Unscrolled Vayera: How To Do Nothing

Parashat Vayera begins with the passage: “The LORD appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot.” (Genesis 18:1)

In this simple phrase, there is something delightful and unexpected: idleness. At the day’s hottest hour, in the shade of the terebinth trees, Abraham sits and does nothing.

This is almost unheard of in Judaism. As a rabbi I knew some years ago once put it, “Life is work.”  When he said this, I had the same objection that you are probably having right now: what about Shabbat?

“Shabbat is work, too,” he clarified. “Just a different kind.”

Now that I am Shabbat observant, I understand what he means. On Shabbat we ask God to grant us a “rest of love and generousness – a rest of truth and faith.” That said, it is a day of great busyness which involves hosting guests and being hosted; going to synagogue and praying for hours; and walking long distances which one might have otherwise driven. It is a day of great spiritual power, yes. But idleness? No.

If Shabbat is a busy day, however, how much more so the days of the week, when we rush from place to place, swamped with obligations and eager to fill any miniscule crack in our schedules with a moment of blissfully mind-numbing screen time.

Considering this, when, if ever, to we get to be idle? When do we get to really and truly do nothing?

Doing nothing has been on my mind since reading the book, “How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell. The book is a powerful manifesto on the need to recalibrate our faculties of attention, turning away from digital media and consumer culture and tuning into nature, our communities, our selves, and one another.

Much of the book centers on Odell’s home city of Berkeley, her favorite parks, and her most treasured spots to go birdwatching. For her, the process of disconnecting is in truth a process of connecting with her surroundings. “I stopped looking at my phone because I was looking at something else, something so absorbing that I couldn’t look away.”

Doing nothing, Odell realizes, is not really about “doing nothing.” It is, however, about doing nothing productive – nothing monetizable or brandable or Instagram-worthy. Nothing that can be checked off a list. Nothing terribly goal-oriented. It is about simply being alive and paying attention to the world we live in.

It is about simply being alive and paying attention to the world we live in.

Picture Abraham again as he lingered in idleness under the sheltering branches of the terebinths. Imagine now the sounds that he heard, the birds that he saw in the sky, the curious images that passed through his field of vision as he stared out at the horizon, the thoughts that meandered and circled about in his mind.

It was to this idle Abraham that God appeared in the first passage of the portion, but what happens next is mysterious. No words are spoken. No actions recorded. In the very next line, Abraham looks up and sees three men approaching from the distance, and the story moves on. One is left with the unsettling suspicion that this passage about God appearing doesn’t belong – that it is the opening line of an aborted storyline that was cut from the final draft, though perhaps we can look at it another way.

The commentaries tell us that this was a bikur holim – a visit to the sick. Abraham was only three days out from his circumcision and not feeling very vital or well. And so, God came to visit him.

There is a temptation when visiting the ill to try and cheer them up, or else to try and find the perfect comforting or inspiring words that will make it all better. The wisest among us, however, know that sometimes it’s ok to come and say nothing at all – to simply be there.

So God and Abraham sit together in the shade, finding comfort in one another’s quiet company. In a moment, the three men on the horizon will arrive. After that, nothing will be quiet. The action of the portion will begin, and an action-packed portion it is.

But just for now, God and Abraham can take a moment to simply be — to connect with one another and with the world itself.

In other words, to do nothing.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.