By HaRav Dov Begon, Head of Yeshivat Machon Meir
Our father Avraham was chosen by the Holy One, Blessed Be He, to lead the world, as is learned from his name: “Your name shall be Avraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Bereshit 17:5).
As our Sages taught: “The day that our father Avraham departed from this world, all the great ones of the nations of the world stood in line and said: ‘Woe to the world that has lost its leader! Woe to the ship that has lost its captain!’” (Bava Batra 91a).
Similarly, on the verse: “The king of Sodom went out to meet him, after his return from defeating Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, to the Valley of Shaveh that is the King’s Valley” (Bereshit 14:17) the Midrash comments that they “crowned Abraham over them as a prince of God and a commander” (see Rashi there).
Indeed, Avraham Avinu, whom the Rambam calls “the pillar of the world”, and for whose sake, says the Baal HaTurim, the world was created, is the most influential personality in the history of the world and of the human race, from the beginning until the end.
There is a special command to study and contemplate Avraham our father, as the Prophet says: “Look to the rock from which you were hewn… look to Abraham your father” (Yeshiyahu 51:1–2).
If we wish to understand ourselves, we must recognize the rock from which we were carved and the roots from which we grow.
The Torah and the teachings of our Sages are filled with descriptions of Abraham’s deeds, the first of which is his swiftness in moving to the one-and-only place that Hashem wants his People to live, in the Land of Israel. This noble soul is ours to emulate, his great kindness whose eye was good toward all creatures; the great educator of his people and of all humanity; the hero who fought idolatry, wickedness, and evil in his generation and beyond. He is the great victor, and with God’s help, with us today, as we affirm every day in prayer: “Blessed are You… Shield of Avraham.”
To this very day, “the deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children.” All the noble traits that appeared in Avraham our father, and all the good deeds that he performed throughout his life, have not been lost. They were imprinted within the people of Israel, in the spiritual and even physical “chromosomes” of the People of the God of Avraham.
The promises and the Covenant that God made with Abraham our father are being fulfilled before our very eyes. First the ingathering of the exiles and the promise — “I will make you into a great nation… and through you shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Bereshit 12) is taking on tangible form before us in miraculous ways.
Although we are not great in number, we are giants in quality.
The State of Israel, small as it is in physical size, already occupies a central, influential position among the families of nations – and will increasingly continue to do so until we merit to see the fulfillment of the prophecy when mankind casts aside its false idols: “Many peoples shall go and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the House of the God of Yaacov; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths’” (Yeshiyahu 2:3) – the realization of Avraham’s eternal call: “And he proclaimed there the Name of the Lord, God of the Universe.”
With prayers for our complete Redemption.
