Lekh Lekha

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But the Rabbis do not let go of Terah so easily. Terah is, after all, a father, who deserves his son’s honor and reverence. And for our Sages, honor and reverence are not vague and ephemeral notions; they embody concrete obligations: “What is reverence and what is honor? Reverence: a son may not stand in the place where his father customarily stands nor sit in his father’s designated seat. He may not contradict his father or side with others against him. Honor: one is obligated to provide food, drink, clothing, shelter and transportation for one’s parents” (). And if you think that these obligations can be fulfilled merely, or even mainly, by sending one’s parents a check to cover expenses you are wrong. Indeed, the Babylonian Talmud concludes that parents bear primary financial responsibility for providing for their own needs. The essence of honoring one’s parents is personal service. To put it in contemporary terms, I may not be obligated to pay for my parents’ groceries, but I am obligated to take them shopping. And this is true not only if they are incapable of shopping on their own. There are numerous stories in the Talmud of sages who honor their parents by bringing them water to drink. Perhaps in some of these cases this meant drawing water from a cistern, an arduous or at least inconvenient task. In others, however, the rabbi was performing a task that could have been done with ease by the parent—and that was the point. It is when we provide our parents with service and attention that are not essential from a utilitarian perspective that we honor them most.

The issue of Abraham’s filial obligations to Terah arises in a midrashic discussion of a textual anomaly (Midrash Aggadah to ). The Torah reports Terah’s death () before relating Abraham’s departure from Haran (12:5), leaving us with the impression that this was the chronological order of events. However, the Torah records earlier that Terah fathered Abraham when he was 70 (11:26) and that he passed away at the ripe old age of 210 (11:32). Abraham left for Canaan when he was 75 (12:4). Thus, Terah lived for 65 more years after Abraham’s departure.

As is often the case, this textual anomaly is explained by means of addressing yet another oddity. Terah is the last to be mentioned in a genealogical list that begins with Noah’s son Shem. For each of those listed, we are given the age at which he fathered his son, the next link in the genealogical chain, and the number of years he lived after fathering him. The Torah does not provide a death notice for any of these figures except for Terah: “Terah died in Haran” (). Why is Terah the exception? The midrash explains, “This teaches you that the wicked are considered as dead even during their lifetimes”—a notion expressed frequently in rabbinic midrash and therefore neither original nor surprising. By this the midrash means to say that, although Terah lived on after Abraham’s departure, the Torah considers him to have been already dead because he was spiritually moribund.

The midrash continues: “Abraham was afraid that he would be the cause of God’s name being profaned; people would say that he abandoned his father in his old age and departed. God therefore reassured Abraham, saying, ‘I exempt you from the obligation to honor your parents; moreover in the Torah I will record your father’s death before your departure.”

From the conclusion of the midrash we realize that, as is often the case, the midrash is bothered by the content of the text as well as by its form. It puts in Abraham’s mouth a question that apparently bothered the Rabbis themselves: how could the pious Abraham abandon his father rather than being a dutiful son? The midrash addresses both the textual and religious difficulties as follows: Terah’s death notice teaches us that he was wicked and therefore considered dead in his own lifetime. This notice precedes the story of Abraham to indicate that, because of Terah’s wickedness, Abraham was not obligated to stay in Haran and attend to him. The achronological mention of Terah’s death serves a second function as well. While the faithful might accept Terah’s wickedness as justification for Abraham’s actions, the doubters would see this explanation as a convenient excuse. Therefore, God denies them the opportunity to mock Abraham by concealing the fact that Terah was in fact alive when Abraham left Haran.

I assumed above that the problem of Abraham’s inattention to Terah was raised because it was a source of genuine discomfort. However, it is also possible that the issue was raised merely because it offered a pretext both to provide an ingenious explanation of two textual anomalies, and to proclaim yet again that a life of sin is a life wasted. I would like to believe that the question was asked with some degree of sincerity. It must be admitted, however, that the initial rabbinic concern for Terah as a father is far outweighed by condemnation.

If indeed the midrash reflects a genuine concern for Terah’s honor, perhaps it was inspired by a passage in Joshua’s farewell speech, part of which was incorporated into the Haggadah: “In days past your forefathers—Terah, father of Abraham and father of Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and worshipped other gods. But I took your father Abraham from beyond the Euphrates and Ied him through the whole land of Canaan” (). Verse 2 looks back at Abraham’s past, in which Terah appears as the father of both Abraham and Nahor. In verse 3, God plucks Abraham from both his geographical location and his religious and cultural environment, allowing Abraham to enter into a covenant with the One God, the God who will become Israel’s savior. For Abraham and his descendants, history begins anew; now only he, and not Terah, is “your father.”

And yet in verse 2 Terah is described not only as Abraham’s father, but as father of Abraham’s descendants as well—unlike the midrash, which ultimately strips Terah of his patriarchal status entirely. Verses 2 and 3 can be seen as a sort of palimpsest. This term refers to parchment or paper on which a text is written over a previous one that is still partially visible, if only faintly. The original text may no longer be legible. Nonetheless, its presence is felt, and we know that at one time these were the only words inscribed here.

Surely Joshua mentions Terah the idolater primarily as a foil in order to dramatize and emphasize the transformative consequences of God’s choosing Abraham. But the fact remains that Joshua does not ignore Terah or exclude him from Israel’s past. Abraham had a father and a home; without Terah there would have been no Abraham. We may have rejected Terah’s idolatrous ways, but we must not deny his paternity.

I imagine Terah seeing off his son. Did he understand and accept Abraham’s decision to heed a voice that only he heard? Was he thinking of the moments of joy that he had shared with his son? Was he angry, or perhaps deeply sad? I do not know. But I also wonder whether in that moment Abraham turned to his father, embraced him and said, “Wherever I go, whatever I do, you will be with me. I follow a God that is not yours and go to a faraway land, but I will never forget your kindness and care. Know that in embracing another faith I still value what you have taught me through your words and actions. Know also that you will not be forgotten; I will tell my children and grandchildren that you are my father and therefore theirs as well.”

There is no going without leaving. But it is for us to choose what we take with us.

This commentary was originally published in 2014.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Torah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (��”l) Hassenfeld.

Lekh Lekha

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Can only the deceased be a source of blessing? What about the living? This theme is paramount in Parashat Lekh Lekha, where God’s response to our patriarch Abraham’s call is replete with mentions of blessing. In Genesis 12:2, God says to Avram:

וְאֶֽעֶשְׂךָ֙ לְג֣וֹי גָּד֔וֹל וַאֲבָ֣רֶכְךָ֔ וַאֲגַדְּלָ֖ה שְׁמֶ֑ךָ וֶהְיֵ֖ה בְּרָכָֽה׃

I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
And you shall be a blessing.

It is easier to conceptualize what it might mean for God to bless Abraham. But what does it mean for Abraham to “be” a blessing? How might we follow in Abraham’s footsteps to be a blessing: for ourselves, our families, our communities and our world?

The 15th-century Italian commentator Ovadia Seforno offers a striking possibility: being a blessing indicates that God will rejoice in Abraham’s actions. Seforno cites a fantastical scene in the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 7a) in which Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, a High Priest, enters the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur and encounters the Holy Blessed One, enthroned. God demands, “Yishmael, bless me!” Stunned, the High Priest blesses God:

May it be Your will that Your compassion overcome Your anger, 
and may Your compassion prevail over Your other attributes, 
and may You act toward Your children with the attribute of compassion, 
and may You enter before them beyond the letter of the law.

Whether or not this gorgeous prayer was spontaneously crafted by Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, the Talmud gleans the lesson that שֶׁלֹּא תְּהֵא בִּרְכַּת הֶדְיוֹט קַלָּה בְּעֵינֶיך one should not take the blessing of an ordinary person lightly. God nods in approval and acceptance of the prayer. If a mere mortal can deliver a blessing directly to God, surely people can serve as blessings to one another!

What was it about Abraham that enabled him to be a blessing? I’d argue that it was his sense of purpose. Maimonides posits that even from a young age, Abraham knew he had a purpose. In his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides explains how Abraham became a spokesperson for monotheism: “As soon as Abraham was weaned—even in his infancy—he began to muse, night and day, wondering: how is it possible that the world should be continuously in motion without one to guide it? And such were his ponderings, until he knew that there was one God.”[1] This text recalls a sweet image of baby Avram, the philosopher. It teaches us that even from a young age, Abraham knew what he was meant to do.

Having a purpose is not only important on our better days. The Austrian psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl was one of the first psychologists to propose that having a high-level belief system, such as a purpose in life, enables people to endure life’s most severe and unimaginable hardships.

An article published in 2009 in the Journal of Positive Psychology[2] examined the connection between purpose and life satisfaction among adolescents, emerging adults and adults. The results of this study revealed that having identified a purpose was associated with greater life satisfaction at all those three stages of life. Interestingly, the study also found that searching for a purpose was only associated with increased life satisfaction during adolescence and emerging adulthood. Moreover, the study stated that a strong sense of purpose underscores moral action and civic engagement. We can understand from this research that both seeking and finding our purpose not only brings us contentment; it also helps us make a difference in our world.

Perhaps Abraham did not have to search for his purpose. Maybe, as Maimonides suggests, God’s call made it clear to our forefather that he was put on earth to disseminate monotheism. In contrast to our patriarch, most of us lack that kind of clarity of purpose. But in these murky and formidable times, discerning, connecting with, and taking action to realize our purpose is more important than ever.

In her Rosh Hashanah sermon, Rabbi Annie Tucker from Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York, taught, “Purpose can pull us out of the pits of despair, motivate us to fight against improbable odds, and even lead us to risk the things most precious for the sake of something greater. It is the anchor by which we pull ourselves towards a brighter future.” Rabbi Tucker’s words imply that unfortunately given our current circumstances, our “brighter future” surely will not arrive unless we connect with our purpose and engage actively with leading ourselves—and others along with us—toward it.

If this feels like a tall order. or if you are not sure where to begin, let’s return to two messages from the Talmudic passage above: first, that “one should not take the blessing of an ordinary person lightly.” While we may not know whether God is nodding along with our prayers as the Talmud describes, I still believe that our prayers in this current moment make a difference. And second, to echo the prayer of Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, extending mercy and compassion toward ourselves and others, while simultaneously aspiring to go above and beyond in all that we do, is more than enough. In these ways, may we all become blessings.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

[1] הלכות עבודה זרה וחוקות הגויים 1:3

[2] Cotton Bronk, K., Hill, P. L., Lapsley, D. K., Talib, T. L., & Finch, H. (2009). Purpose, hope, and life satisfaction in three age groups. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(6), 500–510.

Parshat Lekh Lekha

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After fleeing to Egypt due to the famine in Canaan, Avraham asks his wife Sarai to masquerade as his sister. He is afraid he will be killed on account of being married to a beautiful woman. The masquerade happens without record of Sarai’s verbal consent. Avraham remains unharmed, while Sarai is abducted and married to the Pharaoh against her will. The Torah is very clear—because of her, “things went well for Avraham” (Gen. 12:16). While she is taken into Pharaoh’s house, he is lavished with rich gifts. 

Many of our commentators try to “fix” this story by insisting Sarai was not harmed during her abduction. Only Ramban comes anywhere close to acknowledging Sarai’s pain and Avraham’s complicity. On Genesis 12:10 he writes:  

Know that Avraham our father sinned a great sin, unintentionally, when he brought his wife, the tzadeket (righteous person), to a stumbling block of sin out of his own fear that [the Egyptians] would kill him. He should have had faith that God would save him . . . On account of this deed, the exile in Egypt at the hands of Pharaoh was decreed for Avraham’s descendants. 

 Ramban finishes this comment with a thematic conclusion from a verse in Ecclesiastes (3:16): “‘In the place of justice there is evil and sin.” Many of the later commentators take issue with Ramban’s choice to blame Avraham for our ancestors’ enslavement. 

As Ramban and the rest of our commentators argue over whether Avraham sinned, Sarai remains silent. In this silence, she begins to lose her name. Though the Torah often refers to women and girls without names, Sarai is an exception. She is called by her name consistently in the rest of the parashah. Somehow, Egypt is different. Of the 8 verses that describe Avraham and Sarai’s time in Egypt, Sarai is mentioned in each but called by her name in only one. For the rest, she is “his wife,” “the woman,” and “she.” In the context of the Egypt episode, the text signals Sarai’s objectification, turning her into a woman with no name at all.  

Beyond this story, names play another major role in our parashah. In Lekh Lekha’s concluding chapter God changes our ancestors’ names as the covenant and brit milah, ritual male circumcision, begin. In this final episode, our first foremother is just as silent. Physically, she is absent from the name changing encounter with God. Spiritually, she is also absent from the new covenant, which God commands will be ritualized in the blood of only Avraham and the males of the household.  

I must imagine that Sarai experienced the parallels. In both stories, she is shunted aside and unnamed while her husband receives grandeur. Still, it is only imagination. Her experience of these two moments remains untold. I am left searching for a lesson in their similarities. 

For me, a connection lies in the thematic conclusion Ramban brings from Ecclesiates 3:16: “In the place of justice there is evil, and in the place of righteousness there is evil.” Avraham and God make the same error to the same effect. They both try to create justice and righteousness, but also create wickedness. Both God and Avraham are acting in a way that, to them, seems just and righteous. Where they fail is in being unable to extend that justice and righteousness to Sarai, and to the women in her household. Avraham is acting in self-defense, but he fails to extend that defense to Sarai. God is acting to connect divine holiness to a people but fails to extend that holiness to the women. 

Because of this failure, instead of establishing a covenant that operates for both Avraham and Sarai, God establishes a patriarchy. Sarai is not present for her own name change, and the women who come after her continue to be excluded, for much longer than our exile in Egypt. Perhaps things would have been different if Sarai had reported the parallels she identified between her husband and God.  Without Sarai’s voice, it took until Ramban in the 13th century to admit Avraham made a mistake. As for God’s error—we are still in the process of admitting how much damage was done when God made this particular covenant with only the males in mind.  

In Berakhot 13a, the Talmud points out another difference between our ancestors’ name changes. Bar Kappara teaches that God commands us all to call Avraham by his new name, and Rabbi Eliezer teaches that God prohibits us from using Avraham’s old name. In contrast, according to the anonymous voice of the Gemara, Sarai gets no such commandment. Only Avraham is told to call Sarai by her new name, Sarah. Others, it seems, can continue to call her other names without violating divine desire. God changes our foremother’s name while she is absent, and we call her Sarah today. And yet, even this divine name change is unstable, perhaps not even meant for our use.  

We do not know what she thinks of Egypt, and of the covenant. We do not know what she thinks about her new name. If I could speak to her, this is what I’d want to know most. I wouldn’t ask about Egypt, about the violence some of us face along the road. I wouldn’t even ask her about being left out of the covenantal moment. She and I have learned those lessons already. Instead, I’d ask her what she wants to be called. And we’d make it a negative commandment to call her by anything else, and a positive commandment to know her name.  

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). &�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

We first encounter Abram (for simplicity’s sake I will refer to him going forward by his rename, Abraham) within his parental household in Syro-Mesopotamia. From there, Abraham is commanded lekh lekha, (“Get a move on!”) to overcome his stasis and take on a challenge—to leave home and take up residence in an as yet unnamed land. He is promised territory and descendants if he makes this move, but it is unclear if that promise is the carrot or the stick. Almost as soon as Abraham and his wife Sarah settle in Canaan (later Israel), the land is stricken with famine. A truly pious person would appeal to the Deity for relief, but Abraham and Sarah leave the Promised Land and seek sustenance in the breadbasket of Egypt. There Abraham displays a lack of confidence and nearly loses Sarah. He is extricated from the mess that ensues not by his own lights but by a sympathetic Deity who takes on the role of teacher, saving the apprentice from the consequences of his blunder.

Back in Canaan, Abraham’s shepherds and those of his nephew Lot, whom he had brought with him from Syria, could not get along. Abraham realized that he needed to compromise regarding the promise of land, and he proposed that, rather than war with his nephew, he would divide the land between them. But when, in the next episode, Lot was taken captive by an onslaught of foreign kings, Abraham raised a private army, routed the invaders, and rescued Lot. Abraham was learning that he would need to be more and more self-reliant—that trust in the Deity implies a partnership, for which he, too, bears responsibility.

Abraham and Sarah had been promised progeny, but they were elderly and childless. Abraham did not trust the Deity and decided to adopt his major domo as his legal heir, a practice not unusual in his era. But the Deity stopped him, reiterating the promise of a son, against the apparent odds. At this point the narrator tells us that “(Abraham) trusted in the LORD, and He accounted it to him as merit” (Gen. 15:6).[1]

With his back to the wall, so to speak, Abraham, who had managed to cope with all the challenges thrust in his path, was learning to trust. Abraham, who in next week’s parashah would demonstrate his readiness to sacrifice his son, needed to evolve in his trust by way of experience.

The earliest reference to Abraham’s steadfast trust in the Deity is expressed already within the Hebrew Bible, in the prayer of Ezra recorded in Nehemiah 9:7–8:

It is you, O LORD God, who chose Abram, and took him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and fixed his name as Abraham, and found his heart to be trusting of you, and made a covenant with him to give him the land of the Canaanites [and various other peoples], as a grant to his descendants, and you fulfilled your promises because you are righteous.

The passage is incorporated into our daily morning prayers. Jumping ahead to the era of the Maccabees, their leader Mattathias, seeking in his last words to inspire ardor among his sons, invokes the example of Abraham in language reminiscent of Ezra’s:

Remember the deeds of the ancestors, which they did in their generations; and you will receive divine honor and an everlasting name. Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness? (1 Maccabees 2:50–51; New Revised Standard Version translation).

The idea that Abraham had to overcome a series of increasingly harder trials received classic expression in the post-biblical topos of his Ten Trials. The Book of Jubilees, an important ancient Jewish work preserved in books outside the Bible, enumerates seven, and then ten, ordeals that Abraham succeeded in overcoming, climaxing in the Binding of Isaac, the Akedah. The ten trials of Abraham became ensconced in traditional Jewish literature, for example, in Mishnah Avot(5:3), the so-called Ethics of the Fathers (of the Sanhedrin), from the early third century of our era:

By ten trials our father Abraham may peace be upon him was tried, and he withstood them all—to make known how great was (God’s) love of our father Abraham, may peace be upon him.

Although one may infer from this that our sages wanted to create the impression that Abraham was a paragon of trust from the outset, we have seen that the Torah develops Abraham’s character and covenantal reliability in stages. It is a dynamic process of religious education—a model we all emulate in our teaching and in our lives.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

[1] That verse actually contains several ambiguities, but this is the way our best traditions (for example, the leading medieval commentator, Rashi) and our modern linguistic analysis interpret it. Compare, for example, the syntax and wording of Psalm 106:30–31: “Phineas stepped forth and intervened, / and the plague ceased. / It was reckoned to his merit / for all generations, to eternity” (New Jewish Publication Society translation).

Thus, when we open our humashim to Genesis 12 and begin Parashat Lekh Lekha, it is quite a shock to see our father Avram leave his birthplace and journey across the known world on a mission from God. Forget homesickness—how does he understand the language?

According to rabbinic tradition, Babel was dispersed very soon before Avram is commanded to leave his ancestral land. Rashi cites the Seder Olam Rabbah, a second-century chronicle of biblical events, which dates it to the last year of the life of Peleg, son of Eber, who was so named “for in his days the earth was divided [niflegah]” (Gen. 10:25). This timing suggests that Avram was alive, and thus quite plausibly there building the tower, before leaving (returning?) to the land of the children of Eber where he spoke the language. (If we accept this chronology, we could also conclude that the people he encountered on his journey are former neighbors and co-workers from the Great Tower of Babel. The question in this case is less about Avram’s ability to communicate with total strangers and more about how he communicated with former acquaintances literally pushed away from him by God.)  

If Avram personally experienced the dispersion from Babel, God’s command that Avram leave his people is a contradiction of that earlier divine imperative. It is as contradictory as the later command that Avram kill Isaac despite repeated promises of progeny. Having been all but commanded to stick to his own kind, Avram is then directed to become a stranger in a strange land.

So, how did Avram communicate in the foreign lands of Canaan and Egypt?

There are a few possibilities:

• There are translators, unmentioned by the text, mediating between Avram and others. This theory is supported by a crucial later appearance of a translator standing between Joseph and his brothers in Egypt, misleading the latter into believing that Joseph cannot follow their conversation (Gen. 42:23). By the time of Joseph, these intermediaries were evidently available in the Egyptian royal court. But this solution only multiplies the fundamental problem, as we would need to account for how the translators themselves so quickly learned new languages and developed their craft (in the midrashic chronology, they would have only about 50 years to figure it out).

• Avram knows all the languages he needs to by divine assistance. God smooths his path to a foreign land by giving him a unique gift of language. This is indeed what the midrash says of Joseph, who gets a crash course in all seventy languages from the angel Gabriel during his speedy ascent to power in Egypt (Sotah 36b). Others like Moses and Mordecai, also close to power, reportedly know all seventy languages as well (Bereishit Rabbah 49:2; Megillah 13b). But if Avram is a part of this club of polyglots, the rabbinic tradition is oddly silent about it. And there are reasons to be skeptical: Avram, though he attains riches, is not a cosmopolitan palace denizen like his great-grandson. There is also the pesky issue of Avram’s nephew Lot, who interacts (albeit not so smoothly) with other peoples too and is by no means an exemplary individual. Does he have miraculous multilingualism as well? But the main problem with this possibility is theological—what is God’s plan? Fundamentally, if Avram’s journey is a test, why would God do so much of the hard work for him?

• The remaining possibility is that Avram doesn’t start off knowing any languages besides his own, and that learning how to communicate with the people of strange tribes and nations is an arduous, challenging process. Read in this light, there is a definite progression in Avram’s journey. He and his family are not known to have spoken to anyone in their initial sojourn in Canaan. In Egypt, he directs Sarai to present herself a certain way, but mutely takes gifts of riches and words of rebuke from Pharaoh. Their sojourn to Egypt ends without a single recorded word of speech by Avram or Sarai – except to each other. Avram’s first recorded spoken words to a foreigner are not until Chapter 14, when he emphatically rejects looted war wealth offered by the King of Sodom. Before then, he must have engaged in painstaking efforts to understand and make himself understood in order to develop alliances (as with Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre in his battle campaign against Chedorlaomer) and navigate a new world. By the end of his story (and life), he is quite deftly capable of navigating Hittite norms of communication, successfully arranging a sale of territory by mutual consent. Nonetheless, his foreignness remains front and center in this interaction; he begins his courteous entreaty of Efron the Hittite by saying, “I am a stranger and a sojourner among you” (Gen. 23:4).

The post-Babel world is defined by the obstacles of language and human difference, but that does not mean those differences are insurmountable. The Holy Blessed One is not content to allow imperial projects of human unity, nor to let the peoples of the world go their own way. Avram and his progeny bear the contradictions of a middle path. We must respect the divinity of human difference but rise to the challenge of traversing it.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).