Sermons

Being a Faithful (Shabbat Lech L’cha)

You can watch Rabbi Eleanor's sermon here or read it below

The premise is simple: put 22 people in a castle, with the promise of a prize fund increased by daily cooperative challenges, and eliminate candidates daily by virtual murders or banishments; if the ‘faithful’ majority reach the end, the money is split between them, but if the designated ‘traitors’ win, they each get more money as the pot is shared between fewer people. While I definitely have some ethical qualms about its encouragement of lies and deception, the Celebrity Traitors has introduced many people to singer Cat Burns, who has been doing pretty well as one of the scheming traitors (no spoilers here) – and yesterday found time to release her second album.

For anyone who has only encountered Cat Burns on the show, her music might be something of a surprise. The new album is sensitive and soulful, and strongly influenced by the loss of her father five years ago and her grandfather just last year. The song ‘All This Love’ begins the day after the funeral, musing on the hole left in her life that leads her to sing, “I’ve got all this love and I don’t know what to do with it.” All the love that she would have poured into her relationship with her grandfather now has no obvious object, and the pain of this is expressed in the beautiful line, “Grief is love with no place to go.” Cat Burns might be a Celebrity Traitor, but in her personal life, she’s very much a faithful.

There are no dramatic cloaks or fancy Scottish locations, but that idea of having an abundance of love and needing to find places into which to channel it, of love that drives acts expressing faithfulness and loyalty, seems to lurk in Parashat Lech L’cha. Foreshadowing later episodes of Abraham’s life, Genesis 15 begins with “אַחַ֣ר ׀ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה – after these things…” – things we heard Esther talk about earlier – and this time, what follows is not the Akedah, but a Divine vision granted to Abram, assuring him that God will be Abram’s shield and will make Abram’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Immediately after the promise that Abram will have so uncountably many descendants, comes a verse that draws in this idea of faithfulness: “וְהֶאֱמִ֖ן בַּֽיהֹוָ֑ה וַיַּחְשְׁבֶ֥הָ לּ֖וֹ צְדָקָֽה׃ - and he put his trust in the Eternal, and [He/God] reckoned it to [his] merit” (Genesis 15:6). Rashi explains this simply, meaning that because Abram accepted this promise without requesting proof, God considered this as an act of faith which could be counted in Abram’s favour and so earned him a further reward. That word וְהֶאֱמִ֖ן is from the same root as the word ‘Amen’, which is probably another sermon in itself, but the linguistic roots that both words share are to do with affirming something as reliable, trustworthy, or even faithful: so the translation of “וְהֶאֱמִ֖ן בַּֽיהֹוָ֑ה” as “he put his trust in God” is good.

The second part of the verse can be read quite differently from Rashi’s simple interpretation, though, because in the male-gendered God-language of Genesis, it says “וַיַּחְשְׁבֶ֥הָ לּ֖וֹ צְדָקָֽה – he reckoned it to his merit/righteousness”, without explicitly stating which “he” is which. That sounds technical, but it means that other commentators (Rashbam, Chizkuni) can read this verse differently. They can translate it to mean ‘and Abram put his trust in God, and Abram reckoned it as based on God’s righteousness.’ In this translation, it’s not Abram earning a favour by his faithfulness: it’s Abram’s faithfulness leading him to see the goodness he receives as something that comes from God’s righteousness, or charitable

nature, not as something that Abram somehow deserves because of his own good deeds. Ramban (thirteenth century, Spanish) develops this idea to explain that this means Abram no longer needs to fear that the promise of descendants could go unfulfilled if he somehow ends up sinning; the promise is not conditional on Abram’s deeds, but only on God’s righteousness, which is indescribably more reliable than human goodness.

This reading of the verse also makes it a description of what it means to be ne’eman (faithful) or to have emunah (faith). It might not be primarily about believing in God’s existence, or even accepting a promise without question; here, Abram’s act of faithfulness is trusting that goodness will result from God’s nature. This kind of faithfulness involves trusting that others may treat us even better than we deserve, simply because it is in their nature: it means looking at them with a kind eye, assuming that they too may be faithful, trustworthy, or reliable – exactly the kind of behaviour that The Traitors as a show seems to discourage (which may explain why I’m still uncomfortable about it, addictive though I understand it is!).

This fits with the idea that being faithful, in a Jewish sense, is less about what you believe and more about how you act: less a feeling, more an impetus to particular behaviours, perhaps even starting a chain reaction of good acts by the attitude with which we approach others. Jewish tradition encourages us to start each day by returning to something like Abram’s attitude in our parashah: traditionally we recite, first thing in the morning, “מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מלך חַי וְקַיָּם שֶהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ Grateful am I to You, living and enduring Sovereign, for You have graciously returned my soul within me. Great is Your faithfulness.” Starting with gratitude for the simple gift of life, granted by God’s faithfulness rather than relying on us to ‘earn’ it, is an amazing way to start a new morning and a great attitude to take into the day. (It doesn’t always come easily, so to help me remember, I have a picture just behind my laptop of my Modeh Ani cow, inspired by a very silly musical version involving a singing cowboy puppet, that reminds me of emoo-natecha and not to let the sad reality of scammers and spammers derail me too much.)

We do need some protection, so a little suspicion can be healthy, but especially among the people we interact with regularly, we have a chance to build a different kind of world. And so I’ll ask: what would our days be like if we really adopted this attitude? If we approached others with the assumption that they were faithful, not traitors; if we chose not to look out into the world demanding the goodness that we think other people somehow owe us, but rather looked with gratitude for the blessings that come our way, whether or not we have ‘earned’ them. We might even commit to being faithful ourselves, channelling the love we have to give to become a blessing without counting what we stand to gain by it; and then perhaps we’ll find that whether that is towards God or towards fellow humans, faithfulness is love with a place to go. However appealing the Traitors may be as a programme, as we work toward a world of trust and love, you can count me on team faithful.