Weekly Torah portion:  Lech Lecha

Genesis 12-13

Shabbat Candle-lighting:  5:58pm

    Shabbat ends at 6:56 pm

            Shabbat Shalom from Rabbi Tow

Thoughts on Lech Lecha, The Beginning of Abraham's journey.

Our ancestor Abraham was a semi-nomadic tent-dwelling individual.  The one individual, or the composite of lives that gave us the Abraham of the Torah, lived a life much different than the life we live.  The only times we have a small taste of Abraham's life are the meals and moments we spend in a Sukkah or camping out in the wilderness.

            The whole story of the five books of the Torah is a story of nomads.  The migrant, moving person or people become the ideal as we compare this type to the stationary, non-moving, slaves in Egypt who live there for 400 years.  The Exodus is the pinnacle, the sea-changing, paradigm-shifting transformation that leads to a covenant with God and new life for the descendants of Abraham.  In the wilderness we build our first Temple, the Tabernacle/Mishkan.  In the wilderness we receive the Torah.  In the wilderness we struggle to become a unified people after so much time in Egyptian slavery-slavery that affected the mind and the body.  In the wilderness we're preparing to be a people who will settle down in one Land, but this time we will be self-determining people in the Promised Land rather than slaves to an overlord as we were in Egypt. 

            Does this potential transformation that we expect in the Promised Land mean that the new ideal will be the landed farmers and other functionaries in an agricultural society?  Not necessarily.  The Torah story ends before we enter the Promised Land.  The continuation exists in printed Bibles, and in pieces as Haftarahs, but not in our sacred handwritten scroll that we re-read each year.  There is evidence in the Torah scroll that when we enter the land there will be cities, and there will be a Temple, and land will be divided, and there will be laws to govern everything.  At the same time, the Promised Land will be the land of kings, queens and kingdoms, bloody successions, wars, attacking empires, foreign rulers and all that goes along with a settled life within national borders.  By the end of the Bible, in the Book of Psalms and Proverbs, God has largely disappeared from being active on the scene and Torah-wisdom, learning, personal growth and adherence to Torah teachings is front and center.  The same Torah, the book we received in the wilderness, once again becomes the focal point and guide for us in the wilderness of our individual lives and the lives of the people of Israel.  The Torah is like a nomad as it is attached to a people, but not to a particular land.  It goes with us wherever we go. 

            We come full-circle again in Jewish thought.  We return back in a symbolic way to the Torah as our compass through the journeys of life.  The State of Israel changed things for us and reasserted our sense of landed-ness as it continues to do today.  Even within Israel though there is a sense of national connection to the Torah as a guide book.  The Chasidic masters taught that even when we're in Israel, even when we're in the Holy Cityon Passover we say, "Next year in Jerusalem" because Jerusalem is a place but it is also a message, something to that we strive to reach in our hearts and through our holy actions, mitzvoth. It appears then that the nomadic mindset is still active in the collective thinking of the Jewish people.  We are all descendants of Abraham, Sarah, and his retinue and offspring.  We wander with the Torah's teachings as a map and we hope and pray to hear God's voice along the way, to give us strength for the journey, to give us hope for the future, to steer us in a positive and meaningful direction in life.