Notice how it's easier to criticize from a distance than it is to make a positive difference? Sitting in a comfortable chair in the safety of our suburban homes, we peruse the newspapers and comment on the "obvious" solution, even though that solution seems to have escaped the attention of everyone else in the world.
Almost everyone succumbs to the temptation to solve the world's problems, over coffee, or while watching the nightly news.
But notice how few are the numbers of people who volunteer at the local hospital, for the AIDS walk, or at a nearby synagogue.
We all love to criticize the experts, love to sound wise and insightful at a dinner party or social gathering, but the idea of spending time with the homeless, the elderly shut-ins, or the critically ill paralyzes us in our inaction.
Abraham, in that regard, was not so different from the rest of us. In Parashat Lekh Lekha, we pick up his life in the middle, so to speak. Abram is a comfortably well off gentleman. He is married, and seems to be at the center of a thriving clan.
Probably he sounded off at festival gatherings about what was wrong with Ur and how it should be fixed, but minded his own business and spent his precious leisure time privately. In Midrash Bereshit Rabbah, Rabbi Berekiah compares him to "a vial of myrrh closed with a tight-fitting lid and lying in a corner, so that its fragrance was not disseminated."
It isn't hard to guess what Rabbi Berekiah thinks of a bottle of perfume that is so tightly sealed that no one can smell it at all. And it isn't hard to extrapolate his opinion of people who are well-off, well-educated, full of opinions who somehow never seem to find the time to try out their opinions in a practical way. Good advise on how to live, if sealed into a cozy corner, doesn't do the world any good.
In the midst of Abram's comfort and self-absorption, God shattered Abram's complacency forever. With one forceful call, God forced Abram to abandon his posturing and lectures, and to apply his wisdom to helping his fellow human beings. "Go forth from your native land, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you."
Without even knowing where his involvement would lead, Abraham shifted his focus from editorializing to activism--working on behalf of morality, God, and other people. Rabbi Berekiah shrewdly notes that the sealed perfume, "once it was taken up, disseminated its fragrance. Similarly, the Holy Blessed One said to Abraham, 'travel from place to place and your name will become great in the world."
Perfume gains value by sharing its rich fragrance with all who can smell it. A wise education, moral balance, or physical strength, are worthwhile to the extent that they translate into action on behalf of building a better world. When we use the innate gifts that God gave us, when we harness the education and guidance that our parents, teachers, and friends provided, then we do them and ourselves credit.
Rather than hoarding our viewpoints and our energy, we become rich to the extent that we share them with others.
That same wisdom shines in the aphorism of Rabbi Tarfon, when he observed that "the day is short, the task is great, the workers indolent, the reward bountiful, and the Master insistent?"
We are the indolent workers. Our onerous and glorious task, as always, is repairing the world to wholeness, to health, and to peace. As have past generations, we shy away from our sacred calling, preferring instead to simply bottle up our fragrance, terrified to really encounter each other and ourselves.
Yet there is nothing so glorious, nothing so rewarding, and nothing so needed, as reaching out to a needy stranger. In caring for an anonymous creature in the image of God, we uncover a new reflection of God's precious love, and we illumine our own lives by the light of that beauty.
And we also make someone else's life a little more pleasant too.
Shabbat Shalom!