Shabbat Leych Lecha
Challenges
After the chapters that describe stages of early humanity, we come to Avram and the beginning of the monotheism we recognize. God tells Avram to leave Mesopotamia, his land, his birthplace and his father’s house, to go somewhere where he will become a great nation and will be blessed. And through him, humanity will be blessed.
But no sooner does he arrive in the Land of Canaan, when things go wrong. The land he was told would be fertile is stricken with a famine. He has to leave and go down to Egypt together with his nephew Lot. There his wife Sarai is taken into Pharaoh’s palace on the assumption that she is Avram’s sister, not his wife. Initially, this works to Avram’s advantage. But when he discovers the truth, Pharaoh is furious and they are driven out of Egypt. In one way, Avram benefits because under Pharaoh he succeeds in amassing wealth, livestock and slaves.
He arrives back in the land of Canaan. But the tension between him and his nephew lot and their shepherds leads them to separate. Lot’s choice of the Jordan Valley gets him involved with the corrupt men of Sodom and Gomorrah. A war between rival kings drags Avram into it, to save his nephew.
Then Avram faces a personal complication because Sarai his wife can’t conceive. She offers her maidservant Hagar as a surrogate, but then there are tensions between them. Avram has to placate his emotionally fragile wife. God intervenes to reassure Avram that despite all his difficulties, he will succeed and overcome them.
Through all these difficulties he remains strongly convinced that he’s being guided by a superior power in which he has enormous faith. But faith is something abstract and can be just a theological concept. It is how one lives that matters. As it says this week “ He ‘believed’ in God, who valued his righteousness”(Tsedakah)”(Bereishit Chapter 15 verse 6) .The text is obscure. Normally translated as “He believed in God” it sounds like a theological statement. But it can rather be understood to mean “ He trusted in God.” But then the text adds “and God valued (or appreciated) it.” Because the word Tsedakah implied an ethical commitment to correct behavior. A compliment that no earlier Biblical character received.
Stressing not just the commitment to an idea but to a way of life based on justice and righteousness, also implies something else. When things may go wrong, the best way to cope is to think and act positively and hope for better things. This does not mean we should respond passively and wait. Although sometimes we may have no option. To offer a cliché, “After every sunset there will be a sunrise”. Perhaps we may need to change something in ourselves or our decisions. Some people when faced with a challenge give up. Others persevere.
The Torah text keeps on stressing the failures of human relationship and the challenges of alien societies. It may sound as if God values suffering, and we should welcome pain, but this is not a traditional Jewish thought. It goes against our tradition in which suffering is something we have to deal with, but we don’t welcome it. We are certainly not masochists. But the models the Bible gives us is of people triumphing over adversity.
Yaacov is told that his name, instead of being Yaacov, should be Yisrael because “You will always struggle with man and God” ( Bereishit 32: 29). Struggling, to be constantly challenged and to have to strive to be a better person despite the challenges we have to face. Life is tough and we can either capitulate or try to find the easiest way out. Or we can stand and fight in order to survive.
The reality of life is that nothing is perfect, and we all have to go through difficult periods as well as good ones. Nowhere is this more obvious than the world in which we are in today. We assumed we were blessed, and God was on our side, and everything would go well and smoothly . Only to discover that in terms of society, ideology and history we find ourselves challenged and subjected to abuse. It is almost as if this is the nature of being Jewish and something we have to embrace instead of trying to escape .
Life is not easy. Many years later the schools of Hillel and Shammai debated whether it was better to be born or not ( TB Eiruvin 13b). After years of arguing they concluded democratically it would indeed have been better not to have borne given that life is so tough. But they agreed that since we are here in this imperfect world, the best thing is to get on and make the best of it. That was the message then, and so it applies today. That’s what being Jewish means. It is sometimes painful, and yet think of the wonderful gifts it bestows.
Bereishit/Genesis Chapters 12-17.
Rabbi Jeremy Rosen lives in New York. He was born in Manchester. His writings are concerned with religion, culture, history and current affairs – anything he finds interesting or relevant. They are designed to entertain and to stimulate. Disagreement is always welcome.
