LECH LECHA-GENESIS XII -XVII

According to our tradition, there are ten generations between Adam and Noach, and another ten generations between the latter and Avraham. In the last lines of the previous chapter, we were informed that Terach, father of Avraham, and his family left the city of Ur and headed for Cana’an. On the way, they stopped Charan where Terach dies. It is then when Avraham hears the Divine Lech Lecha command…, “go from your parents’ home to the land I will show you.” (An alternate opinion is that Avraham actually received this command while still in Ur).

It is appropriate to recall Rashi’s first comment in Bereshit which anticipates an answer to a probable question. Why does the Torah begin with Bereshit? After all, the Torah is not a history book, it is a text that should contain norms of conduct. The answer given is to let us know that it was God who created this world and therefore He, and Only He has the right to grant any part of the earth’s geography to a people. And it is God who now commands Avraham to embark on a journey to Cana’an and assures him that these lands will be bequeathed forever to his descendants, because God, the Creator, can dispose of any part of His creation.

Avraham is selected by God as the progenitor of a people who will break with the norms and idolatry that prevailed in the world at that time and who will revolutionize the world of ideas. That break with the past had to be complete. The Midrash’s teaching that Avraham destroyed the idols in Terach’s home is very sobering. In order to conceive of the existence of one God, Avraham had to first become an iconoclast. He had to question and separate himself from what, at that time, would be a failed proposition in order to restart with a new and revolutionary vision of humanity and its place in the cosmos. The break had to include family, society, and geography. 

Avraham abides by his first instruction of Lech Lecha, and in order to sow new ideas, he had to go into exile, to a deserted land uncontaminated by the multiplicity of gods and the corrupt cult that accompanies them. With Avraham’s displacement from his ancestral land, the story of the Jewish people begins. It is the story of continuous transfers from place to place. It is the account of the discovery of the One and Only God and the subsequent encounters with Him. It is the emphasis on responsibility for family and for other people with passion that will eventually include all of humanity.

Maaseh avot siman labanim, “what happens to the patriarchs set a pattern for their descendants”, and indeed, the history of the Jewish people can also be studied from the perspective of their periodic travels, expulsions, and settlements. From their putting down roots in a land from which they will eventually be forced to vacate. There is no doubt that the sources of cosmopolitanism and the universal approach to Jewish thought were consolidated, in part, as a result of having been forced to adapt to different environments and diverse societies. On multiple occasions, the Jew gave a different definition to the concept of real estate. For the Jew real estate was movable.

For the gentile world, real estate is related to the land, with something that has a specific location, linked to geography. For the Jew, the only immovable, in the sense of things that cannot be moved or changed, was the content of his intellect. Permanence was a qualifier for what he had learned and not for what he had, for what he had become, and not for what he had managed to possess. Furniture and immovables could be taken from him, but no one could strip the Jew of the ideas and experiences his intellect had accumulated, of what he had studied, and of what he had learned.

Upon arriving in Cana’an, God tells Avraham that He will give those lands to his children, and in gratitude, Avraham builds an altar to the Eternal. This promise is repeated in these chapters, and it is expanded to assure him that his descendants will be numerous as the dust of the earth. And when on one occasion, Avraham complains about not having children, God suggests that he count the number of stars in the sky, because his descendants will be as numerous.

This time, the promise includes a Brit, a pact that included a ceremony. Avraham is also informed of the future exile and enslavement of his descendants in an alien land (Egypt). Finally, this Brit between Avraham and God is formalized by requiring circumcision (Brit Milah) for himself and his descendants.

The Brit Milah has become one of the most important and respected ceremonies in the Jewish tradition. The Brit is considered as the moment of initiation of the newborn into the bosom of his people. Though the lack of the Brit only prevents participation in the consumption of the Passover Korban which is the Paschal lamb of the night of the Passover Seder, it symbolizes the badge of belonging, being a part of the Jewish people.

For Rambam, the Brit is a very important teaching, because through this ceremony we are taught that personal sacrifice, the giving of oneself, is indispensable in the man-man relationship and in the man-God relationship.

One of the paragraphs of this weekly reading tells that Avraham has to “go down” to Egypt. (In Biblical parlance, one ascends into Israel, and descends into Egypt because of their difference in altitude. Hence the concept of Aliyah, ascent, because immigrating to Israel implies an ascent, a rise. 

Avraham heads to Egypt with his wife Sara’i, because of the famine in Cana’an. Avraham observes (apparently for the first time) that Sarai is very beautiful, and that can provoke the Egyptians to murder him in order to seize her. To avoid this possibility, Avraham asks Sarai to hide their marital relationship and claim that they are brothers. According to our Chachamim, Avraham does not lie when he affirms that Sarai is his sister, because they belong to the same family.

Sarai, in addition to being Avraham’s wife, was also his niece. It should be noted that it was customary in those times to seize every beautiful woman for the enjoyment of the monarch, eliminating the husband, if necessary. Traditionally, we worry about justifying the behavior of patriarchs and often do not consider the cruel reality of the environment in which they preached their message. The widespread custom of the Egyptians of kidnapping every beautiful woman to sexually abuse her goes almost unnoticed.

Avraham’s teaching is not solely intellectual and theological. The great revolution of the patriarchs is that monotheism supposes and forces a practical and defined human behavior. The reality of those days was a world of robberies and kidnappings, of human offerings to placate the supernatural powers. The first chapters of the Torah place special emphasis on the daily experiences of family life, on homely episodes that teach that belief in One God must resonate in our morals and daily behavior.

God is in heaven, but man has to incorporate Him and give Him effective entry into his daily existence on earth. This teaches our tradition, God created the universe, but it was Avraham who introduced God to the land of men. Otherwise, God would have remained only a source of theological speculation for some privileged minds. This constant direct relationship between the Creator and human beings, of cause and effect, is the primordial teaching of the patriarchs. In time, God will reveal to man, in detail, what the practical implications of this relationship are. This will be given in the second book Shemot, Exodus, in the episode of the Divine revelation of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

MITSVAH: ORDINANCE OF THE TORAH IN THIS PARASHAH

CONTAINS 1 POSITIVE MITSVAH

2. Genesis 17:10 Precept of circumcision