There’s a wonderful story about the great Hasidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. One day, he arrived in Lviv and approached the home of a wealthy, distinguished resident.
“Might I find a place in your home to spend the night?” he asked, without revealing his identity.
“I have no room for wayfarers. Go to an inn,” the wealthy man replied.
“A small corner in one of your rooms will be enough; I won’t trouble you with anything else,” said the rabbi.
“I have no room. And if you can’t afford an inn, go to the schoolteacher on the next street; he is accustomed to hosting guests,” said the wealthy man.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak went to the schoolteacher, who received him warmly and cordially. Later, as he walked in the street, a passerby recognized him. Word spread immediately that the Rebbe of Berditchev had arrived in town. Before long, a crowd surged to the schoolteacher’s house to greet the rebbe. Among them was that same wealthy and distinguished man.
When he stood before Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, he said: “I beg forgiveness and pardon from our master and teacher, and my earnest request before him is that he honor my home with his visit. All the great individuals who came to our city have stayed at my home!”
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak said to him, “Abraham our ancestor was famous for the virtue of hospitality. When the angels came to him, the Torah recounts: ‘And he took butter and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them’ (Genesis 18:8). But what is special about this? After all, Lot did the exact same thing: ‘And they came into his house; and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate’ (19:3). Yet we do not find Lot praised for his hospitality. Rather, by Lot it says: ‘And two angels came to Sodom’ (19:1). Lot recognized them as angels and invited them in. But by Abraham it says: ‘And he looked, and behold, three people stood over him’ (18:2). Abraham saw simple people, dust-covered wayfarers, weary and thirsty, and he pleaded with them to allow him to host them.
“You do not host guests,” Reb Levi Yitzchak admonished the wealthy man, “you host angels and the famous. The schoolteacher hosts human beings.”
Mic drop.
And yet: I don’t know about you, but if I’m honest with myself, much as I might like it to be otherwise, I’m closer to the wealthy man in the story than to Reb Levi Yitzchak. Why is that?
Because genuine hospitality—not just hosting friends or those one is familiar and comfortable with, but “dust-covered wayfarers, weary and thirsty”—is an extraordinarily vulnerable act. To let a complete stranger into one’s home is a gesture of enormous faith, as great as any of the other tests of faith that Abraham and Sarah encountered. And, if I’m being totally honest, that’s a test I’m still a long way from passing.
The twentieth century Algerian-French Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida explores this theme in a reflection on hospitality. Derrida, who was stripped of French citizenship as a child by the Vichy regime, distinguishes between “the foreigner,” who is categorizable in language and law (e.g. “the famous rabbi visiting our town”), and the absolute other, someone who has no name, no legal status, no rights. “Absolute hospitality,” Derrida writes, “requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner (provided with a family name, with the social status of being a foreigner, etc.), but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names.” (25)
In other words, it’s one thing to host a guest I know, or even a guest I don’t know personally but who I can position in my heart and mind. That kind of hosting might be an imposition—it costs me food, laundering the linens, toilet paper, etc.—but it probably doesn’t feel much like that. I get the enjoyment of my guest’s company, and I might experience a nice feeling of self-satisfaction for having done something good and hospitable, or even honor. “I hosted our community’s distinguished guest when they were in from out of town,” I might tell myself, “so I’m a good person—and my friends know it.”
Elsewhere in his reflection, Derrida points to an etymological chain linking the words host, guest, and hospitality. From more ancient Indo-European roots, we eventually receive the Latin hospes, meaning both host and guest who are bound through the law of hospitality—which, Derrida shows, has a lot to do with property and control of the home. For our purposes, I would call this Lot’s hospitality: law-abiding but/and status-oriented, grounded in knowledge of the placeable and familiar.
Derrida, in a philosophical register, and Reb Levi Yitzchak, in a more Hasidic one, invite us into deeper introspection. Hospitality towards those who are known to me is, fundamentally, safe. I’m not risking much, if anything, in the act. I’m still at home, still in my comfort zone, still in my locus of control, still the master of my house. In such situations, I’m behaving more like Lot than like Abraham—not bad, but not, perhaps, as far as I could go.
“There are four types of human being,” teaches the Mishnah: “One who says, ‘What is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours’—this is an average person. And there are those who say, this describes the people of Sodom.” The Mishnah contrasts this with the deeper expression of hospitality of Abraham and Sarah: “One who says, ‘What is mine is yours, and what is yours is yours’—this is a Hasid,” one who embodies hesed: profoundly open, without boundaries, vulnerably venturing beyond the safety of the known into an encounter with the unknown.
I’ll reserve commenting on this as social policy for another day. More immediately, though, I hope we can hear in these teachings a call to spiritual practice. So much of our practice has to do with the known and the unknown, how we navigate the familiar and the unfamiliar, each of which can generate a range of responses within us. The unknown can prompt fear and wariness. The familiar can engender comfort to the point of boredom or rote routine. Most of our lives are likely lived somewhere in between. And so we might consider our practice as a regular engagement with the question, What kind of home am I living in right now? What kind of hospitality am I—are we—living? And how might I/we reach deeper into the well so that we might open a little further, in the spirit of our ancestors?
For Reflection & Conversation
What is the most generous form of hospitality you can remember experiencing, as a host or a guest? What makes it stand out to you? What, if any, lessons might you draw from that experience for your ongoing inner spiritual work?