Shabbat Gathering: Abraham, the first Jew by choice.

Gud Shabbos Khaveyrim, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

I’ve think I’ve mentioned to you before that I study with a couple of people from synagogue. We meet weekly over a nice breakfast and we just finished about a year long study of a two volume book called Speaking Torah. It’s a compilation of and commentary on the beliefs of the Baal Shem Tov divided into weekly Torah portions. A couple of weeks back, I read something that really hit me: Abraham was the first convert to Judaism. Yeah, that really grabbed me.

Here’s the story (and this is midrash, a tall tale made up by the rabbis and perhaps elaborated on by me):

Abraham’s father’s name was Terah and he was an idol maker and had his own idol shop. When Abraham was still a kid, he helped out with his dad's business. One day, Terah left Abraham alone to run the shop while Terah went to visit a customer.

Abraham had some sort of epiphany that the idols his father made were phony baloney. So Abraham took a hammer and smashed all the idols in his father’s shop except for the biggest one. Abraham took that hammer and put it in the hand of that big idol.

When Terah came home from his trip, he was shocked and angry. He asked Abraham, “What happened here?” Abraham said that that big idol took a hammer and smashed all the other idols. Terah said, “These are just inanimate objects and have no power at all.”

Phony baloney idols.

Abraham made his point. Those phony baloney idols were completely powerless. And from there, Abraham moved on to believe monotheism and, specifically, Hashem when he had his personal encounter with the Divine.

There are many different lesson we can take from the story, but I thought about Abraham’s belief that there is only one G!d. It rang something personal for me about my own journey to Judaism, my own realization that there is only one, single, indivisible G!d.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Mit vareme grusn,
(With warm regards,)

All my love,
brian.

PS

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PPS

This is the 224th consecutive Shabbat Gathering newsletter I've distributed. For some reason, I never run out of things to send on to you. However, if there's a topic you're interested in having me look into, please feel free to let me know. There's a link to my email address in the signature above. Gud Shabbos!

DuoYid

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