Go!

(Genesis 12:1)
MarCheshvan 10, 5776/October 23, 2015

Like an old fashioned western, our patriarch Avraham, (under the alias Avram), appears out of nowhere, on the horizon, his back to the east, heading westward to the promised land of Canaan. Who is he? Where is he coming from? What did he do to earn G-d's urgent voice message: "Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you." (Genesis 12:1-3)

In Hebrew, G-d's entire command and promise that He made to Avraham can be summed up in the first two words of G-d's message: "lech lecha," which also serves as the name of this week's Torah reading. In Hebrew the two words are spelled identically, each one containing the same two letters. In essence, everything that you and I are today, everything that the world is today, the very promise for tomorrow that keeps us moving forward, is contained and conveyed in these two letters which form the words "lech lecha."

Lech lecha is an imperative, meaning "go - get out of here" - "giddy-up" - if you will. Answering its own implied question, the directive lech lecha also means "go into yourself - follow your own inner truth," and in the case of Avraham, his inner truth provides the answer to the question of who he is and where he is coming from, as well as to where he is heading, and for that matter, to where we - his descendants - are heading.

Ancient Midrash fills in details that the Torah omits: Avraham was a lad living in the city of Ur, part of the Babylonian edifice ruled with an iron fist by Nimrod. Nimrod was both king and god to all residents of Ur, to all, that is, except for young Avraham. His iconoclastic behavior, literally smashing his father's idols, drew Avraham to Nimrod'sattention. Nimrod acted swiftly and had Avraham placed in a fiery furnace, (of the same make that baked the bricks which built the tower of Bavel), and when the undauntedAvraham emerged unscathed, Nimrod had him exiled. Avraham began to travel and in his travels he studied both man and the world man lived in. Avraham began to recognize that there is a beauty and an order in creation, a perfection of design that cannot be explained as the work of local king deities, lifeless, sightless statues of wood or stone, or a fantasy-scape of jealous and conniving gods. Only One G-d could be behind the majestic perfection of creation.

It was this one G-d that Avraham was searching for that had His eye on Avraham the whole while. And, behold, this One G-d was also patiently searching for one man: one man who would recognize and honor G-d's one-ness and sovereignty over all creation.Adam was a natural, formed by G-d's own hand and animated by G-d's own breath, butAdam chose to go it alone, to try to make it in the world without placing G-d's will before his own. Noach stepped up to the plate and did all that G-d commanded him. He was a prophet, attuned to G-d's voice, but he wasn't a man of faith.

Avraham was a man of faith, the world's first, a searcher and a desirer to do G-d's will. And as a man of faith, Avraham was truly alone in the world. G-d was long forgotten among the masses of man, a stranger to His own creation. The moment G-d saw thatAvraham's search had led him to the revelation of G-d's presence in creation and as the Master and Shaper of all creation, He said to Avraham, "lech lecha" with all that it implied. From now on Avraham's walk would not be all alone. He would walk openly with G-d .

Today the nation of Israel, the sons and daughters of Avraham, continue that walk. Ofttimes alone, ofttimes tossed in the firey furnace, both literally and physically, Israel continues to raise the ire of the myriad Nimrod potentates who continue their unending yet fruitless war against G-d and His people. Each Nimrod, democrat or dictator, is a god in his own eyes, drawing his own maps, determining his own rights and wrongs, rewriting the past and trying to force the future to conform to his own will. Avraham rode in from the east. Today his children are converging on the land G-d gave Avraham, from the east and the west, the north and the south, forming a great nation - Israel - a blessing to all who bless her and a curse to all who curse her. In westerns the good guys always win, and this western, directed by G-d Himself, shall surely draw to a happy conclusion: "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you." (ibid 12:2-3)

-The Temple Institute