ספר בראשית

‎Genesis 18,1. “Hashem appeared to him (Avraham) in the ‎groves of Mamre.” Since we have been told that G’d had ‎departed from Avraham in 17,23, we would have expected the ‎verse here to mention the subject Avraham by name. Why does ‎the Torah only write ‎לו‎, “to him?”G’d, i.e. aspects of the ‎אין ‏סוף‎, G’ds Essence, dispensed different amounts of ‎שפע‎, “original ‎light,” eventually converted in the lower domains of the universe ‎into matter of varying degrees of physical densities. Every such ‎שפע‎, represents a distillation, ‎צמצום‎, “shrinkage, of this original ‎light. [If I understood the concept correctly, Ed.] This process is ‎reflected already in the different names we have for G’d, the ‎letters in these names reflecting varying degrees of G’d’s having ‎restricted His manifestations to His creatures in order to make it ‎compatible with what His creature can tolerate.This principle ‎applies not only to creatures in the lower part of the universe, i.e. ‎our planet, but also to the different categories of “angels,” ‎disembodied servants of the Lord in the celestial spheres, ‎according to the spiritual level attained by the creature, angel, or ‎human being, as the case may be. When such a human being ‎has been given a “name” by its Creator, this “name” reflects the ‎degree to which this person is able to absorb G’d’s “light,” ‎without being harmed by it. When a human being serves his ‎Creator out of awe, ‎יראה‎, by totally negating the limitations ‎imposed on a soul while it is constricted by the body it inhabits, it ‎may be considered as having “disrobed,” shed the restrictions his ‎body imposed upon the free, upward, heavenward motion of his ‎soul. When we express this concept in terms of the meaning of ‎the letters in our G’d-given names, this means that we have ‎divested ourselves of our “names.”Avraham, at the time of his ‎life that the Torah speaks about here, had not yet freed himself ‎from the limits imposed upon him (by dint of the letters in his ‎name) prior to his having been circumcised. This state of flux, a ‎temporary situation, in which Avraham found himself at the ‎beginning of this portion, is reflected in the Torah referring to him ‎only by a pronoun, instead of by his full name.‎