Drawing Feminine Lessons form Avraham Avinu’s Chesed and Nurture

The story of Avraham Avinu and the visiting malachim is one of the primary examples of the archetypical chesed he personified. Avraham was the ultimate ish chesed and our peephole into the chesed Hashem that created, and sustains, this world. The mitzvah of ve’halachta bidrachav, to walk in Hashem’s path, obligates us to emulate Hashem in his abundant kindness¹. Understanding the chesed of Avraham will help us navigate our own direction along the pathways of Hashem.

The Chesed of Creation

When trying to understand a concept, we refer to where the Torah mentions it in order to understand it correctly. Chesed comes up immediately with creation: Olam chesed yibana² – the world was created with chesed. How is the creation and continued sustenance of the world the ultimate chesadim?

Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik explains chesed as the force of overflow that allows for the existence of others. Fundamentally, chesed is not demonstrated when a transfer occurs from one to another; it describes the process of outpouring, the extension of self-identity over the realm of the other. It is not sacrificial, but generative; not restrictive, but expansive. 

Of course, human chesed can only remotely attempt to emulate Hashem’s, but with this understanding we can begin to reckon with the directive to “love your fellow as yourself ”. Our task in chesed is not to deprive ourselves, but to identify with others’ needs and then practice chesed as its natural expression. 

Hashem’s creation and maintenance of this world is most accurately by His name “Hamakom”, which the Midrash explains: Hu makomo shel olam, v’ein olam m’komo³. It’s not that the world is His place, but that He is the place of the world. We exist within Him and are nurtured by His existence directly.

The Chesed of Avraham

Avraham perfectly personified this chesed Hashem. His contribution to the world was not an inheritance he passed along, but a fully self-generated fullness, an expression of his own being rather than a desire to fill some void. The Midrash tells us⁴ that the tent of Avraham’s inn was open on all sides. He opened himself up to the world, removed all roadblocks, and identified fully with all of creation. 

Avraham’s legacy is twofold: his unmitigated chesed, and the semination of emunah in Hashem. The chesed of Avraham was the power by which he spread Emunat Hashem and demonstrated to people the profound and intrinsic connection between the One Source and all of existence. His own chesed was an expression of Hashem’s overflowing living-kindness that people could relate to and use to return to Him. How do we, as women, emulate his Chesed in our lives?

The Chesed of the Woman

Rabbi Akiva said: More than the calf wants to eat, the cow wants to suckle… ⁵Milk represents the trait of chesed, the flow of sustenance, while blood represents death and destruction⁶. 

The most profound expression of Divine chesed in this world manifests through the woman. There is no better paradigm of ourselves in relation to Hashem than the miracle of pregnancy, the existence of one human within another, a uniquely identifiable entity and yet entirely reliant on the mother. The mother’s continued sustenance of the baby is maintained automatically as an extension of her own existence. It gets nurtured when she eats, gets oxygen when she breathes, gets the benefits of sunshine when the mother goes outside. 

The breastfeeding mother does not reach within herself to remove nourishment and provide it for the baby. She nurtures her child as an extension of herself, a flow that bursts forth when she herself is satisfied, as long as a receiver exists. Maharal tells us that shadayim, breasts, represent the middah of chesed⁷.

Nurturing those we love does not require chopping ourselves into multiple parts, or wearing ourselves thin in the pursuit of giving to others. The woman of the home, its axis and its essence, is the pinnacle of chesed by simply being. She is full and fulfilled, and she overflows because she is larger than her own life. She radiates acceptance, joy, and emunah that can embrace as many people as her heart lets in. The love she gives her family forever multiplies, expands, pours over with the ever-expanding scope of her identity. 

Women are nurturers; not only as mothers, but as nurses, educators, counselors. We have the special ability to identify with others, both in pain and in success, and empathize with them so deeply we lose our own stories in theirs. When we align with the chesed Hashem, there is never a quality vs. quantity conundrum, because there is always more and there is always enough: To be, to give, to grow. 

Real-Life Chesed

Of course, human chesed can only remotely attempt to emulate Hashem’s, but with this understanding we can begin to reckon with the directive to “love your fellow as yourself ”⁸. Our task in chesed is not to deprive ourselves, but to identify with others’ needs and then practice chesed as its natural expression. 

In Michtav Me’Eliyahu, Rav Dessler famously establishes that giving leads to love, because the investment of yourself in others transforms them into an extension of the self. This is not selfish; to deeply identify with others’ pain or lack is the truest expression of chesed. 

Avraham marks the beginning of the Jewish people. Understanding what made him worthy is a powerful step towards making ourselves worthy vessels of his inheritance. As women, we have the special ability to absorb the chesed of Avraham and let it penetrate, fill us, and then overflow to flood our homes, and indeed the world, with kindness.

1. Rambam, Hilchot Deot 6 ↩︎
2. Tehillim 89:3 ↩︎
3. Bereishit Rabbah 68:9 ↩︎
4. Sachar Tov on Tehillim 110; Midrash Rabba 48:9 ↩︎
5. Pesachim 112a ↩︎
6. Kehilat Yaakov ↩︎
7. Gur Aryeh, Bereishit 49:25 ↩︎
8. Vayikra 19:18 ↩︎