If I asked you to name the most important figures of the American Revolution, you would probably say George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Paul Revere. You might add Samuel Adams if you like beer, Nathan Hale if you like spies, and Marquis de Lafayette if you like the French. But you almost certainly would not mention Lambert Wickes. I had never heard of him either, despite teaching high school level American History for years. This is remarkable, because without him, the colonists would likely have lost the war. In 1776, early on in the war, America entrusted Wickes with cargo considerably more valuable and militarily necessary than cannons, gunpowder or gold: Benjamin Franklin.
The Revolutionary War was not going particularly well in the fall of 1776. Britain had the most powerful navy in the world, a professional army, enormous financial resources and the advantage that comes from already being an actual country. The thirteen colonies had declared themselves independent a few months earlier, but declarations are considerably easier to write than countries are to build, and George Washington’s army desperately needed weapons, money and help.
France could dramatically change that equation. The French were not particularly passionate about democracy, but they were very passionate about anything that made Britain miserable. On the other hand, the French were loathe to back the losing team, and it was quite uncertain that the ragtag group of colonists could win against the world superpower.
Congress decided that Benjamin Franklin was the man to convince them that supporting the American rebellion would be an excellent investment. Franklin was probably the most famous American in all of Europe, his scientific discoveries, especially in the field of electricity, were discussed enthusiastically throughout the Continent. The French intellectuals saw him as the embodiment of the Enlightenment ideals they loved, the French people were making mugs, watches, rings, snuffboxes, and all sorts of knickknacks with his likeness; he was the American celebrity in France, and the most likely person to persuade them to support the nascent embattled colonies.
There was just the small matter of getting Franklin to France alive. Franklin was seventy years old, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and arguably the most valuable diplomat America had. The Atlantic Ocean was patrolled and owned by the British Royal Navy, and if the British captured him, America would lose its most important representative in Europe, and Franklin could possibly be executed as a traitor to the Crown.
Congress handed the job to a Maryland sea captain named Lambert Wickes, who had spent years commanding merchant ships before accepting a commission in the brand-new Continental Navy. Wickes commanded the Reprisal, an eighteen-gun converted merchant brig that had been purchased by Congress only months earlier. Compared to the giant British ships of the line carrying sixty, seventy or more guns, the Reprisal was not exactly an overwhelming expression of naval dominance. But it was nimble, and the lumbering British warships were not.
On October 26, 1776, Wickes sailed from the Delaware Capes with Franklin aboard, and 34 days later reached Nantes, France. Getting Franklin safely to France, by itself would have been a pretty respectable contribution to American history, because Franklin then spent the next fourteen months helping build French support for the American cause, culminating in the formal French alliance of February 1778.
But, transporting one of America’s most important men across an ocean controlled by the enemy did not provide Wickes with quite enough excitement, because along the way he captured two British vessels. When the Reprisal reached France, Franklin went ashore and began charming French society, wearing his famous fur cap, and his diplomatic mission. Wickles, meanwhile, had a warship in his command and was not terribly interested in leaving it in its parking spot.
Over the following months he began attacking British shipping in European waters. In early 1777 he sailed into the English Channel, captured several British merchant vessels and then fought a British government ship called Swallow for about forty minutes before capturing that too. This created an awkward situation for France. France was officially neutral in the war. Unofficially, France was supplying the Americans and enjoying the spectacle of Britain having problems. Every time Wickes sailed into a French harbor with another captured British ship, the British ambassador would lodge a complaint to the French government that an American warship was using France as a rest stop between attacks on British commerce. The French would promise to deal with the situation, Wickes would somehow remain around a little longer, and then another British ship would disappear.
By the summer of 1777, Wickes had two additional American vessels sailing with him, Lexington and Dolphin, and he took his tiny three-ship squadron on an extraordinary cruise around Ireland. They sailed directly into waters Britain considered its backyard and began taking merchant ships. During the cruise, the Americans captured eighteen British vessels, including fifteen in only five days! This would not destroy the British Empire, but imagine what it did psychologically. Britain was sending the greatest navy in the world across the Atlantic to suppress a colonial rebellion, while ships belonging to those same rebels had crossed the ocean and were raiding British commerce in its backyard! British merchants demanded naval protection, shipping became more expensive to insure, and the pressure to just end the war began to ratchet up.
This also helped diplomatically. Franklin could talk about American courage and determination, but Wickes was providing visual aids. Every British ship brought into a French port was another reminder that these colonists could actually survive. Eventually Britain’s patience ran out, and British diplomatic pressure on France became so intense that the French detained Wickes and his crew. He was finally released on the condition that he leave France and return to America. On September 14, 1777, Reprisal sailed for home. Somewhere near Newfoundland, the ship encountered a violent storm and disappeared beneath the Atlantic. Lambert Wickes and his valiant crew drowned. According to the Navy’s historical record, only one man survived: the cook.
Wickes never got to see what happened next. In February 1778, months after his death, Franklin finally convinced France to formally entered the war on America’s side. You could argue that America could have won without France, but you’d have a difficult time explaining how. French money and weapons kept the Revolution alive, and French soldiers and ships eventually helped make victory possible. Close to half the troops at Yorktown, the deciding battle, were French, and the French Navy patrolling the Chesapeake is what prevented British General Cornwallis from being resupplied, leading to his surrender. Wickles enabled all that by getting Benjamin Franklin to France.
Benjamin Franklin became one of the most celebrated figures in American history. George Washington became the legendary military hero of the Revolution, and first president of the United States. Lambert Wickes became the sort of man the United States Navy sometimes names ships after, but almost nobody else remembers.
And there is something about that which bothers me. Yes, Franklin deserves the credit and fame he receives. He was brilliant, politically savvy and extraordinarily effective in France. But Franklin had to get to France. Someone had to carry him across the Atlantic and protect him from the British Navy. Someone had to sail into British waters and demonstrate, in a way no diplomatic speech possibly could, that America was not simply going to disappear. History puts Franklin’s name on the American-French alliance. Wickes barely makes the footnotes.
We do that all the time. We look at an accomplishment and attach one name to it. Steve Jobs built Apple. Elon Musk built Tesla. A great rabbi built an institution. A successful businessman built a company. A surgeon saved the patient. That might be mostly true, but usually there are dozens, hundreds or sometimes thousands of people standing somewhere behind that name. They raised the person, taught them, financed them, encouraged them, watched the children, made the introduction, donated or invested the money, answered the phone, cleaned the building, or simply showed up at exactly the moment when the one whose name we remember needed somebody.
Interestingly, the Torah seems to have a very different way of writing credits.
The Talmud in Sanhedrin 19b notices that the Book of Ruth says something rather strange after Ruth gives birth to Oved, the grandfather of King David. The women of the neighborhood proclaim, “A son has been born to Naomi” (Ruth 4:17). Except a son had not been born to Naomi, a son was born to Ruth! But the Talmud answers: “Ruth gave birth to him and Naomi raised him; therefore he was called by her name.” Ruth produced the child, but Naomi helped produce the person. In the Torah’s accounting system, that contribution is significant enough that Scripture describes the baby as Naomi’s.
The same passage gives an even more striking example. Psalm 77:16 refers to the Jewish people as “the children of Jacob and Joseph.” The Talmud asks: Were the Jewish people Joseph’s children? Jacob fathered the twelve tribes, not Joseph. And the answer is remarkable: “Jacob fathered them, but Joseph sustained them; therefore they were called by his name.” Joseph kept the family alive during the famine, and therefore generations later the Torah can attach his name to what that family became.
Numbers 3:1 introduces “the descendants of Aaron and Moses,” but the following verse lists only Aaron’s sons. Where are Moses’s children? The Talmud answers that these actually were Aaron’s biological children, but Moses taught them Torah. “Aaron fathered them and Moses taught them; therefore they were called by his name.” From here the Sages teach that someone who teaches another person’s child Torah is credited as though he fathered him. There is a pattern here. We see the person who crossed the finish line. Hashem sees everyone who carried him to it.
The Talmud expresses the same idea from another direction when discussing charity. “Greater is the one who causes another to give than the one who gives.” (Talmud, Bava Basra 9a.) The person writing the check is obviously doing something wonderful, but Chazal tell us not to underestimate the person who inspired him, convinced him or created the opportunity. In Hashem’s eyes, the person who encouraged the donation receives even greater credit than the person whose name is actually written on the check.
This is a radically different way to look at our own lives, because most of us are not going to be Benjamin Franklin.We spend an enormous amount of our lives doing things whose final product has somebody else’s name attached to it. Parents can spend twenty years pouring themselves into children who eventually become successful adults, and everybody congratulates the adult. A teacher can spend an entire year trying to reach one child and never know that thirty years later something she said became the foundation of that child’s life. One spouse can create the emotional or financial stability that allows the other one to accomplish something extraordinary. A donor can quietly keep an organization alive during its worst year and then watch somebody else get honored at the dinner ten years later when the organization is flourishing. An employee can solve a thousand small problems that allow the owner of the company to be the “successful entrepreneur.”
The Gemara in Berachos 17 asks howJewish women received the extraordinary spiritual reward connected to Torah study, which is considered the highest mitzvah when they themselves generally are not the ones sitting in the study halls. It answers that when they bring their children to learn, encourage their husbands to go study and wait for them while they are studying, that is when they earn their reward. They made the Torah learning possible, and in Hashem’s eyes, that is what gives them their equal reward. It’s decidedly less heroic, and gets much less headlines, but not in Heaven. Heaven sees, Heaven records and Heaven rewards.
Humans can only see the person that delivers the final product. Hashem does not have that limitation, He knows every person who made it possible. He knows who kept the family functioning, who provided the money, who gave the encouragement, who made the introduction, who taught the lesson, who drove the car, who watched the children and who quietly did the thing nobody noticed that allowed somebody else to do the thing everybody noticed. History keeps a very incomplete set of books. Hashem does not.
So if you’re out there, quietly toiling, putting in supreme effort to simply raise your children in the ways of Hashem, which today requires tremendous investments of time, money, emotional drain and physical effort, know that you are seen. If your synagogue benefits from your hours of volunteering, quiet donations, or quiet diplomacy, know that you are seen. If you are putting everything you have into trying to fix a marriage that has been on the rocks for years, know that you are seen. If you are the guy who encourages people to join you when you go to classes, help out with a chessed organization, or support a worthy cause, know that you are seen.
Because this world is not about what people remember, it’s about what Hashem sees. And Hashem sees you.
Parsha Dvar Torah
In this week’s Parsha we see two stories of Hachnassas Orchim, the mitzvah of inviting guests into ones home. In the beginning of the parsha, Avraham invites the angels disguised as Arab travelers passing by the front of his tent, into his home for a meal and some refreshing shade. In the middle of the parsha we see Lot, Avraham’s nephew inviting the same angels to his home. On the outside, it would seem that Lot’s mitzvah took a lot more sacrifice, as he was in Sodom, a city where people were killed for doing kindness to strangers. Why is it that the Torah makes a big deal of Avraham’s kindness, while largely ignoring Lot’s sacrifice in performing his mitzvah?
Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (1820-1892), also known by his most prominent work, the Bais Halevi, offers the following explanation: A careful examination of the verses leading up to the guests’ reception points us to one key difference that explains everything. Regarding Avraham it says, “He lifted his eyes and saw, and behold three men were standing near him. He saw them, and ran from the door of the tent to greet them, and he bowed down to the earth.” But regarding Lot it says, “The two angels came to Sodom in the evening while Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. Lot saw them, and he got up to greet them, and he bowed with his face to the ground.” What is the difference? Go ahead, find it! I’ve got all day, and I can be surprisingly patient…
The divergence between the texts is noted in the description of the guests. By Avraham, they appeared as people, as a matter of fact, the Sages tell us they posed as idol-worshipping Arab travelers. Avraham still rushed out to greet them, bowed to them, and invited in to his home. By Lot they appeared as angels, knowing that as people they would not get the welcome greeting they got at Avraham’s tent.
It’s easy to roll out the red carpet when someone famous, distinguished, or powerful is visiting you. It is much more difficult to do so for the impoverished, vulnerable, and needy people we meet.
One powerful tool you can use when trying to judge character, is to watch how someone treats people who are on a significantly lower social or economic strata than they. I’m not talking about politicians walking through a blue collar town, shaking hands, smiling, and then running of to their trailer to wash their hands and talk about “those rednecks.” I’m talking about someone who genuinely gives of his time, his energy, and his respect to those less fortunate than him. The people who make everyone feel as equals. Those are the people who understand chessed, who understand hachnassas orchim, the people who understand what makes this world tick!
Parsha Summary
Our parsha begins with G-d coming to visit Avraham as he recuperates from his bris. This teaches us the importance of visiting the sick – if G-d took the time to do it, we should definitely do it as well. As G-d is talking with him, Avraham sees three angels disguised as Arab travelers passing before his tent. He asks G-d to wait until he finishes doing the mitzvah of hachnassas orchim, inviting guest to one’s home, and he goes out to ask the travelers to join him for a meal. As he serves them a meal fit for a king (I would say a meal fit for an angel, but angels don’t eat), they reveal themselves as angels, and one of them tells them that in exactly one year Sara will give birth.
After they leave, G-d picks up the conversation again by mentioning to Avraham that he is about to destroy the five cities of Sodom , Gomorrah et. al. Avraham, being the true patriarch of all humanity, prays to G-d on their behalf. Acting as a defense attorney, he pleads with G-d to spare the cities based on the good people within them but, lo and behold, G-d informs him that there are no such people, and that is the exact reason that the cities need to be destroyed.
Two of the angels journey on to Sodom . (Each of the three angels had a job, as angles receive only one task at a time. The first one, whose job it was to inform Avraham and Sara of their upcoming baby, had completed his job and left. The remaining two angels continue to Sodom , one of them to destroy the city, and the other to save Lot .) When they get there, Lot , Avraham’s nephew, invites them into his house, something that was sure to anger the citizens of Sodom , who were notoriously cruel to any visitors or to anyone who was kind to visitors.
Sure enough, the entire population of Sodom gathers around Lot ‘s house that night to wreak havoc on him and his guests. The angels blind the people, and tell Lot that it was time to hightail it out of Sodom , before the upheaval. Lot leaves reluctantly, not wanting to lose his material possessions, and eventually is practically dragged out.
The angels instruct Lot and his family (one wife, two daughters) not to look back, as they don’t deserve to watch the destruction of people who were not much worse than they. Lot’s wife ignores the instruction and does look back and turns into a pillar of salt (my mother has a picture of a pillar of dusty, salty stone that is in the form of a woman, which she saw on one of her trips to Israel. Its proximity to Sodom has caused people to theorize that this might be Lot ‘s wife). Lot, after begging G-d to let him remain in a city nearby, a wish which G-d grants, decides to run off to the mountains in fear of even this city getting destroyed (Lot wasn’t the biggest of believers).
In the mountain cave, Lot ‘s two daughters discuss their predicament. Fearing that the entire world had been wiped out as it had been in the Great Flood, they thought they were the only survivors on earth. The problem, one that hasn’t ceased since then, was that there was a real big lack of eligible guys for them to marry. Not wanting to be the last humans, they get their father drunk on two consecutive nights, and live with him. They both have children and those two children became the father of the nations of Ammon and Moav. (You will see more about these nations in Numbers and Deuteronomy.)
At this point there is another famine in Israel, and Avraham moves to Gerar to escape the famine. History repeats itself, and in order to avoid the murder of Avraham, the couple claim that Sara is his sister. Sure enough, she is taken to the house of the king Avimelech. An angel keeps Avimelech away from Sara, while the entire kingdom is struck with the inability to expel anything from the body (including urination, bowel movements, giving birth etc.). G-d reprimands Avimelech who claims complete innocence. G-d commands him to immediately return Sara to her husband, and to ask Avraham to pray on their behalf. This is what happens, and life returns to normal in Gerar to the relief of the entire population (no pun intended).
After this story, Sara becomes pregnant and gives birth. They give Isaac a bris on his eighth day, and also make a big party for him on the day he is weaned. Sara notices that Ishmael is trying to kill and/or corrupt Isaac, so she demands that Avraham banish Hagar and Ishmael. Avraham is reluctant, but G-d tells her, “Whatever Sara tells you, heed her voice.” (My wife, who is also named Sara, finds this to be her favorite line from G-d!)
Hagar and Ishmael are sent away with some food and water, but they soon find themselves lost in the desert with the water depleted, and Ishmael falls ill. Hagar, being the cruel mother she was (see last week’s email for more details), doesn’t stay with her son through his sickness, but simply leaves him under a tree saying that she can’t bear to see him die (since when is it all about you, Mrs. Hagar?). An angel appears to her and tells her that even though a lot of evil would come out of Ishmael’s descendants, G-d only judges people based on their current status and, therefore, Ishmael is deserving of being saved. The angel shows Hagar a well, and she nurses her son back to health. (This portion of the Torah is read on Rosh Hashanah to remind us that G-d only judges people based on the way they are at the moment, so any time a person makes a real honest commitment to change, they can get back in the good books.)
The last portion of this Parsha is the final test Avraham underwent, one that involved testing his son as well. This is sort of the moment where the reins were passed on to the next generation, as it is the final test of Avraham, and the one of the first for Isaac. G-d commands Avraham to sacrifice his most beloved son, Isaac. This is the most difficult test possible for Avraham whose whole life revolved around kindness but, even so, he gets up early the next morning to fulfill G-d’s wishes. Isaac, even after being told the purpose of the journey they are taking, willingly goes along. As a matter of fact, the reason this event is known as Akeidas Yitzchak, the Binding of Isaac, is because Isaac requested of his father that he bind him tightly so that he shouldn’t shake at the sight of the knife and make the sacrifice imperfect.
Before Avraham even has the chance to harm his son, an angel calls out to him and tells him to stay still. The angel goes on to explain that the event was really a test to see how faithful a follower of G-d Avraham was. Avrahom, in his deep desire to bring a sacrifice to his Creator looked around for an appropriate substitute and found a ram that G-d had prepared from the sixth day of creation especially for this purpose. (In commemoration of this act, we use a ram’s horn for the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah. It so to speak reminds G-d of the sacrifice our forefathers had, and hopefully serves as a merit for us to get a favorable judgment on Rosh Hashanah.) This is one of the most action packed Parshas in the whole Torah, and if you are still reading by now, please email me, so I can gauge how many people made it this far. Congratulations!
Quote of the Week: A good example is the best sermon. – Rabbi Shmuel Leknarf
Random Fact of the Week: Added together, the world’s unused frequent flyer miles equal 42,500 round trips to the sun!
Funny Line of the Week: Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.
Have an Unusually Bright Shabbos,
R’ Leiby Burnham
