In this week’s parasha, Vayera, Abraham and Sarah are visited by three angels. They will announce that in a year’s time, Abraham and Sarah will have a son. The Mai Hashiloach, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner (1800-1854) asks a question: Why did three angels visit Abraham and Sarah before the birth of Isaac?
He answers that the world was not yet prepared to receive a soul as precious as that of Isaacs. Isaac’s coming was no ordinary birth; it was as though the Divine Presence – the Shechinah – herself, descended from heaven to earth. The angels’ visit infused the world with holiness, preparing its spiritual atmosphere and laying the foundations necessary to welcome the one through whom God’s covenant would endure.
In Jewish tradition the home is called a “Mikdash Me-at”, a small sanctuary. This implies that the ideal Jewish home is suffused with a sense of holiness, a reflection of the Beit Ha-Mikdash, the bygone Temple in Jerusalem. Just as the angels prepared the world for Isaac, so we are called upon to prepare our homes for the Divine Prescence.
But no angels will come to do it for us. We must lay our own foundations, create our own sense of holiness. We can cultivate a spiritual atmosphere in our homes through lighting Shabbat candles and having a Shabbat dinner, by having Jewish books and Jewish art in our home, by speaking kindly and listening respectfully to one another, by welcoming friends and family into our homes, practicing the hospitality that is so evident in the beginning of our parasha in the way Abraham treats the angels who visit him. It is through finding the sacred in the ordinary rhythms of life that we can transform our home into a haven of holiness.
May our homes be a place of Torah, a place of kindness, and a place of peace.
Shabbat Shalom
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