least one friend.  Where did you find yours?

Friendship and brotherhood are at the heart of this week’s Torah portion.

The two are dealt with in Toledot because Judaism understands that there is not such a clear line between someone who is a true friend and someone who is family, and that the divine image in all of us precludes friends or family from being discarded when they no longer serve a specific purpose.

This is proven by negative example in this week’s parashah where the patriarch Issac encounters a false friend:

Isaac faces a famine in the Land of Israel. Rather than leave his beloved homeland, he settles in the region of Avimelech, the king of the Philistines, who pretends to befriend Isaac, even going so far as to protect Isaac's wife from his countrymen.  Isaac settles in the land and prospers. Soon, he is a wealthy man, with large herds and a huge household.

His newfound bounty and happiness, however, threaten his friendship with Avimelech, who apparently could only be friends with someone dependent on him.  So Avimelech terminates the friendship saying, in effect, “Go away from us, for you have become far too big for us."

Imagine how devastated Isaac must have been to receive Avimelech's abrupt termination of their friendship – and all from jealousy!?!

Judaism is about friendships that are built on loyalty, kindness, and caring regard – not on what a friend can do for us.

In a collection of stories called Beit Hamidrash, the Jewish view of friendship is exemplified in a story about two close friends who have been parted by war when one of the boys moves to a neighboring kingdom.

According to the story, one of them came to visit his friend, and because he came from the city of the king's enemy, he was imprisoned and sentenced to be executed as a spy.

Nothing could save him, so he begged the king for one kindness.

"Your Majesty," he said, "let me have just one month to return to my land and put my affairs in order so my family will be cared for after my death. At the end of the month I will return to pay the penalty."

"How can I believe you will return?" answered the King. "What security can you offer?"

"My dear friend will be my security," said the man. "He will pay for my life with his if I do not return."

The king called in the man's friend, and to his amazement, the friend agreed to the conditions. The king released the man for one month.

On the last day of the month, the sun was setting, and the man had not yet returned. The king ordered the man’s dear friend killed in his stead.

As the sword was about to descend, the man returned and quickly placed the sword on his own neck.

But the dear friend stopped him saying, "Let me die for you."

The king was deeply moved. He ordered the sword taken away and pardoned them both.

"Since there is such great loyalty and friendship between the two of you," he said, "I beg you to let me join you as a third." And from that day on both men became the king's companions.

This week, focus on nurturing friendships that are built on loyalty and what you can do to support each other – not based on material things or what you can give each other.

True friendship is a form of chesed — lovingkindness that need not be continually earned, caring that is its own justification. Only in the context of that chesed can we risk exposing our souls and our hearts to each other's insight

May the week ahead be one of warm friendships, of healing wounds, and of much chesed -- lovingkindness.

Rabbi Howard Jacoby Ruben