‘I will surely bless you, and I will make your descendants numerous like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore.”
In this week’s parsha, Vayeira, we read this famous blessing that God gives to Abraham.
There’s an obvious question here. According to current estimates, there are around 7.7 billion people in the world, of whom approximately only 14.6 million are Jews – children of Abraham. We make up roughly only 0.2% of the world’s population. How, then, do we understand this blessing of being great in number – numerous like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore – when clearly, we are not, and never have been? And even God Himself, later in the Torah, tells us that He did not choose the Jewish people, “because you are the most numerous of the nations... since you are [indeed] the fewest.”
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