Reading the incident of Sarah and Avimelech, the Rabbis noticed an interesting change of wording. After Avimelech has taken Sarah, whom he believes to be Abraham’s sister, into his harem, G-d appears to him and threatens him with death for abducting a married woman. Avimelech pleads ignorance, as Abraham had said she was his sister and states: ‘with an innocent heart and clean hands I did this thing’. G-d replies that he knows that he acted with an innocent heart, and therefore prevented Avimelech from touching her. The Rabbis pick up on the absence of any mention of clean hands in G-d’s reply. They portray G-d as answering that indeed Avimelech acted out of innocence but his failure to carry out the sin was not due to his ‘clean hands’ but rather G-d’s stratagem to protect Sarah. This little exchange may seem insignificant or merely a nice piece of clever exegesis, but it contains within it an important message: one heeded by the Rabbis themselves and relevant to us. There are two ways to stop people doing something wrong. One is education. By informing people of the consequences of their actions or the true nature of their activities, they can hopefully be dissuaded from acting in an unacceptable manner. Yet, this is often not enough. People need often to be prevented from acting in ways that are damaging to themselves and others, even before they can be educated out of such behaviour. Thus, G-d prevented Avimelech from sinning with Sarah and only then informed him of the danger he faced. The Rabbis, too, were great believers in the power of education. Yet they understood the need to create a ‘fence round the Torah’; distancing people from situations and actions that could lead to forbidden actions. Not touching work implements on Shabbat, or not being alone with a member of the opposite sex, are but two of the laws in this genre. The same debate can be had concerning the modern evils of tobacco and alcohol abuse. Are education campaigns enough? Or is it necessary to prevent people from sinning, through smoking bans and liquor taxes. The lesson of the Torah seems to be that both are necessary. That is an important message for our society. We often seem to think that education alone will solve our societal evils. Indeed, education may be the only long term solution. But in the present we have an obligation to limit the damage. That, as Avimelech discovered, can often only be done by prevention..

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 Sidra Statistics

Parshat Vayera:

• has 147 verses ;
• is the 4th in Genesis, 4th in the Torah
• 4th longest in Genesis, 6th longest in the Torah
• has no mitzvot.

99, 13 and 8.

We learn from Abraham, that whoever invites guests to their home; it is as if they entertained G-d.