Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Xenophilia STEVEN SHANKMAN We often hear about xenophobia in today’s troubled Western world, about fear of the stranger, fear of the demonized other. But we rarely, if ever, encounter the term, or the inspiring idea of, xenophilia, love of the stranger, hospitality. Rarely, that is, unless we regularly consult the Bible and the two great Homeric epics. What do these foundational works of Western culture teach us about the relation between xenophilia—the gesture of welcoming the potentially dangerous stranger—and what it means to be truly human? Let us begin with an explicit reference to the word xenophilia that appears in an essay by the great and radical 20th -century philosopher on the nature of ethical obligation, Emmanuel Levinas, written in 1959. Here Levinas remarks: “Monotheism [by which Levinas says he means Judaism, Christianity, and Islam] is not an arithmetic of the divine.... It is a school of xenophilia and anti-racism [Il est une école de xénophilie et d’antiracisme].”1 The relationship between monotheism, in the Abrahamic religious tradition, and xenophilia is suggested at the beginning of the eighteenth chapter of Genesis, when three strangers appear to Abraham, who runs towards them to offer them food and drink. Who are these three strangers? One of them, it turns out, is God, and the other two are angels, but their identity does not concern Abraham. What he sees are three men and he wants merely to be hospitable towards them, to serve them. At the conclusion of the previous chapter, Abraham, at the age of ninety-nine, was arion 28.2 fall 2020 74 xenophilia circumcised. He is, as you can imagine, now in great pain. The rabbis say that God, knowing that Abraham is such a hospitable person, purposely made the day very hot so as to discourage wayfarers from braving the heat and thus tempting Abraham to exert himself during his early recovery from the trauma of his belated and recent circumcision. I have indicated, in brackets, the verses in which Abraham addresses the stranger(s) in the singular and in the plural, which cannot be discerned in the translation into English: God [the ineffable Tetragrammaton ‫יהוה‬— most often pronounced Adonai today] appeared to him [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the heat of day. He lifted his eyes and saw: And behold! Three men were standing over him. He saw them and ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and bowed toward the ground. And he said, “Adonai [meaning ‘My Lord’ or ‘My Lords’], if I find favor in Your [singular form in the Hebrew] eyes now, please pass not away [singular form of the verb] from Your [singular] servant. Let some water be brought and wash your [plural] feet, and recline [plural form of the verb] beneath the tree. I will fetch a morsel of bread that you [plural] may sustain yourselves, then go on [plural form of the verb]—inasmuch as you [plural] have passed your [plural form of the adjective] servant’s way.”2 “God appeared to him [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the heat of the day. He lifted his eyes and saw: And behold! Three men were standing over him.” Where, exactly, is God in this passage? The rabbis of the Talmud suggest that God did indeed visit Abraham, but that when the three strangers arrived, Abraham asked God to wait (can you believe such audacity?) while he, Abraham, could first meet the needs of the three wayfarers. First things first! From this the Talmud concludes that “Hospitality to wayfarers is greater than receiving the Divine Presence.”3 A beautiful thought! But the verses from Genesis are even more radical than that. We wonder whether the alternation, Steven Shankman 75 in Abraham’s address to the strangers, between his addressing them first in the plural then in the singular and then back to the plural again, does not suggest a response to our question of where God appears in this passage. Could this alternation be suggesting that the way God appears in these verses...