Lech lecha 5785: Reimagining the Covenant

God calls to Avram: “Lech lecha”, go forth, from your country, your homeland, your family home – and so begins one of the greatest stories on earth. Avram is told to go to the land God will show him where he will become a great nation. We Jews understand this as the beginning of the “patriarchal covenant”, the promise repeated to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that their descendants will be the nation to inherit the land. But this is far more than a physical journey and an earthly contract. Avram’s journey is a spiritual one, one that we must replicate as we attempt to understand the significance in our time of the covenant – to be God’s people in the Holy Land.

Our sages note that we understand this is a spiritual journey by the way the instruction to leave his home is given in the Torah. When one begins a physical journey one first leaves one’s home, then one’s locale and finally one’s country. The reverse order of command given to Avram (as he is known at the beginning of his journey) indicates the ascending degree of difficulty in leaving behind everything he has known heretofore. Further, we know Avram as Ivri, a Hebrew (the other names given our people – the children of Israel or Jews – come after Avraham’s time). Again, the name Hebrew has a physical and spiritual component. It refers to Avram’s crossing over the physical Euphrates River on his journey to the Promised Land. It also describes the spiritual river of consciousness as Avram shows himself to be a bit of a contrarian.

Wondering why God chose Abraham in the first place, the rabbis tell a well-known midrash or legend that as a youth he smashed his father’s idols to demonstrate their powerlessness. (Genesis Rabbah 38:13). Avram transformed the spiritual teachings and practice of his time. Judaism (and Christianity and Islam which learned from Judaism and also consider Avraham as their spiritual father) teach that there is only one source of life (Makor Chayim), one, unique and singular God. The name of God for which we say “Adonai” is an amalgam of the three tenses of to be: was, is and will be. It is this ultimate presence with whom we make our covenant.

In turn, the Holy One makes the covenant with a person of excellent character. This man of apparent wealth and privilege is an idol smasher and contrarian. He is a man of peace and compromise. When his shepherds and those of his nephew Lot quarrel over grazing rights in the land, he says, “you go north and I’ll go south, or if you go south, I’ll go north” (Genesis 13:1-13). He is a man of courage and action, as in his late rescuing his nephew Lot and other captives held hostage in war (Genesis 14: 13-16). Other stories told of him in the following parashah demonstrate his compassion, pursuit of justice and abounding faith. As he is renamed Avraham at the end of this week’s parasha, he is told to be blameless and walk before God.

Fast forward to the 21st century. For the first time in two thousand years, the terms of the covenant are apparently again being fulfilled. Once again we are a people proudly in our promised land. At the same time, we must hearken back to the story of Avraham, the idol smasher and contrarian and think of all the values by which he lived. Are we at risk of forgetting those values and idolising our people in an ethnocentric, chauvinistic fashion (remember Avraham is the father of a multitude of nations, and our Torah reminds us each human is created in the divine image). Are we at risk of idolising the land over life? (and think of how Avram acts in these first stories of Lech lecha).

The phrase “lech lecha” can be understood as both an imperative and an internal spiritual quest. We descendants of Avraham are called to our spiritual journey, one in which we should constantly consider whether we have become idolaters, or whether as we understand that the presence of our people in our land is to be in covenant with and service to the Makor Chayim that connects us all.