ABSTRACT
A survey of where adults place the portals through which children enter the world of Torah indicates that it all begins with Abraham and Sarah going to the Promised Land. For those who read the Torah in search of both origins and destiny, the point on which we come to rest, where we find our first father and mother, is in the story of Abraham and Sarah. Throughout the millennia, the children of Abraham and Sarah, having themselves become parents and grandparents, not only transmit but also “do literature” that expands on and sometimes reshapes what those primary parents represent. Abraham, as the Jewish tradition sees him, was first and foremost a man of faith. With regard to Abraham, two of the great thinkers of our Middle Ages suggest very different portraits of the man. The spiritual lives of Abraham and Sarah were more complicated than those of humanity’s first parents, Adam and Eve.
