Lech-Lecha

This week’s parasha, or Torah portion, to be read in the synagogue on Shabbat, is called “Lech-Lecha.” It’s usually translated “get thee out” or “go forth,” and it describes a profoundly pivotal period in the history of the Jewish people. I’m going to dwell on it at some length here, because I believe that the influence of this narrative on the consciousness of the Jewish people through the centuries is extremely relevant to the events unfolding in the Middle East today.

The portion begins at Genesis 12:1, with God telling Abram (as Abraham was then called) to leave his native land and his family and travel to the land of Caanan. In this new land, Abram is promised, he will become the father of a great new nation.

So Abram does as he’s told. But soon after he arrives in Caanan, he’s forced to leave again as a result of a famine. Abram travels to Egypt, where his wife, Sarai, attracts the eye of Pharoah. Abram must pretend to be her brother to avoid being killed as an obstacle to Pharoah’s desires. But all turns out well, as a plague prevents Pharoah from following through. Ultimately, the famine ends, the truth is revealed, and Abram and Sarai are permitted to return to their new home.

At this point, Abram and his nephew, Lot, decide to separate their households. Lot takes up residence in Sodom (another story entirely) and Abram moves to near Hebron, where God makes the following promise:

Lift up now your eyes and look from the place where you are, north and south and east and west; for all the land that you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed for ever. And I will make your seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall your seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for to you will I give it.
(Gen. 13:14-17)

Abram soon becomes embroiled in a local war when his nephew is taken as part of the spoils. He miraculously vanquishes the invading armies and wins the admiration and blessing of the King of Salem (Jeru-salem), Melchizedek (“righteous king”), another portent of things to come.

Abram continues to receive promises from God about his posterity, toward which he becomes increasingly skeptical as he grows older and remains childless. Finally, in a dream, Abram is told of the future descent of the Jews into Egypt, their enslavement there and their ultimate liberation to return to the land he has been promised. And the boundaries of that land are described in rather generous terms.

Unto your seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.
(Gen. 15:18)

After this, Abram conceives a child with his wife’s servant, an Egyptian woman named Hagar. The child is called Ishmael. And thirteen years later, when Abram is ninety-nine years old, God once again appears to him, affirms the covenant in all its details and commands him to memorialize it in his flesh and the flesh of every man in his “household” through the act of circumcision. Abram’s name is now changed to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah and God promises him another son, this time by his wife. The child's name will be Issac, and it is through him that the covenant will be honored.

Quite a bit of important activity for just a few pages of biblical text, where time often moves at an erratic pace. But in this account we find the seeds of the rest of the story. And there’s a lot to think about here. In these five chapters, God appears to Abraham no less than five separate times. On four of these occasions, God promises to make of him a great nation and on four of them God promises him the land. The culmination of these promises appears in the last chapter, which consists almost entirely of a conversation between Abraham and God.

And I will establish my covenant between Me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God to you and to your seed after you. And I will give to you and to you seed after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Caanan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.
(Gen. 17:7-8)

Throughout the parasha, the promise, which is a simple declaration at first, becomes increasing woven into a mutually binding covenant. The land and the people are inextricably bound to God in a complicated relationship that’s finally sealed in a most dramatic and irrevocable act.

This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your seed after you: every male among you shall be circumcised.
(Gen. 17:10)

Looking at this from a modern-day perspective, it almost seems as if Abraham was backed into a bit of a corner here. He’s induced to leave his home by a naked promise, he uproots himself from comfort and safety and literally becomes a new person with a new name in a new and strange country, and along the way he learns that there are strings attached to the original offer. Even so, he’s 100 years old before he sees the first tangible manifestation of the promise. A single son, Issac, through whom the covenant will be realized. (And, as we know, he’ll later be asked to sacrifice this son in the ultimate test of his devotion to God.) And what of his first son, Ishmael, also dear to him, through which a separate nation will come? At this point in the story, it’s already clear that the relationship between the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Issac will be stormy.

And the angel of the Lord said to [Hagar]: Behold, you are with child, and shall bear a so, and you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. And he shall be a wild ass of a man: his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the face of all his bretheren
(Gen. 16:11-12)

It’s important to keep in mind that this narrative was set in its present form (more or less) several centuries before Mohammed was born. And that for almost 2000 years after the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews continued to read it in their synagogues every year around this time without any intention or interest in acting on their own to reclaim their land. The text itself, in fact, seems to encourage an acceptance of God’s judgment of exile until He finds us worthy to bring home Himself, and there are Jews today who refuse to acknowledge the State of Israel for this reason.

But, to most of the rest of us, the birth of the State of Israel is the manifestation of the promise. Regardless of whether you read Lech-Lecha literally or as a national origin narrative cast in the spiritual language of its time, this promise has been the center of Jewish life from its inception. And throughout the years of the Diaspora, Jews read this story in times of joy and times of sorrow, times of comfort and times of want, and held on to the hope that someday, somehow, the promise would be kept. We would be able to go home, to our land, to the one place on this planet where we truly belong.

Abraham had to wait until he was eighty-six before he had a child, and until he was ninety-nine before he had a child by his wife, but when the time finally came, he took matters into his own hands, so to speak and, with some Help, created a miracle or two. After waiting 2,000 years, the Jewish People have followed his lead. Again.

Shabbat Shalom.