This week's parsha - containing both the destruction of S?dom and the episode of the Akeida - defies our understanding.
Think about it: Avraham was the epitome of chesed: "What is mine is yours, and what is yours is yours." But S'dom was the antithesis of chesed: If you dared to help a stranger, both he and you would be punished severely. So why should Avraham argue to save S'dom? He should davka be the one to demand that G-d destroy this most evil city, as a testament to their evil ways.
Later, Avraham is told to bring Yitzchak as an offering. Why does Avraham not argue then - as fiercely as he did at S'dom - for Yitzchak's reprieve? "How can You, O G-d, kill this tzadik," Avraham might have pleaded, "if you were willing to save S'dom on behalf of its righteous?"
Avraham's silence is as deafening as it is puzzling.
I suggest to you that Avraham was trying to prove a theorem that needed to be established, forever, in G-d's universe: This world is sustained by virtue of those precious few individuals who are totally loyal to Hashem's will, and who maintain their spiritual purity even when they are surrounded by multitudes of those who don't.
S'dom represented all the worst qualities of a world gone astray: Depravity, theft, cruelty to others, injustice, hate. Yet even with all that, there was still hope - as long as a minimum of tzadikim, pure souls, remained.
At the Akeida, this same lesson was expressed in an even more dramatic fashion. Would a human being be prepared to give the ultimate - his life, his soul - to be faithful to G-d's will? Avraham and Yitzchak's acquiescence to the presumed sacrifice placed in the world, for all time, Jewish willingness to go all the way for G-d.
It is this selfsame spirit of m'sirat nefesh - demonstrated by Rachel, Hur, Shimshon, the Shoah victims, IDF soldiers and the all-too-many heroes and martyrs of our history - that convinces Hashem to let this planet keep on spinning, and to permit the Jewish People to go on, despite our failure to always live up - as a nation - to our sacred mission and character as an Am Segula and Goy Kadosh.
In effect, Avraham's actions both at S'dom and at the Akeida served to convince Hashem to practice the ultimate chesed: To allow life to flourish and be maintained always, in the merit of those holy, precious neshamot who carry the rest of us on their beautiful, broad shoulders.
Think about it: Avraham was the epitome of chesed: "What is mine is yours, and what is yours is yours." But S'dom was the antithesis of chesed: If you dared to help a stranger, both he and you would be punished severely. So why should Avraham argue to save S'dom? He should davka be the one to demand that G-d destroy this most evil city, as a testament to their evil ways.
Later, Avraham is told to bring Yitzchak as an offering. Why does Avraham not argue then - as fiercely as he did at S'dom - for Yitzchak's reprieve? "How can You, O G-d, kill this tzadik," Avraham might have pleaded, "if you were willing to save S'dom on behalf of its righteous?"
Avraham's silence is as deafening as it is puzzling.
I suggest to you that Avraham was trying to prove a theorem that needed to be established, forever, in G-d's universe: This world is sustained by virtue of those precious few individuals who are totally loyal to Hashem's will, and who maintain their spiritual purity even when they are surrounded by multitudes of those who don't.
S'dom represented all the worst qualities of a world gone astray: Depravity, theft, cruelty to others, injustice, hate. Yet even with all that, there was still hope - as long as a minimum of tzadikim, pure souls, remained.
At the Akeida, this same lesson was expressed in an even more dramatic fashion. Would a human being be prepared to give the ultimate - his life, his soul - to be faithful to G-d's will? Avraham and Yitzchak's acquiescence to the presumed sacrifice placed in the world, for all time, Jewish willingness to go all the way for G-d.
It is this selfsame spirit of m'sirat nefesh - demonstrated by Rachel, Hur, Shimshon, the Shoah victims, IDF soldiers and the all-too-many heroes and martyrs of our history - that convinces Hashem to let this planet keep on spinning, and to permit the Jewish People to go on, despite our failure to always live up - as a nation - to our sacred mission and character as an Am Segula and Goy Kadosh.
In effect, Avraham's actions both at S'dom and at the Akeida served to convince Hashem to practice the ultimate chesed: To allow life to flourish and be maintained always, in the merit of those holy, precious neshamot who carry the rest of us on their beautiful, broad shoulders.