CHAYEI SARAH: The Ultimate Test

Tests of epic proportion

It is a well-publicized fact through the hebrew school system in America that our forefather Avraham was tested with 10 tests.  I know for myself that in my nursery school years we made more than one arts-and-crafts project attempting to bring these tests to life with colored cellophane, cotton balls, and even "googley eyes".  Despite this, it is difficult for most of us to connect these tests to our lives in any real way.

Look: jumping into a fire -- not happening; circumcision -- I didn't have much of a say in the matter; being asked to sacrifice my firstborn -- even if it were to come up, I saw the end of the parsha last week -- it won't be much of a test!

The tests Avraham went through lie on the fringe of human experience, well beyond the tests the average person faces in his life.  Moreover, it is in the nature of these tests to be one-off shots, and therefore, even though any single one was an event of major intellectual, emotional and even physical strain on Avraham, they were all events.  But what about us -- in the day-to-day grind of our lives -- we have our trying events too -- but what about all the moments in between -- what are we tested in?  And of what cosmic significance are they if they are dwarfed in the light of Avraham's epic achievements?     


The 10th Test

It is the mishna which first alerts us that G!d officially tested Avraham 10 times (Pirkei Avot 5:3).  The rishonim (medieval sages), each through his own analysis, comes out with different lists for which exactly were the 10 tests.  The most natural choice for the last test, if we assume there is an aspect of increasing challenge is of course the Akeida (the binding of Isaac), and indeed, this is the opinion of the Rambam and Rashi.  However, Rabbeinu Yonah, from left field, brings the Akeida as #9!  And even though he notes that this is "the biggest [of all the tests]," there is a critical 10th test which the other rishonim failed to give proper importance to: the burial of Sarah his wife.

Rabbeinu Yonah is not referring here to the death of Sarah -- he specifically writes that "[her] burial" was the 10th test.  What about burying a loved one is so unique to Avraham?  Death is a sad fact of life, one that all of us must face -- Avraham was not the first nor the last to have to tend to the burial of his wife.  So, how was the Almighty challenging Avraham in the burial of Sarah to merit its place as the 10th and final test?

R' Yonah goes on to explain the test: the Creator of Heaven and Earth tells you that the entire land of Israel will be yours (Bereishit 13:17), yet when you get to Kiryat Arba to bury your loved one, you have to go through a whole song and dance with the locals, wait to state your request to the figurehead, and purchase it for some exorbitant amount of money...all the while wondering: "didn't they get the memo?"

If we zoom into the text of the Chumash, we can see this emphasis with more clarity.  Avraham's opening line is:

"גר ותושב אנכי עמכם"

"I am a foreigner and resident with you" (23:3).  

The pshat simple understanding is that "I was a foreigner, and now I have come to reside with you" (Rashi's 1st explanation).  But Rashi isn't fully satisfied with this fluffy/fudged reading of the text, and neither should we.

If we're truly rigorous with the words as they appear, the deeper reading, what we call "the drash" emerges ("drash" comes from the root לדרוש meaning "to seek out" or "demand [from the text]").  Why is Avraham opening with such a parve statement?  He seems to be expressing that somehow he is simultaneously a foreigner and a resident!  Based on these questions, Rashi articulates the drash -- the undercurrent, unspoken, psychological message buried in the seemingly innocuous exchange of words:

"If you want to be civil, I can relate to you as a foreigner; if not, I will relate to you as the resident that I am, and I will confiscate this land according to the law that is on my side since the Almighty promised it to me."

Between the pshat and the drash (the simple and deeper readings) lies the tension in the scene -- a tension so thick you could pinch it.  A tension that is kept at bay between Avraham's heart and his lips. 

Despite the Divine mandate behind him, the recent death of his wife, and having just returned from the spiritual tour de force and jolting experience of almost slaughtering his son, Avraham was being courteous and maintaining his composure.

All this while the Benei Cheit (the local people) fawn over Avraham, calling him "the prince of G!d," and initially talking big about giving him the plot of land for free, and then without skipping a beat, set up a mock-bureaucratic leader who snyly puts his offer on the table, " My master, listen to me... land worth 400 silver shekels -- between me and you -- what is it?," only to immediately accept that very sum swiftly and silently (23:6, 23:10 w/Rashi, 23:15-16).  If we look at it with the right sensitivity, the scene looks straight out of a Monty Python skit in its absurdity, and Avraham, who at this point, is thinking anything but comedy, stands his ground.


The anti-event   

Coming down from the spiritual heights on Mount Moriah of the Akeida down to the very technical, nitty gritty exchanges for a gravesite juxtaposes the ultimate event with the anti-event.  Whereas the Akeida was a one-time event which can never be paralleled, going through the technicalities of burying one's wife is the lowest common denominator expected from any decent human being, an act which no one will get a "yasher koach" for.

My father-in-law's neighbor told me once that the hardest part of serving as a soldier in the Yom Kippur war was coming back to his parents' house expecting a heroic welcome, and being asked to take out the trash before he sat down.  The climax of the drama of the war came crashing down with the mundanity of household chores and the ingratitude of others.

We can now appreciate that Rabbeinu Yonah called the Akeida "the biggest" of all the tests.  It certainly was.  It doesn't get more epic than to be asked by G!d to go against everything you've ever stood for, and offer your son as a sacrifice, and succeed.  This may be true -- but it was not the truly climactic test -- it may not even have been the most difficult of the tests.  All that tremendous energy, all the drama of the Akeida, Avraham had to swallow as he found his wife dead.  What followed was not G!d's command; simple common sense and human sensitivity demanded that Avraham bury his wife.  The final test was not big -- it was small.  Lots of small and subtle mini-tests.  The smallness of this test is itself its challenge!  When something is an event, we can rise to it, but when it's just a moment in our day, what exactly are we rising to?

The 10th test of Avraham is the essential human test because for any person, even Avraham, he has more non-events than events in his life.  We see that the sum total of every interaction -- every moment in which Avraham kept smiling, kept his cool, and did his duty as a husband is considered to be the pinnacle of human achievement from G!d's perspective, even higher than the one-time event of the Akeida.  More precisely, we can say that the greatness of any moment of achievement in our life is revealed through its residual expression in the small nooks and crannies as the event washes away.


The anti-event generation

We live in an era of ultra-specialization juxtaposed to global thinking.

As scientific knowledge expands, scientific discoveries are increasingly local.  The academic subject that used to be called by the Greeks as "natural philosophy," is now subdivided in our universities into: particle physics, astrophysics, theoretical physics, physical chemistry, chemistry, biochemistry, epistemology, ontology, linguistics, etc. 

The flipside is that barraged by news from around the planet, the average student graduating college has dreams of changing the world. 

The extreme tension between these two tendancies can be suggested as the impetus for millions of people around the world to unplug from their daily life and plug into a virtual world called "Second Life," a world in which they are assured that every move they make is significant and digitally accounted for. 

The Torah world is no exception.  After the Tannaim, Amoraim, Rishonim, and Achronim have spoken, a person can think: "what do I have to add?"

In response to talk about ירידת הדורות, the decline of generations, a Jew may think to himself, "what am I going to do that's so different?"

The 10th test of Avraham is the quintessential test for posterity.  More and more it becomes imperative for us to appreciate the grandeur of its anti-grandeur.  I am afraid that even as we read these words, the intrinsic anti-climax of this concept will drain the lesson of its power -- but try we must.  Surely, when we appreciate the small moment of redemption in front of us -- genuinely listening to the person speaking to us, understanding this idea on the page, articulating this bracha with sincerity, then and only then will we be capable of appreciating the redemption we are asking for.  


This dvar Torah is based primarily on the ideas developed by Rav Eliyahi Dessler in Michtav MiEliyahu IV:245 and Rav Emmanuel Bernstein in his Dvar Mikra.
 
 

VAYEIRA: The explosive power of a little bit of wisdom

Wisdom untapped

"Wisdom" is one of these geriatric words in our language which is well on its way to join the ranks of such dusty oldies as "thou," "wherefore, and "art."  At best, the word conjures up images of the mysterious East and a far-removed, ancient body of knowledge.  At worst, one thinks of the pop-evangelical self-help books near the cash register of the pharmacy and airport bookstore.

We live in an era of absolute disemmination of knowledge.  As Wikipedia expands, the new printings of gemaras get fatter with more commentators in the back.  It is almost cliche to be writing about it, but it must be meditated on, because although the world is certainly more (formally) educated today than ever, our concept of wisdom has been flattened.

From time to time, usually late at night, with a close friend or spouse, probably over a drink or two, everyone has conversations that touch on the deep topics that pull on the bottoms of our hearts: life's meaning, our purpose, the metaphysical, the paranormal, etc.  But as quickly as it came, the conversation evaporates like a dream, both parties doubtful that any real answers to such questions exist, and even if they do, we are hopeless to ever know them.  Wisdom thus remains a far-off, almost mythical notion in the heart of modern man.

What is wisdom?

Torah teaches us that wisdom is everywhere.  So central is this principle that the wise man is not defined by how much he knows, rather by his awareness of this reality ("Who is a wise person?  The one who learns from everyone" [Pirke Avot 4:1]).  The Almighty literally built the world on top of the invisible scaffolding of Wisdom: "ה' בחכמה יסד ארץ" ("Hashem with Wisdom layed the foundation of [the] physical world") (Proverbs 3:19).

The human body is our metaphor for this.  Almost every cell in your body contains in the DNA in its nucleus with all the information to make your entire body.  Of course, the information is not written in English -- it is written in biochemical code through a complex ordering of nucleic acids.  Transcribed into letters, a small small slice would look like this:

There are about 3,000,000,000 letters in the full sequence for a human being (about a million pages of text).  Bear in mind -- these are letters which represent biochemicals that code for amino acids that contstruct proteins -- they represent information but are not information themselves.

Moreover, even if we knew what sequence codes for what protein (which we do), or what the mapping is of genes for the entire human genome (which we do), we still have barely begun to understand the oceans of medical wisdom therein -- otherwise all disease would have been banished with the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. 

You see, just because we know information, we do not necessarily know the wisdom from which it emmanates, nor the wisdom towards which that information could be used.  Wisdom is hidden behind information, and information is hidden by layers of physicality.

There are a frightening number of people in the world who have dedicated an amount of time that I would rather not think about in order to memorize the digits of Pi (3.1412 etc; really -- look it up!).  Throughout this rigorous process of memorization, it's more than likely that very little wisdom was absorbed.

Similarly, two medical students may have worked very hard in med school.  Whereas one slaved to systematically memorize information from textbooks, the other learned by constantly digging to find the wisdom behind the biological system, carving out the underlying rules in his mind.  The second doctor with medical wisdom could look at a persons skin color and "see" the invisible -- the problem behind the symptoms and its solution.

Wisdom in the language of Torah is called חכמה (Chochmah).  There is an oft-quoted Zohar which "sees" in the word "חכמה" its essence: "כח מה," the "power of 'what' ."  While the fool is complacent with the appearences of what is around him; a wise man probes to get to the wisdom buried beyond the surface, insisting "what is it?"

Any person who has worn black cow-skin straps with attached black boxes, or shaken a citrus fruit and 3 tree branches, or seen his mother frantically vacuuming for bread crumbs before Pesach...and has not sincerely asked himself, "what on earth is going on here?" needs to work on his חכמה.  

The power of wisdom and missing the point

Every child knows that Einstein is famous for his formula E=mc².  What most people don't realize is that an implication of this statement is that if we could extract all the energy stored in the mass of a U.S. penny, we could power the metropolitan New York City area for 2 years.

If this enormous output of latent energy exists in matter, imagine the power of wisdom waiting to be unleashed -- after all, both matter and energy are products of the wisdom behind the laws which describe them...

.....

Avraham approached Jerusalem with his two sons Yitzhak and Yishmael, and his servant Eliezer, and no one knew exactly where they were supposed to go.  G!d had been carefully ambiguous in his description of their destination:

"...go to [the] land of Moriah, and there offer [Yitzhak] up as an Olah offering upon one of the mountains that I will tell you" (Bereishit 22:2). 

As they got closer,

"...Avraham raised his eyes and saw the place from afar.  Avraham said to his youths [Yishmael and Eliezer], 'Stay here with the donkey, and I and the youth [Yitzhak] will go until there..." (ibid 4-5).

What did Avraham see that made him so sure that this was the place?  Why does the Torah record that Avraham told Yishmael and Eliezer to stay "with the donkey?"  Could there be a more innane piece of information at the cusp of such an epic moment as this?

The Midrash, highly attuned to these questions extrapolates on the subtelies of the verses:

What did [Avraham] see?  He saw a cloud [unusually] affixed to a mountain.  He said [to himself] that it appears that this is the place G!d told him to offer up his son.  He asked Yitzhak, "my son, do you see what I see?"  He said, "yes."  He [then] asked the youths, "do you see what I see?"  They said, "no."  He said, since the donkey doesn't see it and you don't see it, stay here with the donkey (Bereishit Rabba 57).

The Midrash brings into poignant focus the spiritual chasm that opens between Avraham & Yitzhak and Yishmael & Eliezer on this precipitous occasion.  The inability of Yishmael and Eliezer to perceive the delicate subtlety of G!d's expression in this instance, causes them to be paired with the donkey rather than rising with Avraham and Yitzhak to the pinnacle of ethical achievement.

Let's keep in mind that Yishmael and Eliezer in broader terms are described as giants.  Eliezer knew all of Avraham's teachings (Rashi 15:2), and Yishmael boasted to Yitzhak for being circumcised at 13 -- let alone a powerful enough individual to be father to a nation (B"R 55).  Yet nonetheless, as they approached the spiritual crucible of the Akeida (the binding of Isaac) their lack of perception -- their missing a piece of wisdom -- their inability to "see" what was in front of them, made all the difference in the world.

The Talmud (Kiddushin 68a) goes even further to say that by missing this perception, they were "comparable to donkeys."  This seems a bit harsh, but the understanding is that the donkey is our archetypal inertial animal.  When a donkey wants to sit, you can push all you want, but he's likely going to keep on sitting.  It is no coincidence that the word for donkey is חמור (Chamor), of the same root as חומריות (Chumriut), physicality.  When a person is set in his ways and cannot perceive the inner reality of what is in front of him, at that instant, his is a glorified donkey.

A small drop of wisdom

At first, this midrash grinds on our sensibilities -- "it's not fair," "don't you think it's a bit of an exaggeration..."  However, with a bit of thought, we can open it up.

Any person who invests money professionally can tell you after some introspection several occasions in which he made some large sum of money when the market didn't because of one or two pieces of financial wisdom which he grasped during his Masters or from his mentors, and most of his peers didn't.

On any given day, a surgeon, if he pays attention, will realize that there were several life-saving decisions he made that day because of specific subtle principles he came to understand deeply over the years.

People often ask me why I became religious.  Usually they are looking for a story about an epiphone.  I can tell you with certainty, that even for those people who do describe epiphanes, it can only be the result of many concepts which individually become clear over the years and ultimately come together, allowing them to "see" Torah for what it is.  Very often a person in his 20's learning a mishna in Pirkei Avot feels a resonance in his heart from a deep-seated value impressed upon him by his parents in his childhood.

Because very often we make decision so quickly and intuitively, we unfortunately underappreciate the power of ideas in shaping our actions.  Certainly, Torah concepts, which from the outset, already make up a totally foreign world, seem entirely irrelevant to our lives.  And when we hear someone make a big deal about an extra letter here or a word-choice there, we assume they've spent a sufficient amount of time learning Torah to lose their minds.  But therein lies the key.

The Almighty values wisdom more than we can possibly imagine.  He sees the far-off consequences of us learning any one Torah concept we are sitting in front of, and is rooting for us to understand it.  Just yesterday I saw how a concept in divorce law solved a problem in kashrut (Tos Yevamot 30b "Isha," Shach Y"D 50:1).  The day before, I began to understand how G!d speaks to us through the events of our lives based off a concept in testimony law.  In the invisible world of wisdom, behind the world of facts, nothing is irrelevant and every drop is powerful.  After all, the Talmud teaches that the universe was created with a single letter (ה), imagine what you can do with the rest of the alphabet.

This dvar Torah is primarily based on the ideas developed by the Alter of Slobadka in the sefer Or haTzafun, under the title "Kne Midat Chochma."

 

LECH LECHA: The Invisible Core

The perenially odd religion

It is the nature of Judaism, as seen from the outside in, to appear as a bizarre shell of ritualistic laws.  Oddly enough, this is true even as a person continues to move deeper into Torah and mitzvot himself -- the frontier just beyond his grasp remains somewhat alien.  In fact, it is central to the sustained vibrancy of Jewish life to continue to ask, "why do we do this like this?  Isn't this weird?"  So much so that the Aron haKodesh, the Ark of the Covenant, is crowned with a "Zer Zahav" (Shmot 25:24) -- rather than the normal word for crown ("keter"), the word "zer" connoting foreignness ("zar") is used...

The invisible core

Despite this, G!d did us a massive favor by beginning the Torah with the book of Bereishit, filled with the narrative of the creation of the world, Adam, Noach, and our forefathers.  Everyone can relate to Bereishit.  I can't say I've been to too many churches or mosques, but I can't imagine too many Friday/Sunday sermons revolve around the sacrificial laws in Leviticus.  The stories of Genesis are what captivate the attention of children, and the deeper Torah therein is what first attracts the uninitiated adult.

It should not be lost upon us, however, that this was all crafted with great Wisdom.  The principles embodied by the lives of our forefathers are meant to enter and lay the fertile soil in our hearts from which the rest of Torah will sprout.  In other words, beginning the Torah with Bereishit is not a Divine marketting gimick, but rather establishing what the inner core of Torah should be within us throughout our lives.

Sekhel haYashar ("a straight mind")

Avraham was well known throughout the fertile crescent as a deeply religious man, hailed as "the prince of G!d" (23:6) and reknowned by kings as prophet (20:9-10).  When his nephew Lot is taken captive in war, the refugee Og comes to implore for Avraham's military support.  Naturally, he appeals to Avraham as the "עברי," the "Hebrew," who stood on the "other side of the river" in support of G!d against a world of idol worshippers.  He tries to reel him into the war under the pretense of a crusade against Amrafel, who is Nimrod, the leader of the "humanistic," anti-G!d Tower of Babel movement (Rashi 14:1, 10:8-9).

Amidst Og's theo-political propaganda, Avraham hears one thing, "וישמע אברהם כי נשבה אחיו"  "Avraham heard that his brother [nephew] had been captured."

Immediately, "וירק את חניכיו" "he armed [and mobilized] his students" (14:14).

There was a reason more fundamental than theology to go to war -- his family was in trouble. 

The Talmud calls our forefathers, "ישרים" the "straight ones" (Avoda Zara 25a).  While they certainly followed the letter of the law to perfection (Kidushin 82a), their outlook was not defined by the letter of the law.  The Avot did not wish to merely fulfill their obligations like a checklist.  Rather, their deepest desire was that everything they did should be directed straight towards G!d.  Behind our lives of mitzvot, of fulfilling obligations, we must strive in our cores to be yashar, straight like the Avot (hence our name "Yisrael" ישראל).  One does not have to be at the end of the spiritual path to be moving straight.  Even at the beginning, it is critical that we orient ourselves according to what is yashar. 

Yashrut, straightness, therefore must exist in one's mind even if there were no articulated obligations.  Meaning, if G!d were to give us "the day off" from Torah, we wouldn't throw off our yarmulkas and sheitles and go to Vegas; we would continue to live the exact same way because a straight mind demands such.  The converse is that even with obligations in place, a yashar like Avraham Avinu continues to make decision rooted in fundamentals -- the "basics" do not become obsolete even as one advances spiritually.   

The prejorative usage of "frumkeit" can be defined as religion without the core of yashrut that was embodied by our forefathers.  We can understand now, however, that it is a matter of חינוך ("Chinuch"), preparation/education.  "Chinuch," is definied by Rashi right here on our verse, as the first entrance of a person or vessel into his specialized task (14:14), meaning education should put one on the same path he will be on in the future (Proverbs 22:6).  If a math teacher takes a right-brain, artistically-minded student but only trains him to think in a left-brain, analytic way, he will suffer tremendously and end up hating math forever.  Education, therefore must be the initiation of the student into the beginning of the same path of life.  This implies that one's 1st experiences with Judaism should naturally lead into his maturity in Judaism.  The fertile soil of yashrut, and derech ertez, "basics" become the spiritual sprouting ground for a Judaism in which the law is not an end unto itself, but the path to becoming a better person, a more G!dly person and one who is deeply concerned for the world around him.    

...Immediately, "וירק את חניכיו" "[Avraham] armed [and mobilized] his chanichav [students]" (14:14, this is the first time this word appears in Torah).  Fully aware that his life was giving birth to a people, Avraham prepared the invisible core of Judaism in the most basic of values.

[This dvar Torah is primarily based on the ideas developed by the Ktav veHakabalah and R' Yaakov Kaminetsky in their commentaries on the Chumash]

NOACH: Beyond our Righteousness

The Question: Why not Noach?

The Torah sweeps us at high speed through the first two-thousand years of human history, from the creation and first trial of man through 20 generations, at which point it pauses with great drama to introduce us to us to our father Avraham. Halfway in between, in this week's parsha, the Torah takes what we could call an unusual pit-stop.

Just to be clear, the Torah is not a history book. Everything in it is of course 100% true, but it leaves out many facts which would be of interest to historians: Avraham's encounters with other noteworthy individuals in Mesopotamia, the socio-theological nuances of the Chaldean worldview, etc. History, although an important branch of Wisdom, is not the main artery of Wisdom the Almighty wishes to communicate to us. Rather, through the Torah, G!d draws our attention to what man must focus on in order to become what he is capable of becoming -- the person he was made to be.

So, Adam was the first -- that's significant (even though the Torah frames him mostly in the context of his failure). And Avraham is the first of our forefathers -- as we say in the Amida: "our G!d and the G!d of our fathers, the G!d of Avraham, the G!d of Yitzhak, and the G!d of Yaakov." Avraham marks the new beginning for the Jewish people. But aside from the compelling historical reasons for mentioning the flood, why does the Torah dedicate so much attention to Noach himself?

And once we grant Noach importance, why don't we go so far as to say "the G!d of Noach" in prayer? The Torah attests to his undeniable greatness at the beginning of the parsha by telling us that Noach was a Tsaddik, a righteous man, "perfect and whole in his generations," and that "Noach walked with G!d!" These are unbeatable credentials!

And if you tell me, "the answer's obvious: Noach was father to the entire world after the flood; but from Avraham comes the Jewish people!" I'll respond two-fold:

1. Why then didn't we just get the show on the road with Noach? Let him be the forefather of the Jewish people! and,
   
2. G!d calls Avraham "Av Hamon Goyim," the father of many nations (Bereishit 17:5) -- indeed, even more so than Noach, Avraham was not just biologically the father of many nations, he intellectually established the foundation of Judeo-Christian values for the entire world. We are called the "Children of Israel" (after Yaakov who was later called "Yisrael") because Yaakov was the exclusive father of the Jewish people, as opposed to Avraham whose role seems to be more global.
   

If all this is true, why do we count Avraham as our father and not Noach?

The Reactionary's Reaction

Noach is described as צדיק בדורותיו, a "righteous person [alone] in his generations." He was a righteous man in a boundary-less world of theft, idolatry and adultery which had destroyed itself. The flood was only a physical manifestation of what society had spiritually wrought on itself (this is the way the Almighty runs our world: since we, by definition, do not recognize the damage our actions are causing to our psyche and in the hidden worlds of other people, Hashem has to add the special effects of physical repercussions to bring them to light).

The Torah characterizes the source of all these problems as a trait called חמס, which Ounklus translates as "snatching," a violent and pervasive sense of entitlement to what is not one's own. The chilling lesson that is depicted in the life of Noach is that, in subtle ways, this evil can penetrate even the hearts of the greatest of men.

With a little introspection, we clearly see this in ourselves. I live in Jerusalem, and whenever I take visitors to the Kotel, they are very often shocked by the brazenness and sheer number of people asking for charity even as one tries to focus with eyes closed on his personal prayer. The natural reaction, which I think everyone can relate to, is to close up. Ironically, our response in disgust to the sense of entitlement of another is to grab the money in our pockets more tightly. This is especially interesting to note since the mitzva of צדקה (Charity) comes from the root of צדק, which means "Justice," which should not be connected with our personal desire to be charitable, yet the reality is that it is. The most natural thing is to be affected by the people around us. In a infinitely milder way, even though Noach distanced himself from the thievery outside is doorstep, in trying to keep his family unaffected, he was affected.

Orienting Our Hearts Outwards

Rashi explains on the verse (6:14) the highly unusual request from the Almighty to take the most scholarly and righteous person of the generation and have him purchase power tools to build a boat over a 120-year period. G!d wanted to force Noach out of his shell and to interact with the world he was leaving behind. People would inevitably come and ask him what he was doing building such a large ship in the middle of terra firma, and he would have to get into the back-and-forth of the end of the world coming.

G!d tells Noach, עשה לך תיבת, "make for yourself an ark." "For [himself]" because even if no one was going listen to him (which they didn't), Noach had to perfect himself.  If he was going to rebuild the world, he would have to care about it with all his heart. The Almighty wanted Noach to perfect himself internally so he would be able to externally rebuild a world that was built on the opposite of entitlement -- on concern for the other. The salvation for Noach was not going to come from the fact that he was in a boat when the rain started to fall, but rather from the fact that he had to build it, and all the while speak to and think about all the people who couldn't grasp spiritual truths that were so obvious to him.  

All this, explains the Alter of Slobodka, was to awaken prayer from Noach for the sake of the world -- a world which he has given up hope for, and we must note, a world which any of us would have given up hope for as well. And it is because he never did genuinely pray for them, that the prophet Isaiah attributes the flood to him, calling it the "waters of Noach" (Isaiah 54; Zohar Noach daf 63). The tragedy of Noach is that the year he spent in the ark day and night feeding tens of thousands of animals (a superhuman task) was meant to fix his trait of Chesed (Love) to be able to build the world anew, but realizing his mistakes, he could barely leave the ark, a broken man (8:15-16, Rashi on 9:5).

Let's not forget the accolades G!d introduced Noach with.  Noach was a deeply religious man.  "Religious" in the real sense -- not just "frum."  He was a "perfect Tsaddik," meaning he certainly cared about others, gave charity, visited the sick, consoled mourners, cared for orphans and widows...  Any opportunity to do good for others which was available for him, he undoubtedly took, but we see the rigor with which the Torah treats great people -- Noach did not go above and beyond what he believed to be his obligation.
Avraham, however, upon hearing of the destruction of Sodom, immediately rises in prayer to G!d to find sufficient merit for the salvation of Sodom (18:23-33). Again, this is beyond what we would even call "above and beyond."  If G!d tells you He is going to do something, you do not try to convice Him otherwise.  This episode must be understood properly, but we see what it took to be the first father of the Jewish people. Avraham is the "pillar of Chesed (Love) in the world, the one who brought into human reality the authentic reflection of G!d's Love for us -- beyond all conceptions of obligation and "what is expected of me." Avraham was a person whose love for others and his desire to give everything he had to give was completely self-generated, not reactionary. (This is, of course, the deeper meaning behind the epitome of Avraham's kindness, which is the feeding of angels, who of course do not need food [Rav Tsadok haKohen].) As such, he rose above the level of צדיק (Tsaddik) to become a חסיד (Chasid), whose striving was not just to fulfill his obligation, but to become a giver from his core like G!d.

It should be noted that we are not called the בני אברהם, the "Children of Avraham," but rather, the בני ישראל "Children of Israel," because our Love must be channeled in practice through Truth, the trait of Yisrael (Yaakov). Love, as we know, can be hijacked and take a person to extremes out of balance (i.e. worrying about guests and ignoring one's wife). The Chatam Sofer even explains that Noach limited his outreach out of fear of losing his children to such a dangerous world, which is a very reasonable concern. And of course, a person has to think about himself! Otherwise he will not have what to give! If a person spends a lifetime digging wells in Africa, but never sat down to dig a well in himself and understand life better, he's doing a disservice to himself and to others.

While all this is true, every Jew must know that Avraham is the first of our forefathers because our hearts' orientation must go out beyond ourselves. If this is our hearts' orientation, when the appropriate opportunities arise, our actions will follow. Even as we build our own arks of Torah and mitzvot, we must work hard to remind ourselves to rise above our own righteousness, that shying away from those who need our help is beyond the pale of the Jewish DNA.  We should be students of our forefathers who were students of the Almighty -- everything we learn and everything we receive is a gift best received by sharing with others.