On being a Jewish parent, the most influential man who ever lived doesn't appear on any list I have seen of the hundred most influential men who ever lived.

He ruled no empire, commanded no army, engaged in no spectacular acts of heroism on the battlefield, performed no miracles, proclaimed no prophecy,

led no vast throng of followers, and had no disciples other than his own child.

Yet today more than half of the seven billion people alive on the face of the planet

identify themselves as his heirs.

His name of course is Abraham, held as the founder of faith by the three great monotheisms,

Judaism, Christianity in Islam. He fits no conventional stereotype. He's not like Noah described

as unique in his generation. The Torah tells us no tales of

his childhood, as it does of Moses. We know next to nothing about his early life. When God calls on him,

as he does at the beginning of this week's pariah to leave his land, his birthplace and his father's

house, we have no idea why he was singled out. Yet never was a promise

more richly fulfilled than the words of God to him when he changed his name from Avram to

Avraham, Ki Avraham Gavhamun Goyim Natatachah, for I've made you father of many nations. Today there are 56 Islamic nations and more

than 80 Christian ones and the Jewish state. Truly Abraham became the father of many nations.

But who and what was he? And why was he chosen for this exemplary role? There are three famous portraits

of Abraham. The first is the one we learned as children. Abraham left alone with his father's

idols, breaks them with a hammer which he leaves in the hand of the biggest of the idols.

His father, Terak comes in, sees the the devastation asked who caused it, and the young

Abraham replied, can't you see the hammer is in the hands of the largest idol? It must have been

him. Terak replies, but an idol is mere wood and stone. Abraham replies, then, father, how can you

worship it? This is Abraham thy iconoclast, the breaker of images, the man who, while still young,

rebelled against the pagan, polytheistic world of demigods and demons, superstition and magic.

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