OCTOBER 20, 2007

In the October issue of Vanity Fair there is an article entitled, “The 2007 New Establishment” – a list of what Vanity Fair considers the 100 most powerful, influential people in American society We Jews represent about 2.5 percent of the American people.  So one could naturally expect that out of the 100 most influential people in America, one would find listed two or three Jews.  How many Jews do you think were listed?  You’re going to find this hard to believe, but according to Joseph Aaron of the Chicago Jewish News, 51 out of the 100 are Jewish!  On the same list of 100 with names like Warren Buffet, Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey there are people with names like Schwartzman and Spielberg and Blumberg and Geffen and Perelman and Lauder and Wasserstein and Cohen and Weinstein and Weintraub, and Friedman, and Silver and Sulzberger.  All the more astounding when one considers that there are more people born in China every year than there are Jews in the whole world!  And as if all this is not enough, in the same issue of the magazine, there is another list.  This one called “The Next Establishment” listing younger people who Vanity Fair believes will eventually make it to the ‘big list.’  There are 26 people on that list … 15 are Jews.  Again, over 50%!

In case the point has not been made clearly enough, in the same magazine there is a list of people who are in a place they call the pit stop.  That is, they made the “New Establishment” list in the past, but for one reason or another didn’t make it this year, but Vanity Fair believes will be back in the future.  There are 9 nine names on this list … 8 of them are Jews!  In fact the only non-Jew on this list is Don Imus.
 
Reading these lists, I began to wonder if this was the fulfillment of the words spoken to Abraham in this morning’s Parasha.  Here, God challenges Abraham to leave his country and to come to the Promised Land of Israel.

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing;” God promised Abraham that his progeny would become a great nation.  The fact is that we have never attained comparatively great numbers amongst other world religions.  There are approximately 13 million Jews in the world today.  There are ¾ of a billion Hindus in this world.  There are over 300 million Buddhists.  There are more Zoroastrians and Mormons in the world than there are Jews!  Perhaps, in the light of Jewish history the promise made to Abraham needs to be read differently.    Rather than Abraham and Sarah having significant numbers of descendents in the world, maybe the blessing is that that the Jewish people would be perceived as more powerful then our numbers might imply, with more influence than anyone would expect from a group that is less than 3 percent of the American population.  Maybe the real blessing that the Kadosh Baruch Hu was talking about is contained in Vanity Fair Magazine in a section called the 2007 New Establishment.

How would Abraham respond to last month’s issue of Vanity Fair?   How would the Father of our people the disproportionate number of Jews on this list?  Or on the list of Noble Prize Winners for that matter: 178 are Jews.  Is this the blessing that Abraham was promised? Would he understand it that way?  So, I imagine Abraham sitting down with the October issue of Vanity Fair carefully looking through the magazine.  In my mind I hear Abraham asking questions.  The first question would be obvious.  Who is this woman on the cover and why is she wearing so little clothing.  I would be forced to explain that this was Margot Kidman, confident that would lose interest after I began discussing Tom Cruise.   The second question that I imagine Abraham asking is why he was not on the list.  Here, I could say with a degree of confidence that if Vanity Fair would have been publishing such lists in 1700 BCE, Abraham would most assuredly have surely been in it.  In fact, this week’s Parasha goes to great lengths describing how after his encounter with God, he accrues great wealth.  In each step of his journey, Abraham’s estate continues to grow, not only in the number of livestock, but also in the number of people in his entourage.  This would include a fighting force of more than 300 men.  The image of Abraham as a poor wandering nomad is the Hollywood version.  The Abraham we meet in the book of Genesis is a person who exudes a unique Jewish power, faith, confidence, strength, with an eye toward making an impact on the world. Vanity Fair all the way.

The third question that I imagine Abraham asking would be the most difficult. He would repeat that verse quoted earlier:
 
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great

Abraham would go on to say: so I see that God has made good on God’s promises.  How have my descendents fulfilled their part of the blessing and be a blessing.

When I don’t respond immediately I hear him saying: don’t you understand, these blessings were given not only for you to enjoy, but they are meant to be used in this world to further God’s covenant”.  “This is the story of my life, it should be the story of yours as well.

Upon refection, the entire Abraham cycle is an attempt on Abraham’s part to fulfill those two words.

Consider the story told in this week’s portion of a war that Abraham fought against a group of Kings.  It seems that Abraham’s hapless nephew Lot was taken capture after these Kings had sacked Sodom and Gomorrah.  Abraham took his fighting force and in a cunning strike at night, freed his nephew and defeats a significantly larger fighting force.
 
The first thing that Abraham teaches us is that being a blessing means to be willing to fight for your own people.  There will be no covenant if there are no descendents of Abraham, and we must be willing to use all means possible to ensure Jewish survival.

Abraham returns with his relative, his army and the treasure trove that was taken from Sodom and Gomorrah.  As he passes what is now Jerusalem he is met by Malkizedek the Priest of Shalem and the King of Sodom.  This is how the pagan priest greets Abraham:

Blessed be Abram of the most High God, possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God the Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.

Here is the second lesson of being a blessing.  Abraham always presents himself as a Jew.  At no time does he hide that fact.  At no time does he disguise himself or show any sort of discomfort. As a result he publicly embraces his destiny. .  Abraham’s willingness to let his identity be known he brings praise not only on himself but on God as well.  It should be further noted that Abraham does this with an acute awareness of being a minority, after all he and his entourage are the only Jews in the world.  Yet, Abraham proudly walks with God.

Finally, the King of Sodom tells Abraham to take the booty and to give him back his people taken captive.  Abraham refuses to take any of it.  He makes it clear that he has only acted to do what is right and just. 

This is the third blessing of a being a blessing.  Abraham is moved to action because of his sense of justice and his desire make the world a better place. But again, he does it as a proud, identified Jew.   In this way, Abraham acknowledges the mandate of the Jewish people.  That is, to benefit the world, to help bring Tikun Olam.  To be Jew is to fight for Jewish survival, to be a Jew is to publicly embrace our own destiny, but to be a Jew is to work to bring justice to the word. As a result, this pagan King would also have to appreciate the power of this living covenant.

How should we respond to Abraham when he asks how well these 51 Jews in the Vanity Fair list have fulfilled these words?  How should we respond as individuals?

The sad fact is that many of the Jews on the Vanity Far list do very little to be a blessing in the Jewish sense. Here, I mean to cast no dispersions on anyone, nor am I questioning as to whether or not these are good people are not, or whether they do good things with their largess.  I am simply using Abraham’s criteria as a matrix of blessing.   While they might fund some very good causes, often a Jewish consciousness plays little role in their decision making.  Consider Jewish survival. In Ruth Wisse’s new book Jews and Power, she makes the point that one of the effects of the Diaspora is that Jews have taken to placing more emphasis on moral ideas than they do on the survival of the Jewish people.  So that when for its own survival, Israel acts in a way that they find morally objectionable these same people simply walk away from Israel.  Rather than acknowledging the difficulties and the necessary evils that come with Israel’s precarious situation, they simply stop their support of Israel. Of course, I am telling you something you already know.  It is alarming that this attitude is becoming more and more prevalent among young people.

Imagine what would happen if all of those 51 people would focus some of their attention and their resources on the issue of Jewish survival, whether here in America or Israel. What a blessing that would be.

Secondly, do we present ourselves to the world as proud identified Jews, or as people who just happen to be Jewish?  Are we willing to engage others in a discussion and present a Jewish view or is that uncomfortable for us?  Imagine the power that the 51 individuals have in the world if they were to choose to speak with an openly proud Jewish voice.  Of course, there would be those who would complain about Jews taking over the world, but they do that already.  Most people, I believe would hold Jewish in higher esteem, simply because we are willing to acknowledge who we are and what we represent.  What a blessing that would be.

Finally, there is our mandate to care for the world and its inhabitants.  Here I believe that Jews are often quite generous.  But the trend in the Jewish community is to give to causes other than those in the Jewish community.  Here I would remind you that taking action to relieve hunger in Africa or anywhere else in the world is a necessity.  But when you do that through an organization like Mazon or Jewish World Service you are also helping to ensure that people around the world know that not only do Jews care, but that the Jewish mandate to repair a broken world is being fulfilled through you.  When those receiving relief realize that the word Mazon stamped on the box is the Hebrew word for food, or that it comes from a Jewish organization we cast a wonderful light upon the covenant that began with Abraham. In a way, we recreate that moment when Malkizedek, the Pagan Priest praises the God of Israel.  Imagine if all of those 51 thought this way: What a blessing that would be.

Good friends, this morning we begin to tell a story that began nearly 4,000 years ago: a story that continues through us.  Despite the vicissitudes of our history we have not only survived but have thrived is reason alone to believe in the power of the covenant that we read of today.  The fact that 51 of our brethren are recognized in a national publication as being the most powerful and an influential people in American Society today makes a remarkable statement about our people.  The fact that so few people know how many on this list are Jews is, according to our Torah reading, a lost blessing. 

On this Shabbat of Lech Lecha let us imagine Father Abraham asking us this morning from the Sefer Torah: how have my descendents been a Jewish blessing to this world?  That is a question worth taking with us today, and acting on tomorrow as we are the guarantors of the covenant in our age as Abraham was in his.  May all of us, including those 51 people choose to be a true Jewish blessing.

Amen