Built on Kindness: The Gateway to Torah

1a“So that he will command his children and his household after him, and they will keep the way of Hashem, to do tzedakah and justice.”¹ Why did Avraham Avinu command his descendants about tzedakah and kindness in particular, more than about all the other 613 mitzvos? We also need to understand a verse further on: “And he planted an eshel …”² The Gemara comments: “Reish Lakish said: This teaches that he made an orchard and planted in it all kinds of choice fruits. R' Yehudah and R' Nechemiah differ: one said it was an orchard, and the other said it was an inn.”³ Rashi explains that the orchard was for passersby to enjoy and the inn for guests to lodge in, and that the word eshel is formed from the initials of achilah, eating, shesiyah, drinking, and levayah, escorting, and so on.

1bThis calls for an explanation. Hospitality to guests is certainly an exceedingly great thing, but it would seem that Avraham's main task was to bring those who were far away close to Hashem and to teach them Torah. If so, it would seem more fitting for him to have founded a yeshivah to draw them close to Torah. [Chazal do say, “Avraham Avinu was an elder who sat in the yeshivah.”⁴ Still, for the many people who were drawn close to him, we find only that he gave them food, drink and lodging.]

2Let us first cite a teaching of Chazal in the early Midrash Tanna Devei Eliyahu: “Those who went out of Egypt had one mitzvah in their hands, and it was more pleasing to the Holy One, blessed be He, than a hundred mitzvos: they all formed a single band and made a covenant to do kindness for one another …”⁵ Yet it would seem that the whole purpose of the Exodus was for Israel to receive the Torah, as the verse says, “When you take the people out of Egypt, you will serve God upon this mountain.”⁶ Why, then, did they make a covenant to do kindness for one another, and not a covenant about Torah, to teach one another?

3aWe can explain all this as follows. The verse says, “The world is built by kindness”:⁷ the foundation on which the world is built and stands is kindness. To see why, we begin with Chazal's teaching that the Torah was created before the world.⁸ At first glance, what need was there for the Torah before the world existed, when there were no people to study it? The answer is that it was created first to show everyone who comes into the world that the world could be created only once the Torah already existed. Only through the Torah does the world endure, as Rashi and Chazal explain the verse “If not for My covenant day and night, I would not have set the laws of heaven and earth.”⁹

3bThe truth of this is plain in our own days: everyone can see what the world looks like without Torah study. This is especially true of the Jewish people, who cannot survive without Torah, as Chazal teach in the Gemara: “Once the wicked Roman kingdom decreed that Israel must not engage in Torah. Pappus ben Yehudah came and found R' Akiva gathering crowds in public …”¹⁰ R' Akiva answered with a parable: “To what can the matter be compared? To a fox …”¹¹ And he went on: “If in the place where we live we are afraid, in the place where we die, how much more so! So it is with us: when we sit and engage in the Torah, of which it is written, ‘For it is your life and the length of your days,’ this is our state; if we go and abandon it, how much more so!”¹² From this we see how vital Torah study is for the survival of the Jewish people. Without the Torah, the Jewish people has no life in the world at all.

4We can now see why kindness is what sustains the world. The way to bring Jews close to Hashem and to His Torah is by doing kindness for one another. And the way to acquire the Torah is by teaching one another; when a Jew teaches a friend who cannot learn on his own, that too counts for him as an act of kindness. This is what the verse calls “a Torah of kindness,” as Chazal explain.¹³ That is what Dovid HaMelech meant by “The world is built by kindness.” True, the world endures through the Torah. But the Torah is acquired through the kindness of teaching one another, and kindness also draws people close to Hashem and His Torah. So the whole structure of the world and its existence rests on kindness.

5This is the meaning of the words “so that he will command …” Avraham Avinu did command his descendants to keep the entire Torah, as it says, “and they will keep the way of Hashem.” But the Torah endures only through kindness, and “the world is built by kindness.” So he commanded them first and foremost “to do tzedakah,” so that they would draw one another close to the Torah and strengthen one another in it. And “to do tzedakah” covers not only material things but spiritual ones as well: teaching Torah to one's fellow.

6This answers our question about the eshel. All of Avraham Avinu's avodah was to bring the people of the world close to Hashem, and, as we have seen, people come close to Hashem through acts of kindness. So he set up a place of hospitality, to draw people through it to Torah.

7In the same way we can understand why our forefathers, when they left Egypt, made their covenant about kindness, of all things. They left Egypt in order to receive the Torah, and the way to receive it, as we have seen, is through kindness.

8May it be His will that we be privileged to attain both kindness and a Torah of kindness. Amen.