Torah Portions
Vayera
"And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre..." (Genesis 18:1)
וַיֵּרָא - Vayera Torah Portion
There is a condition and understanding that everything is going after the beginning – every time the Torah portion appears, in these two portions – it is a great opportunity for us to see the arena of our work. Not only to examine ourselves, but to truly see what needs to go through circumcision in ourselves, so that we could see our work. So that something will reveal itself to us
The portion of Va’yera is about circumcision, starting with Chessed. The beginning is understanding the bounty related to love and kindness of Chessed, and the dangers around it, and how to channel it through a restraint of Gevura.
It appears in three sections in this portion. The first, rarely spoken of, the binding of the daughters of Lot. As a student of Abraham, Lot has within himself a strong Chessed power. It has to do with the way Sodom understood Chessed. They wanted to draw the end of reformation, the world to come, so they set an evil separation. The thought in their mind was ‘what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours’. Because, at the end of time, everyone will get what they should – at once.
So, what we can understand from the angels' visit to Lot – he is willing to sacrifice his daughters. The new visitors arriving to town wanted the guests, so he thought of giving his daughters.
If we look at our new generation's psychology – we can see this has not changed much. People still think their children are their own to give.
Any offspring of us doesn’t belong to us, even if we think it is asked of us. There is a strong statement of non-agreement here which allows us to ask ourselves: what does this mean in relation to our internal work?