Parshas Vayera: Why God Loved Avraham and Why I Plan to be a Hands-on Father

The week exploded with joy: a healthy baby boy, hospital runs, school interviews for our four-year-old, and more miles on the Parkway than we can count. In the rush, a harder truth surfaced—our Gemara seat sat empty—and that stung. So we turned to Vayera for clarity and found a verse that hit like a bell: God doesn’t single out Avraham for breaking idols, debating kings, or even building a tent of radical hospitality. The love lands here—he teaches his children and his household to keep the way of God.

That insight flips the scoreboard most of us carry in our heads. Public greatness is good; parenting is greater. We unpack how Avraham’s legacy makes the home the primary beit midrash and why brief, consistent moments with our kids—ten minutes of Torah, a Shabbat table that lives, a nightly story or song—can shape identity more deeply than any speech. We talk about brit milah as a parent’s obligation, the danger of outsourcing chinuch, and the quiet power of modeling growth where children can see it and feel it. When kids trust that love guides our choices, they’ll walk beside us even on steep paths.

You’ll hear practical ways to turn family life into lasting learning: questions at dinner that spark wonder, small rituals that stack into memory, check-ins that teach integrity as clearly as halacha. Work matters. Learning matters. But raising a child in God’s ways is where love and duty meet, and that conviction can redeem a week that might look “unproductive” on paper. If God loved Avraham for being a father first, we can reorder our homes—and our calendars—to follow suit. If this conversation speaks to you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review with one family ritual you’ll start tonight.

Transcript

A Week Of New Life

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It has been quite the busy week here at the Motivation Congregation Studios. It's been a week filled with emotional highs and lows. We have been blessed by the Almighty with a happy and healthy baby boy. It was a week that consisted of excitement and buildup and labor pains and hospital trips. And more hospital trips. And more waiting. And more trips to the grocery store. It was an amazing week because it was unlike any other. It wasn't just the having a baby that made this week special, which would have been enough to even make a whole lifetime special. There were also interviews with principals and teachers to try to earn a spot in their school for my superstar four-year-old daughter. There were more meetings with brokerages and realtors, CEOs, and developers to try to figure out where I should hang my license to be able to aid buyers and sellers in the transactions of real estate. There's been tons of daddy time, father time, daddy daycare. Driving back and forth on the New Jersey Parkway between exit 105 and exit 98 from Monmouth Medical Center, picking up the children from daycare and hanging out with them back and forth to the hospital, making sure their lunches are ready. Trying to figure out how to put tights on a two-year-old. There was a lot of father time. And it was a fantastic week, a week with almost all just emotional highs and very little lows. But there was not much time for Torah study. I did struggle with the fact that my seat in the study hall with the textbook of Bava Mitsia would lie bare, would lie unused at the study hall. My seat would remain empty because I was involved in important and necessary obligations and functions. And I struggled with how to I balance family life and Torah life. I struggled to deal with the fact that I probably wasn't going to know the sugya as well as I had learned it when I was just a yeshiva boy without any obligations. So I discovered a new perspective in this week's Parsha that taught me everything that I think one needs to know, and an idea that I will apply to my own life about how one should spend his time and what's important in his life. I think it's obvious, but it needs to be stated loudly and clearly. The hero of our parsha is none other than the great father of nations. The foundational figure of our parsha, his name is Abraham Avraham Avenu, Avraham, our father. His accomplishments in life on his tombstone. It would read Established Monotheism. He is credited with discovering and teaching people about the existence of the one God. He is credited. He and he alone is credited. And educating a world that was totally immersed in idolatry and Avodesara and sports betting, breaking idols, did he, and debating with them, did he, and all of his wayward contemporaries to teach them about the proper way of life. Avram Avenu was the very first patriarch, the progenitor of the Jewish nation. Avram Avinu, in his free time, besides for establishing monotheism, joined the covenant of the circumcision, did a brismila at the ripe old age of 99. He was commanded to make a brismila, and so he did. If that wasn't enough for Avram Avenu's legacy, he also was a pillar of kindness, in which he set up a motel, a hotel, a ritzcarlton of kindness, doors open on all sides, welcoming in the poor, the hungry, the weary, the needy. Those that smell bad and struggle with obesity but need help, Avram Avinu was there to help them. Avram is remembered for his outstanding kindness. Avram is remembered for his shalom bias in which he always pitched his wife's tent before his. They want to change, they're gonna do better. He would deal with the sinners, with the drug addicts helping, helping, and praying for them, interceding constantly for the sake of Sodom and Gomorrah. He interceded for the righteous people that would live there so that there wouldn't even be one lost holy soul. And Avramavinu, because of these great acts, it would seem that these are all the are the causative factors as to why God calls Abraham Avramavinu my lover, the one that I love. The apost in Yeshaiah 41.8 says, But you, Yisrael, my servant, Yaakov, who I have chosen, the offspring of Ahavroham, the Zerah Avroham Oyavi, the one who loved me. We learn in Divrahayam that the love was reciprocal. Although our parsha's vayera exposes the secret. Why it does Hashem love Avram Avinu so much? Which action earned him the title of the one that I love? The Pasik says, listen to this. Kyodative, Hashem is declaring. For I know. Rachi says this is Loshan Khiva. Kyodative, I know him. As if when the Torah talks about a couple cohabiting, it says, he knew her. To know someone means to know them in a very close and bonded way. Kiyodativ Rashi says it's a way of saying, Avram Avidu, he's my guy. You are singled out. Why? Why is Avram singled out? And Allah, that God knows him and loves him? Because that you teach and you command your household, your children after you, and you teach them to guard the path of God, la so mishvat. Avramavinu earns the title of the chosen one, and the one who God loves, not for his spreading of monotheism, but because he taught his children the way of God. He was a good Tati, does it say here? You've been singled out because he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of God by doing what is just and what is right. I heard this Nikuta screamed by Rabbi Elephant and Rabbi Lopiensky a couple years ago in Ishir. That with all of our obligations, sometimes we forget our most critical obligation and the reason that Avram was loved, which is that he taught his kids how to be good Jews. And what we see here is a huge novel idea. That it even seems like being a good Tati is the reason that God loved Avram so much. It seems like that is the reason. For being a good Tati is the reason that he's singled out. And not specifically because of the spreading of monotheism and opening up chesed organizations and being Mekari of thousands of people and interceding for Sedom and Amora and possibly and obediently sacrificing his son. Those aren't the reasons that he earns the title, the singled out Oya Vrom A Oyavi, the one that I love. But it's rather because he took the time to be a good father. That's what it means that I know him, that he is my guy. I was thinking about this. We spend so much time trying to do good things that sometimes we forget are a most important obligation, which is Lamanitzava Ezbonov Ez Beso Acharov. To teach our children how to be good, godly soldiers. It was this idea that gave me a lot of koach from this past week, and that I was running around in mostly daddy time and father obligations, but I thought about it a different way. What if I finally was now having a chance to focus on the most important job? Of course, we need to spend time at work and spend time learning Torah. But when we finally have those opportunities to teach our children the way of Hashem because we're spending significant time with them, that is the most critical job, the most vital and necessary job that a human can possess to be a Tati and to be a mommy. I just picked up on this this past week that our patriarchs and our matriarchs, the best Jews that we have ever seen, they are not called prophets, they are not called leaders, but they are called fathers and mothers, of and emohos. We remember them as Tatis and as mommies, as good paternal teaching parents, proper tutors of the way of God. Does that not scream to our most sacred calling, which is to draft and train little soldiers in the army of Hashem? How paramount is the obligation on a father to teach his ways, the ways of Hashem to his son, that it seems that the mitzvah of brismila seems to be not necessarily on the boy himself when he gets to be 13 years old, but it's an obligation on a Tati to do it to his son. An obligation to welcome him into the fraternity and the brotherhood of godliness. The more I thought about how important it is to be a good daddy and a good mommy and give your children time and really teach them and focus on your children, that they should become the students of Hashem and that they're actually much more important than our own service of Hashem, the more I noticed different references to this in the Parshios. I'm remembering that in Parsha Shamos, the Jewish people are going down. Yaqov and his 70 descendants are going down, and it says, Ishu basu boo, the Jewish people are counted not as one community, but actually as separate units, each in its own family. God wants us to take the Torah back to our homes and educate our youth and educate our spouses and be good ovos vi'emohos. But too frequently do we err in our calculations of how to spend our time and what's important. Too many Tatis or too many mommies can say that they have sufficiently taught their child how to hold a spoon. They've taught them how to throw a baseball and catch it. They've potty trained them and taught them how to ride a bike, but they have yet to educate them on how to take care of the most precious possession that their children possess, which is their soul. They haven't taught them how to do mitzvos and how to care for the health and happiness of their nishemah. They haven't taught them integrity and truth. They haven't done vidibartam. They haven't taught their children to study Torah, and they haven't taught them the very basic tenets of the Jewish faith. But they call themselves good parents because they taught their kids how to ride a bike without training wheels. And while that is a pretty cool feat, it is far from teaching the child how to take care of his soul. You're to teach him to swim. The Gemara says. But he wouldn't ever involve his children or his wife in his growth. She elaborated about the tragedy that had happened and how she laments that her husband did not hear the advice of Rabietsk Berkowitz. And while that man probably didn't mean any harm, harm was had because of a grave error of not including your children in the steiging and not focusing foremost and primarily on Laman Yitzava as Bonov as Beso Acharov. All of my role models are good dads. They can't be. They can't be a good rabbi and a good role model if they're not good dads. If a person isn't blessed with children, then at least they're definitely the best dad to their students and to the people that they teach Torah to, because that's also a form of fatherhood. And an interesting conclusion from being a proper dad, when you read the words of why Yitzhak followed his father up the mountain of Moriah for the sake of becoming an offering, it does not seem that Yitzhuk was doing it for the sake of God, but Yitzhuk's words are always, of course I'm doing it because it's what my father wants. Because it seems that when you trust your dad and you know that your dad is there for you and taking care of you, and your parents are always doing what's best, you see what they're up to. Yitzhuk Avinu's loan care and concern is that my father wants to offer me as a carbon. Well, then I'll do it if that's what dad wants, and that's what dad says is right. Could you imagine such loyalty of a son to a father because he feels so taken care of or so at ease and so close to his parents? It's a parent's job that every Shabbos should be like a Shabbos of Chizuk. You don't need to go to the Sheraton or any of those kosher hotels in New Hampshire or Connecticut and hear great speakers and eat good food. It's a parent's job to have Shabbatones and panels every Shabbos between him, his wife, his kids, and there should be a liveliness, a vibrancy about the Friday night meal. Candy and parsha and excitement and newsletters and reading and divre Torah and songs. Question and answer sessions at Shalashuddhis with the kids and with father. To create a proper and holy reina yiddish of vinkel or a happy and healthy Jewish house. We shouldn't dare just rest on our laurels and offload our responsibilities to the school that they should take care of the education of my son. No. Be aware of how your children are doing. Be a hands-on father. Know how they're doing in their homework. Know how they're following the school rules. Take time for you to educate your children, Vidibarth Bom style. It's for this reason that after I give my little boy a name on Monday, you're all informed of the bris. You cannot invite to a bris because then one has to go. Otherwise, they're considered despising a mitzvah of Hashem because they don't want to attend a simcha. That's a simcha shell mitzvah. So we inform. So everyone is informed to come to the bris this Monday. You can reach out to figure out where and when it will be. But after we give this little boy a name, I'm gonna be a hands-on Tati. Because that's what God loved Avram Avinu for. And I want God to love me. And I bet you want God to love you. And because we are reminded that our most important job is to establish a happy, pleasurable environment for our children to Shtai, to be able to educate our children in the way of Hashem. Lem'an. How could we do this? Why are we doing this? Lamanya dativ? Because I know Lamanashayitzava is born of his basu akharov, Shamruder Hashem, because God loved Avram Avenu, because he was a good Tati. I want to be a good Tati. I bet you want to be a good Tati or a good mommy, a good parent. And it's that being a good Tati that God notes about Avram. Not his spreading of monotheism and not his opening up of chesed hotels. That should give you a little bit of a perspective about how you organize your day and your time. Maybe to put learning with your son or having some tea with your son. If you're a mommy, schmoozing with your son, making him feel emotionally healthy and stable, making him feel loved and grounded and cared for.