Lech-Lecha 2020

This week's parsha is our first introduction to Avrohom, the first Jew. We know very little about him except what God tells him: “Go for yourself, from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing. Those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed. And all the people of the world will be blessed through you.”

There is a well known but perplexing Midrash Rabbah on the first of the verses above: “And God said to Abraham, ‘Go from your land`.'' Rabbi Yitzchak taught: The verse in psalms (chap 45) states: “Listen my daughter and see, incline your ear, and forget your people and your father’s house.” Rabbi Yitzchak said, it is like a person who was traveling from place to place and sees a palace on fire. The person says, “Is it possible that this palace has no owner? Then the owner of the palace looked out at the person and said, “I am the master of the palace.” So too with Abraham, when Abraham our father said, “Is it possible the world has no guide?”, then God looked out at him and said, “I am the Master of the World.”

How does the story relate to that of Avrohom in our parsha? In fact, the Midrashic story has almost an opposite theme than the Biblical one. In the Torah God takes the initiative and reaches out to Avrohom, but in the Midrashic story the traveler takes action and asks the questions, and only then does the owner of the palace come forward. What forces the Midrashic hand to write this story of the traveler, Avrohom, as taking the first step? What was wrong with the pishat, the plain meaning of the Torah text, in which God first approaches Avrohom?

I think the Midrash is saying that it is impossible that God just appeared to Avrohom. There must first be a need to know. First we must set the table, before God can be manifest. And then, when we find God, we must take action. Radical action, leaving everything we know. If we are really willing to listen and see, we will see new visions in the very world in which we have always lived. The world has not changed but we have opened our eyes and our ears, and when we do, we see the palace burning. It is hard to see it, and often, like Avrohom, we may be the only one. This then is so profound it causes us to change our life, to leave all that we knew, all we were used to.

If God had just appeared to Avrohom, not much would have come of it. God appeared to the Jewish people in Egypt and it did not change them, change took 40 years. But when we do the work of seeing, of listening, of waking up, then we see in a whole new way, and we are, of necessity, transformed. This then leads to change and loss, loss of our previous way of being. No doubt change and loss are deeply uncomfortable. But as the great Rabbi Abraham Magence once said, “Judaism should make us uncomfortable.”