Lech Lecha 2022
Isaac’s Parsha Corner · 2022
And God said to Avram, “Go forth for yourself from your land, your birthplace, and your father’s home to a land that I will show you” (Gen 12:1)
“Go for yourself,” for your own benefit, for there I will make you into a great nation. Here you do not merit to have children. (Rosh Hashanah 16b quoted by Rashi ibid.)
This Midrash is difficult on many levels. Was Abram without merit in Uhr Kasdim? Did he not stand up to Nimrod and the idol worshiping public? Did he not break the idols of his father’s idol store? Did he not allow himself to be thrown into a fiery furnace rather than forsake his belief in the one true deity? If he was without merit than who are we? And yet we have children in the diaspora with no real limitation as did many other biblical figures. Furthermore, his entering the land did not provide him with immediate progeny. He entered the land of Canaan at age 75 and gave birth to Ishmael at age eighty-six and Isaac at age one hundred. As the Pasuk says “And Abraham was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael for Avram.” (Ibid 16:16). “And Abraham was one hundred years old when Isaac his son was caused to be born for him.” (Ibid 21:8). The hundred-year mark for childbirth was normal for a different era. In the generations leading up to Abram the norm for childbirth was 20’s and 30’s!
The Ramban takes a different approach to the events at the beginning of the Parsha. According to the Ramban Avram was escaping a hostile land that had rejected him and his God, had sent him into a pit (jail) and even into a fiery furnace. For the Ramban the journey had already begun and was happening. Avram was already on his way to Canaan when he became waylaid in Haran. The first Pasuk in our Parsha is God encouraging Avram to return to his original plan! Rashi, however needs some further analysis.
A Yerushalmi in Taanit further expands on our difficulties:
“There are three ways to abolish negative decrees, a change of place, a change of name and a change of action. All these are exhibited from Abram who was instructed to leave his place, change his name and his actions” (Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 2:1, also Zohar 3:17)
Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, he was instructed to change his place and was told to leave the house of his father which was a place of idolatry. Abram, according to this Zohar, was at one time an idol worshiper and needed to remove a negative decree. This may be the most surprising Midrash you have ever heard. Abram was the recipient of a negative decree because of something he had done and needed a change of venue to attain a new decree! Because this is a Zohar, we should probably leave it as beyond our understanding as is much of the hidden sections of “Sode”.
What was bothering Rashi? What drove him to quote the Midrash and to claim the Abram wasn’t worthy of children in Uhr Kasdim or Haran? The answer can be revealed by asking the following question, “Why Canaan?” Couldn’t Abram be successful in his hometown or in Charan? The answer to these two questions is that the only place on earth that Abram was going to be successful, first as a father and next as The father of the Jewish nation, and third as the spiritual father of the entire human population had to be Canaan. Of course, he could have had children in “Chul”, but then he would not be Avraham the father of many nations. Avraham was not Avraham without Israel and Israel was not Israel without Avraham. That much we know from the very first Pasuk in Parshat Lech Lecha. The Parsha ends with the covenant of circumcision. That too had to be in the land of Israel. It was a blood ceremony with the blood of the wound absorbed into the holy earth of the land of Israel thereby binding us to the land of Israel then and forever. The first commandment upon entering the land of Israel in Joshua Chapter Five was the circumcision of all males reaffirming the blood connection between the Children of Israel and the land of Israel.
Shabbat Shalom