Rabbi Dennis

There are no fences On High
Rabbi Elijah ben Raphael

Like virtually everyone else in North Texas, the backyard of our home is belted in privacy fences – some belonging to our property, some to our neighbors. Over the summer, though, a little boy and girl who live in the house behind us started climbing to the top of our fence and talking to my boys. Within a day they had created a game of tossing balls back and forth over the fence. And within a week it became necessary for me to toss children back and forth over the fence so the kids could play with each other.

So, after much deliberation and careful discussion with our new friends, it was agreed that I would create a porthole gate in the fence. Easier said then done. Once I made the initial cuts with my jig saw, it became evident the section I had chosen as the site was full of dry rot, and started collapsing shortly after I started.

So the effort expanded. In my very first opportunity to use the cargo rack on our new station wagon, I bungeed a 6X8 section of fencing to our roof and drove, or more accurately, glided, home. I cut out the rotten section, built a portal into the new section, and now the children move between yards with ease. And now we have a privacy fence, but one with a gate in it. It proved to be a lot more work then if I had simply left it as a barrier. But I think the extra effort was worth it.

In the Book of Genesis, Chapter 18, we read about our Father Abraham going to all sorts of extra effort to make strangers feel welcome. Three wayfarers pass the camp of Abraham in the heat of the day, and rather then taking the easier and safer course of letting them go on their way, Abraham opens his home to them. He settles them in the shade and hauls water so that they can drink and wash their feet while Sara prepares an elaborate festive meal for them. In short, both Abraham and Sara go to extraordinary effort to welcome these foreigners; they go out of their way to turn strangers into friends.

Now more then ever, this is a time for us follow the example of Abraham and Sara and go out of our way to be welcoming; to create community between strangers, to make opening in the fences we put around our lives.

The poet Robert Frost is famous for saying that “Good fences make good neighbors,” but as anyone who has visited Frost’s New England knows that fences there allow neighbors to see each other; it is possible to have a face-to-face encounter when only a wooden rail or a low stone wall separates you. Here in North Texas, where our fences more resemble and function like military stockades, God needs us to make an extra effort to reach out to our fellows. And especially in a time when we are more suspicious of strangers, our first effort should be to become more familiar with the strangers who surround us.

The population of Denton is growing, and I find there are so many strange new people in my neighborhood, people who have come from other places, people who have yet to make a human connection. Having made a geographic move, they are also in danger of moving from the category of unrecognized to the status of the invisible. We who choose to link ourselves to the covenant of Abraham, whether we be Christians, Jews, or Muslims, have a special obligation to such strangers. Claiming the mantle of Abraham and Sara brings with it the obligation to reach out to strangers when we encounter them.

So whether it be across our fence or in line at Tom Thumb, we should make the effort to introduce ourselves and to make a personal connection. And of course, we need to remain open and friendly even to those who are not our immediate neighbors. Remember that Abraham’s virtue was not that he made friends of mere acquaintances, or that he fully embraced all the members of his own clan. Rather it was his willingness to speak to strangers, to people he’d never met before and would probably never see again, to reach out even to people who were of potential threat to him, that marked him as righteous and caused God to reveal himself to Abraham in that moment.

In Talmud the Sages debate the definition of what it means to be a hero. Ben Azzai says, “Who is most heroic of all? One who overcomes his selfish inclination.” We live in a time and a place where we talk about and look for heroes. Reaching out to strangers is a way that we add a heroic dimension to our own lives. God loves all those who are willing to take risks on His behalf. But as we learn from the experience of our Father Abraham, He is radically present with us when we dare to peek over the fences of our own lives, when we are willing to make an opening there for others.

(This essay appeared in the Denton Record-Chronicle)