Hospitality and the Hospital: Why Abraham Interrupted God to Welcome Three Strangers
Parshat Vayeira and why the highest spiritual encounter happens when we tend to another human being’s pain
The Torah portion of Vayera opens up with Abraham convalescing from his circumcision. He gets a “Bikkur Cholim” visit (Mitzva to visit and comfort a person who is ill) from no less than Gd himself. He interrupts this visit to tend to three tired and hungry strangers who show up at his doorstep in order to fulfill the Mitzva of “Hachnasat Orchim” ( hospitality).
The instructional values suggested by the narrative, in which the ethos of hospitality arguably supersedes
the vital importance of visiting the sick, derives its literary moral oomph from the jarring choice of the first Jew abruptly ending a sick visit from Gd himself, in order to tend to the needs of these three sojourners.
Perhaps it’s the other way around, and the question of why Abraham would interfere with this Mitzvah in progress, is simply intensified by the fact that it is G-d himself performing the Mitzvah?
Either way, I am happy to point out
the etymologically intriguing fact that the word hotel, hostel, and of course hospitality, all share the same latin root as the word hospital.
Shabbat Shalom,
Much Love,
Rabbi Yossi