The Model to Follow
Now, the strength of character that it takes to oppose a majority doesn’t come out of thin air – it requires a model, someone to emulate. And these great men, Yehoshua and Kaleiv, had an especially good model to follow, someone from their not so ancient history – only a few hundred years before them – whose life they studied. I suspect that it was a model they thought about and spoke about often.
Who was that? It was the father of our nation, Avraham. But they weren’t emulating him only as Avraham Avinu; they were emulating Avraham Ha’Ivri. Now, I’ll take a minute or two to explain that.
There’s one place in the Torah where Avraham is called Avraham the Ivri (Bereishis 14:13) and our Sages are puzzled by that because we never call our heroes Ivri. Reformers call themselves Hebrews because they don’t know what the word means but if you’re familiar with Tanach, you’ll see Jews don’t call themselves Ivri. Gentiles, yes, they call Jews Ivrim, Hebrews. A Jew who’s conversing with a goy, that too; he’ll call himself an Ivri because that’s how the gentiles like to think of us. ‘Ivri’ is a generic name which means ‘those who originate from ever hanahar, the other side of the Euphrates River.’ In the eyes of the nations of the world the Jew was just one of the many tribes that originated from the other side of the Euphrates.
And who came from the other side of the river? Non-aristocrats, nomads, drifters. It was a part of the world where cities weren’t considered the norm of civilization; it was primarily shepherd nations who moved around following the pastures so that the livestock could graze. And so to the gentile, the word Ivri meant the lower class, the nomadic people. Like they say in America, the people who live ‘on the other side of the tracks’.
A Misplaced Moniker
And so the question arises therefore, because the Torah is not a gentile book. And so why does the Torah call Avraham “the Hebrew”?
And the answer the Sages (Bereishis Rabbah 32:8) give is as follows: It’s true that to the people living in Canaan Avraham was an Ivri because ‘he came from the other side’ but the Torah has a better reason for that moniker. The Torah calls him an Ivri because Avraham was an Ivri even before he came to Eretz Canaan. Even when he was still on that side of the Euphrates he was already ‘a man from the other side’.
The other side? Of what?
The other side of the whole world! םָלֹעוָה לָּכ∆ׁ ̆„ָח∆‡ ר∆ב≈ﬠ≈מ ֹולֻּכ – The whole world was on one side, „ָח∆‡ ר∆ב≈ﬠ≈מ םָהָר¿בַ‡¿ו– and just one little boy, Avraham, was on the other side (ibid.)
A Lost Little Boy
Everybody worshiped idols – that is, everybody who Avraham knew. In Eretz Canaan there was a small group of maaminim, descended from Shem and Ever, who were active in their town of Shaleim but Avrohom didn’t know anything about them. He was in Ur Kasdim all alone, one little boy among the idolaters.
You know the archeologists have spent a lot of time investigating Ur Kasdim – the ruins are in Mesopotamia near the Persian Gulf – and they discovered that it was a town dedicated to the worship of the moon goddess avodah zarah. In that town everybody was saturated with the teachings of idolatry. The mothers and fathers worshiped idols and little children were taught that way from the cradle.
And so even among his family Avraham was on the other side, an outcast. Everyone knows the story but I’ll say it anyway; how Avraham’s father, Terach, made a business of selling idols and sometimes the father asked him to stay in the store for a few minutes. And so Avraham was standing in the store behind the counter and somebody came in and wanted to buy, let’s say, an idol that’s good for having children, a special idol for fertility.
Now Avraham found it very difficult to spoil his father’s parnassah. It was the family’s way of life and it was their living too but Avraham had other ideas.
One System, One Creator
As a little boy he began to question the idols. He began to point out the oneness in the universe, how everything cooperates. Don’t you see how the sun sends down its energy and how the sun draws up the moisture from the seas and it becomes clouds and how the winds convey the clouds and then the force of gravity brings down the water?
So how did this system happen, that all these things work together in cooperation? The sun is ninety-three million miles away from here and still the sun is causing the water to rise from the surface of the ocean and the winds blow all across the surface of the earth and they carry the clouds inland and the clouds drop the water.
And then when it falls we have machines on earth called seeds that can take this water and change it into grass. Water changes into grass. And then we have cows and sheep that change the grass into leather and wool. And that's why we have not only wool and leather, that’s why we have food to eat. It all comes because of this system.
So Avraham Avinu saw that there was planning here. Tremendous planning, incredible design. And he saw such things everywhere around him. He looked and he studied and he thought and he saw everything cooperating in the world. And he said therefore that it has to be that everything has One Supervisor Who conducts all of its affairs; and finally he came to the principle Hashem Echad!
And that meant that the gods that were worshiped by his contemporaries, the whole thing was a fraud; they were being sold a false bill of goods.
Child Abuse in Mesopotamia
And so when this man asked for an idol Avraham said, “Listen to me Jack. You’re better off by going home and praying to the Hashem Elokei HaShomayim.”
“Who’s that?” he said.
So Avraham began to explain. In the meantime his father came in and saw what was doing, “What are you doing here?!” he yelled at his son. “You’re driving away my customers?! Are you out of your mind?!” And he gave him a frask (slap).
Oh, that frask was an achievement! Because it meant that Avraham was being opposed. Aha! The greatness of opposition. Not that the opposition is great but it can make you great!
Child Abuse in America
I knew a boy who told me that he was learning Gemara in his house and his mother came in and smacked him for learning so much. She was an American mother and she didn’t want him wasting his time with that ‘nonsense’.
We were walking together and he was telling me the story. He was discouraged. I said to him, “Do you want to sell me that smack? How much do you want for it?”
He thought it over and decided he wouldn’t sell it. And he was smart because he was becoming great because of that opposition.
A Difficult Test
And that’s what happened with Avraham. We have to realize that Avraham had a big battle on his hands. He was ridiculed; he was always fighting the battle of the mind, of the emotions. Don’t think it was easy. Even if you’re a smart boy, you’re an iluy, you’re a prodigy, it’s very difficult for anybody to oppose the environment.
Let’s say you’ll go today onto a university campus and you’ll stand and start preaching about Hashem Echad. You’ll be shouted down by people who can speak perfect English – the ‘intellectuals’ – and they’ll say that you’re out of style, you’re old fashioned.
“He’s talking about things that are just as dead as the flat-earth theory.” They’ll laugh at you and ridicule you. “There’s nothing to it! All the scientific world accepts evolution without exception.”
And so just because you know that you’re right doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s quite uncomfortable.
The Meshuga Majority
It’s like walking into an insane asylum. I had that once. I once had to visit a yeshivah man who was in an asylum. He was sick and I wanted to visit him. I was there after visiting hours and so they gave me a big black security man to walk with me. And all of the inmates were pointing at me and laughing at my beard. In those days nobody had a beard so they were laughing at me. Don’t think it didn’t bother me. For a moment I felt discouraged.
But then I said to myself that they were the meshugaim, that I was the sane one. But it’s not easy. It’s uncomfortable.
And Avraham Avinu didn’t have only three hundred meshugaim. He had thousands of people, his compatriots, who were shouting him down. Wherever he went they pointed at him and said, “There goes the lunatic. Terach has a crazy boy in his house.”
Great Character, Great Reward
He had nobody on his side. ה∆ּזƒמ ר∆ב≈ﬠ≈מ םָלֹעוָה לָּכ∆ׁ ̆ה∆ּזƒמ ר∆ב≈ﬠ≈מ םָהָר¿בַ‡¿ו! He was all alone, one boy against the world! And that was the highlight of Avraham’s history because it was the greatest opportunity for him. To remain strong in the face of opposition is what separates the men from the boys; it’s what makes your character great.
Because Avraham didn’t bend – despite the smacks and despite the laughter and ridicule he persisted; he didn’t weaken in his righteousness – he became better and better because of that. That’s the principle here! The more opponents you have, the greater you can become.
And the greater your reward will be. ‡ָּב∆ׁ ̆„ַﬠ םָּלֻּכ רַכ¿ׂ ̆ יוָלָﬠ ל≈ּבƒ ̃¿וּינוƒבָ‡ םָהָר¿בַ‡ – Because he persisted, Avraham took the reward of his whole generation (Avos 5:2). All of the nitzchiyus, all the Olam Haba that his generation could have gotten had they been virtuous, Avraham took away because he stayed strong despite them. They are the ones who caused his Olam Haba to be greater because it was their opposition that made him great.
And that’s a quality of character that Yehoshua and Kaleiv learned from the father of our nation. That when you remain virtuous in the face of a majority, you become so virtuous because of that, that you take away even the reward that the others could have received. Not only in this world, not only a share in Eretz Canaan; that’s nothing yet. Your share forever and ever is increased by your strength of character in the face of an opposing majority.
