Where He Is (Vayera 5787)

Photo Credit: Dan Porges

When I was in graduate school, a new classmate named Avi — someone I had never met — threw a party, and I went. I judged him in ten minutes. He was loud. He was playing MC Hammer. “U Can’t Touch This.” Over and over. He seemed to me completely full of himself. I figured, well, I don’t have to be friends with everyone.

I left early. And I remember being glad we had not connected.

A few months later we ended up on the same hike in the far north of Israel. There was a steep drop — the kind where you need a hand — and he was the one who reached back and helped me down. We talked the rest of the way.

After that, Avi and I became best friends. For years. I think about that party every time I read this week’s parashah, Vayera.

The Torah narrative tells us Hagar and her son Ishmael have been sent away from Avraham’s house. They are in the desert. The water is gone. Hagar puts the boy under a bush and walks far enough away that she will not have to watch him suffer. 

And then:

כִּי־שָׁמַע אֱלֹהִים אֶל־קוֹל הַנַּעַר בַּאֲשֶׁר הוּא־שָׁם

“For God has heard the voice of the boy — where he is.” (Genesis 21:17)

Focus on who God hears. Not Hagar. The boy. God hears Ishmael.

Rashi (11th-century France) asks: What does “where he is” add? God already knows where the boy is. Rashi answers with a scene he draws from midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 53:14). The ministering angels object to the idea of rescuing Ishmael. They protest saying, in effect, Master of the universe, one day Ishmael’s descendants will be cruel to Avraham’s descendants. And You are going to open a well for him?

God answers with a question of His own. Right now — what is he? Righteous or wicked? The angels concede: at this moment, the boy is innocent. Then, says God, I judge him by what he is now. Rashi explains, “he is judged according to the deeds he is doing now” — and not according to what he may do in the future.

The Talmud states the principle (learning it from this verse: “a person is judged only according to his deeds at that moment” (Rosh Hashanah 16b).

Hold that for a moment. God, who knows the whole future, declines to use it. He judges the boy in front of Him.

Now a mirror teaching from earlier in the same parashah, when Avraham comes to Gerar — a foreign city, not his people. He assumes the worst. He hides that Sarah is his wife, to protect himself. Afterward, when the king, Avimelech, asks him why, Avraham says: “I [assumed] that surely there is no fear of God in this place.” (Genesis 20:11) I assumed. Avraham decided before he knew. And he was wrong. Avimelech turns out to be more decent than Avraham assumed. The Torah does not cover for him. Avraham jumped to a conclusion about a whole city of people he had never met.

So in a single parashah we are handed both. God, who could judge by the future, judges by the present. Avraham, who could have waited and watched, judges by making an assumption. I do not think the Torah leaves much doubt about which path we are meant to follow. 

The rabbis of the Talmud explain the path this way: “One who judges another on the side of merit is judged on the side of merit.” (Shabbat 127b) Kaf zechut is the pan of a balance scale — the side that tips toward the good. In other words, judge people generously, and you will be judged generously. It does not ask us to pretend, and it does not ask us to be naïve. It asks this: when two stories could explain what you have just seen, and you do not know which one is true, lean toward the kinder one until you know, really know, differently.

Here is why this matters in a high school. It is late October. Many of us have already decided — who is smart, who is fake, who is trying too hard, who is not trying at all. And the person who has been decided about feels it.

That is a trap — deciding about someone before you actually know them. I still fall into it. Being judged by a story someone else tells about you is one of the loneliest things that can happen to a person. Some of you may be feeling that right now.

Two weeks ago, on the Monday of Parashat Noach, I asked you about the words you use for people — about speech that strips a person, or a whole people, of dignity. This week I am asking about something that comes earlier: the conclusions we reach before we say anything at all.

So here is my ask this week. Bring to mind one person here that you have already judged harshly. You know who it is. Now drop that assumption and give them a chance to show you who they really are. You can do that with one conversation, or one question you have never asked them. You do not have to like them, you just need to drop your assumption and learn more about them. 

I almost missed one of the great friendships of my life because of MC Hammer. Even Avraham got this wrong. But We can get it right. With this one person, see them ba’asher hu sham — where they are today, not where you judged them in September.

May we be judged as kindly as we judge. And may this be a school where every one of us is seen where we are.

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Each week our whole school gathers for Hakhel — all of our students and all of our faculty and staff, together in one room. We took the name from the mitzvah in Deuteronomy 31, where the people are called together to hear Torah. It is a time for announcements, celebration of community, honoring student accomplishments. I close the gathering with a short dvar Torah. This is what I offered on the Monday of Parashat Vayera.