How could Avraham Avinu leave his esteemed visitor — G-d Himself — to take care of idol-worshipping guests?
hen people who’d suffered tragedies would come to him for spiritual advice, Rav Aharon Leib Steinman ztz”l would always counsel them to look for the tikkun they sought in their interpersonal relations. Is there anyone among us who can’t find something to improve in that area?
I, too, had the privilege of hearing his mussar some years ago, when he spoke to me about the power of being careful in our interpersonal interactions. These mitzvos, he said, can save a person from every sort of mishap in the world. (Many years before, I had heard from a confidant of the Chazon Ish that the gadol, whose yahrzeit falls this week, stated that the steep decline in interpersonal relations among the Torah-observant population had helped pave the way for the terrible gezeirah that befell the Jews of Europe a generation before.)
In my conversation with Rav Steinman ztz”l, he directed me to write about this subject at regular intervals. And it’s this week’s Torah parshah, in its description of Avraham Avinu’s hospitality, which enlightened me as to the reason for this general failure of ours to fully live up to our bein adam l’chaveiro obligations.
In the parshah, we see Avraham Avinu forgoing the revelation of the Shechinah in favor of pursuing the mitzvah of hachnassas orchim. Hashem, as Rashi explains, had come to pay a bikur cholim visit to Avraham, but Avraham, eager to offer hospitality, cut the visit short when he spotted three travelers in the distance. Rav Shlomo Wolbe ztz”l poses a questions about this in his commentary on sefer Bereishis:
Create a free account to keep reading.
