Torah of Recovery: Lekh Lekha

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Bereshit Rabbah 38
“Haran died during the lifetime of Teraḥ his father” – Rabbi Ḥiyya grandson of Rav Ada of Yafo: Teraḥ was an idol worshipper [and a seller of idols]. One time, he went away to some place, and he installed Abraham as salesman in his stead. A person would come seeking to buy. He [Abraham] would say to him: ‘How old are you?’ He would say to him: ‘Fifty or sixty years old.’ He would say to him: ‘Woe to this man who is sixty years old and seeks to prostrate himself before something that is one day old.’ He would be ashamed and leave. One time, a certain woman came, carrying a dish of fine flour in her hand. She said to him: ‘Here, offer it before them.’ He arose, took a club in his hand, shattered all the idols, and placed the club in the hand of the largest among them. When his father came, he said to him: ‘Who did this to them?’ He said to him: ‘I will not lie to you, a certain woman came, carrying a dish of fine flour in her hand. She said to me: Here, offer it before them. I offered it before them. This one [idol] said: I shall eat first, and another one said: I shall eat first. This big idol, who was standing among them, got up and took the club and shattered them.’ He [Teraḥ] said to him: ‘What, are you mocking me? Are they sentient at all?’ He said to him: ‘Do your ears not hear what your mouth is saying?’

Rambam on Genesis 12:1

Scripture says, And Terah took Abram his son, 11:31. which teaches us that Abram followed his father and that it was by his counsel that Abram went forth from Ur of the Chaldees to go to the land of Canaan!

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 48

Much has been made of the second word in this phrase, lecha, which means 'for you.' No translation quite captures the sense of the Hebrew ('Go you,' 'Get you,' 'Go for yourself'). [Note: Everett Fox translates it as 'Go-you-forth']

Mei HaShiloach, Vol I, Genesis, Lech Lecha 1

(1) ...God said to him, “Lech L’cha,” move yourself forward, meaning to yourself, to your true source, for truly all the matters of this world cannot be termed “life,” and the main point of life you shall find in yourself.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, p. 86

The emphasis here is on Abraham's quest for himself, for the root of his own life. This is the literal rendition of lekh lekha - 'Go to yourself'; only in the movement inwards is the God-joy that is true life to be found.

USCJ and RA, Etz Chayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 70, citing Alshekh

Physically we leave our home first, then our neighborhood, and finally our country. Emotionally, however, leaving one's geographic country of origin is easier than leaving one's family

Richard Eliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 48

The point of this order is not geographical. It is emotional…arranged in ascending order of difficulty…It is hard to leave one’s land, harder if it is where one was born, and harder still to leave one’s family

Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Bereshit, p. 113

We are referring to a spiritual rather than physical withdrawal, beginning with the periphery and ending with the inner core.

Rumi, cited in Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 30

Come, come whoever you are! Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving, come. This is not a caravan of despair. It doesn't matter if you've broken your vows a thousand times, still, come, and yet again Come!

Rabbi Mark Borowitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 14

So, in order to go to ourselves, we have to leave outside influences and find a space of our own in which we are able to hear the call of our soul. This is true for Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Judah, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, all the way to Bill Wilson, who was in a hospital bed, all alone, when he had his spiritual awakening. Too often we are so busy, hearing so much chatter, that we are unable to distinguish what is authentic from what is phony. The first move is to get away from the places that want to keep us pigeonholed so that we can find our true self.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 51

The narrative conveys far more that the mark of Abraham is obedience. Leave your land: 'And Abram went.' Sacrifice your son: 'Abram got up early.' The tests that Abraham undergoes are not necessarily tests of faith but are certainly tests of obedience. At this stage in relations between God and humans, God appears to single out a human who will do what he is told. This will change gradually in the Tanak, as humans grow and mature and God cedes more responsibility for the world to them. But for now, obedience is sought.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, p. 74

For the first time, a journey is undertaken not as an act of exile and diminuition (Adam, Cain, and the dispersed generation of Babel), but as a response to a divine imperative that articulates and emphasizes displacement as its crucial experience. For what is most striking here is the indeterminacy of the journey...his destination is merely 'the land that I shall show you': from 'your land,' the landscape of your basic self-awareness, to a place that you will know only when the light falls on it with a difference.

Paul Simon, Me & Julio Down By the Schoolyard

Well I'm on my way
I don't know where I'm going
I'm on my way
I'm taking my time
But I don't know where

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, p. 75

This directionless traveling is in one sense a travailing [Fr. for childbirth is 'travail'] that is intimately connected with the quest for birth. The Oxford English Dictionary glosses travel: '1. torment, distress, suffer afflictions, suffer pains of parturition. 2. make a journey, from one place to another.'

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 297

“Lekh lekha,” the opening words of God’s commandment that give this parashah its name, literally means “Go for yourself.” As Rashi says, “Go for your own benefit, for your own good.” You must grow from this journey, you must explore who and what you are, and, it is implied, change. All of this calls for a supreme leap of faith, even given the promise of fathering a great people, and Adonai isn’t going to make it easier by telling Avram his destination: “[Go] to the land that I will show you.” When I think you’re ready.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation: Genesis, p. 67

With Abraham a new faith is born: the faith of responsibility, in which the divine command and the human act meet and give birth to a new and blessed order, built on the principles of righteousness and justice. Judaism is supremely a religion of freedom – not freedom in the modern sense, the ability to do what we like, but in the ethical sense of the ability to choose to do what we should, to become co-architects with God of a just and gracious social order. The former leads to a culture of rights, the latter to a culture of responsibilities: freedom as responsibility.

USCJ and RA, Etz Chayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 69

Instead of asking one individual or one family to be good in isolation, God seeks to create a community, a people, descendants of a God-fearing couple, in the hope that the members of that community would sustain and reinforce each other. In that way, ordinary people would be capable of displaying extraordinary behavior.

Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Genesis, p. 112

Abraham, as he left for the promised land, was to be considered the only glimmer of light wandering through a world of thick darkness, eventually spreading, illuminating the whole of mankind, enveloping the whole world with its glow, 'from the shining of the sun to its going down' - 'in thee shall be blessed all the families of the earth.'

Rashi on Genesis 12:2

(3) והיה ברכה AND BE THOU A BLESSING — Blessings are entrusted to you; hitherto they were in My power — I blessed Adam and Noah — but from now on you shall bless whomsoever you wish (Genesis Rabbah 39:11)

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 49-50

The Tanak is so focused on the people of Israel that one can underestimate the overwhelming significance of its opening section...God leaves the species alive but chooses and individual who will produce a family that will ultimately bring blessing to all the families of the earth. To make sure we get it, it is the final point of God's first revelation to Abraham:..To make sure we do not forget it, it is repeated four times - and also in crucial moments of revelation...The social and moral point is that Abraham's descendants are not to live by themselves or only for themselves.

Genesis Rabbah 39:14, cited in Bialik & Ravnitsky, Sefer Ha-Aggadah: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash, p. 351

'The souls that they had made in Haran'- (Genesis 12:5) these are the proselytes they welcomed, which shows that he who brings a stranger near and causes him to become a proselyte is deemed as though he had created him.

Rabbi David Kasher, ParshaNut, p. 24, 26

[Rashi writes] up to the place of Shekhem - In order to pray for the Children of Jacob, when they would eventually go and do battle in Shekhem...So again, following Rashi's transhistorical reading of the journey, Abraham went to Shekhem, saw his great-grandchildren fighting, and prayed for them. And then he went to visit Alon Moreh, and there were his descendants, now a whole people, accepting the Oath of the Torah as they prepared to enter the land. And then he saw, as he peered through this window into the future, that the Canaanaites would then be in the land. And he knew, already in the first moments after hearing God's command, everything about how that command would echo through the generations. He could see the Torah straight through to the end.

USCJ and RA, Etz Chayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 72

This is the first mention of Egypt in Israelite history, foreshadowing the ambiguous nature of their future relationships. On the one hand, it was a place of shelter in time of distress; on the other, a region of mortal danger.

Genesis Rabbah 40:6, cited in Bialik & Ravnitsky, Sefer Ha-Aggadah: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash, p. 34

'And Abraham went down to Egypt' (Gen 12:10) - The Holy One said: Go and tread out a path for your children.

Rashi on Genesis 15:5

(1) ויוצא אתו החוצה AND HE BROUGHT HIM FORTH OUTSIDE — Its real meaning is: He brought him outside his tent so that he could look at the stars. Its Midrashic explanation is: Go forth from (give up) your astrological speculations — that you have seen by the planets that you will not raise a son; Abram indeed may have no son but Abraham will have a son: Sarai may not bear a child but Sarah will bear. I will give you other names, and your destiny (מזל planet, luck) will be changed.

USCJ and RA, Etz Chayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 83

From an earth-bound perspective, a star looks tiny. From the viewpoint of heaven, each star is a world by itself. The descendants of Abraham seem insignificant in terms of numbers and power, but each one is an indispensable part of God's plan. Each individual Jew, each individual human being, is a world by himself or herself.

Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship and Customs of the Nations 1:3

He would go out and call to the people, gathering them in city after city and country after country, until he came to the land of Canaan - proclaiming [God's existence the entire time] - as [Genesis 21:33] states: "And He called there in the name of the Lord, the eternal God."When the people would gather around him and ask him about his statements, he would explain [them] to each one of them according to their understanding, until they turned to the path of truth.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, p. 85

Here, we approach the essence of the lekh lekha experience....the first trial was tiltul, which is the hardest of all. Tiltul is a kind of harassed, distracted, even confused movement. Is Abraham's journey indeed a movement of distraction, in the full irony of its two senses: a drawing away, a truancy from the fruitful pursuits of life, and, ultimately, a madness? Tiltul is the word that is most vividly descriptive of exile; to be in exile is to be 'off the point,' it is to be reduced to a handled passivity in which drives and compulsions dominate freely regulated motion. Like a ball, says the midrash, which is caught in the air, and can never touch ground. Or like a dove that never rests; folds one wing at a time and flies on, obedient to some instinct of the species. Tiltul is the hardest experience of all, and it is this that is the measure of Abraham's passion.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 58

The presence of God is expressed through fire here in the covenant with Abraham. Fire will be the expression of God's presence many more times, including most notably the miraculous burning bush when Moses first meets God, and the fire on Sinai in the covenant with Israel.

Midrash Tanhuma, Vayashev 4

The Holy One, blessed be He, desired to fulfill the decree Ye shall surely know that thy seed shall be a stranger (Gen. 15:13), but He resorted to subterfuge in every instance to accomplish it. He made Jacob love Joseph, so that his brothers hated him, and as a result they sold him to the Ishmaelites, who brought him to Egypt. When Jacob heard that Joseph was alive in Egypt, he descended there with his descendants. Later they were enslaved there. Though it says: And Joseph was brought down to Egypt, the word should not be read as hurad (“brought down”) but as horid (“he caused”) his father and the tribes to descend to Egypt.

Genesis Rabbah 44:18, cited in Bialik & Ravnitsky, Sefer Ha-Aggadah: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash, p. 385

'Know, yea, know, that thy seed shall be a stranger' (Gen 15:13): 'Know' that I shall disperse them, but 'know' that I will gather them together; 'know' that I shall give them in pledge, but 'know' also that I will redeem them; 'know' that I will allow them to be enslaved, but 'know' also that I will deliver them.

Genesis Rabbah 44:21, cited in Bialik & Ravnitsky, Sefer Ha-Aggadah: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash, p. 377

'Behold a smoking furnace and a torch of fire' (Gen 15:17). Simeon bar Abba said in the name of R. Yochanan: The Holy One showed four things to our father Abraham: Gehenna [kind of like hell], [the yoke of]the kingdoms, the giving of the Torah, and the Temple. And He said to him: As long as your children occupy themselves with the latter two, they will be saved from the former two. If they neglect the latter two, they will be punished by the former two.

Rabbi Dr. Sue Reinhold, Lekh Lekha: Go to Yourself, October 2007 talk

At this point of the story, in Chapter 15, Abram has asked God, “How shall I know that I am to possess [the land]?” (15:8). Abram is no longer just setting out not knowing where he is going. He is now asking God for the details. The story continues: “As the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great dark dread descended upon him…When the sun set and it was very dark, there appeared a smoking oven, and a flaming torch which passed between those pieces.” (15: 12-17) What does this mean? The sun going down, the darkness, the dread, and then the flaming torch that comes to him in what seems to be a dream? The light that “passes between pieces,” light shining through an enclosed space? I can only surmise that along the way, Abram worried, and struggled, and dreamed of illumination where sometimes there seemed to be none. At what points do we feel as if everything has gone dark, that there is dread, and no hope? And at what point is there light, and a flaming torch shines brightly on our truth, at times when we least expect it? At what points along the way do we achieve moments of utter clarity? Abram’s journey is not unlike many of our journeys. And, perhaps like Abraham, our land is “the landscape of [our] basic self-awareness.”

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, location 931, Kindle edition

Why does Genesis go out of its way, in the very first chapter after the terms of the covenant between God and Abraham are set, to tell us of an Egyptian slave being oppressed by an Israelite? In order to teach us, I think, that the role of victim and victimizer are not set in stone. Israelites are not always victims, any more than Egyptians are always victimizers.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, p. 78

The promise/demand of God is 'I will make of you a great nation,' which the Tanhuma translates, 'I shall create you anew.' In this reding, the call of lekh lekha is an urging to self-transformation: at base, that is the meaning of a change of name, or a change of place.

Bereishit Rabbah 30:10-12

(10) "With God walked Noah" (Genesis 6:9). [Midrash from] Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Nehemiah. Rabbi Yehuda said: [There is] a parable for a chief that had two sons, one big and one small. [The chief] said to the small [son], “Walk with me,” and he said to the big [son], “Go and walk before me.”

(11) Thus (i.e. like the big son), [was] Abraham, [whose] strength [was] beautiful: “Walk before me and be whole” (Genesis 17:1).

(12) But Noah’s strength was bad: “With God walked Noah.” Rabbi Nehemiah said: [There is] a parable for a citizen of the king that was sinking in thick mud. The king peeked and saw him. [The king] said, “Until you sink, walk with me.” Thus it is written: “With God walked Noah.”