Thursday, December 27, 2012
Beginnings Part 8 - Avraham, His Wives & All Their Children (Video
Rabbi Haber discusses the lives of Avraham, his wives, children and their family dynamics.
The Jewish people are the “tweak” of the world. That is, we are the people who must adjust and fix the nature of human exigencies on creation to align it with Hashem’s plan. Avraham is universal, many nations lay claim to Avraham. Yitzchak was narrower, and Yaakov was narrower. The 12 tribes were narrower still than the Avos.
The Jewish people of today are the result of all that tweaking. The point of the Jewish people’s function in Hashem’s plan is not that we should bring people to believe in G-D, (which is a good thing), but that we should make the world into a home (a resting place) for G-D’s presence.
Yishmael is not the evil person that we usually think he is, he was actually a tzadik who was not only a good person, but he got along with his brother, Yitzchak, they were friends.
The Rav further focuses on the dynamics of the relationship of Avraham Avinu with Sarah Imeinu and Hagar.
Rabbi Haber has been a leading force in Jewish Outreach for the past 25 years. A founding trustee of AJOP, the Association of Jewish Outreach Professionals, he was the founder and director of the Torah Center of Buffalo from 1980-1990 while serving as a community rabbi in Buffalo. From Buffalo he and his family traveled to Melbourne, Australia where as a project of Kollel Bais HaTalmud he founded the Australian Institute of Torah, a national outreach and adult education program. He directed that program from 1990-1995, at which time he was sought out as National Director of Jewish Education for the Orthodox Union in the United States where he created the Internationally acclaimed and highly successful "Pardes Project."
