Abram the Hebrew

Oct 19, 2018 By Jonathan Sarna | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

“I believe we have not yet appointed a Hebrew,” President Abraham Lincoln wrote on November 4, 1862, to his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, amidst the Civil War. Partly to rectify that imbalance, he agreed to appoint Cheme (Cherie) Moise Levy, the son-in-law of Rabbi Morris J. Raphall of New York’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, to be an assistant quarter-master with the rank of captain. This may have been the first example of “affirmative action” in all of American Jewish history.

Land and People—When Things Get Real

Oct 27, 2017 By Hillel Gruenberg | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

Lekh Lekha is one of my favorite parashiyot because it marks the entrance of the biblical narrative “into history.” Putting aside the historicity of the Bible—the subject of no small scholarly debate—Lekh Lekha departs from the preceding biblical text as it introduces us to the lands, people, and civilizations that will serve as a backdrop for the millennia of triumph and tribulation that await Abraham, his descendants, and their contemporaries. Until now, the story has been fundamentally supernatural and ahistorical—the creation of the world and all that is in it, heavenly gifts and divine punishment, a cataclysmic flood, and extensive genealogies of the forebears of future nations, whose lifespans number in the hundreds of years.

What Was Promised to Abraham?

Nov 11, 2016 By Hillel Ben Sasson | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

In this week’s parashah, Abraham makes his dramatic first appearance on the stage of the Torah, when he follows the command to go forth to an unknown land, relying on the promise of an unknown God. His moving story, along with that of his sons and grandsons, has captivated readers from all three large monotheistic religions. Generation after generation wished to read these patriarchal and matriarchal stories into their lives, their time and place.

A Land of Promise

Nov 11, 2016 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

Abraham continually inspires us, his descendants, in his ability to place trust in the journey. God’s command to “[j]ourney forth from your country, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house” (Gen. 12:1) is striking: Leaving one’s country is doable. But to journey from one’s birthplace and familial connections is jarring—with the potential to transform one into an aimless wanderer. Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his roots for an indeterminate future—for the place that God will show him. A promise. And nothing more.

Mentioning our Mothers

Oct 16, 2010 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Lekh Lekha

Did the Imahot (matriarchs) have a relationship with God?

This question has nagged at me of late, brought to the surface by the welcome feminist language of the new Mahzor Lev Shalom. Faced by the names of the Imahot staring at me from the page, I found myself confronting anew a question I have not revisited in some time: was Abraham’s God Sarah’s God too?

Abraham the Noble Warrior

Nov 4, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

The Torah does not give us a complete biography of Abraham, only a series of striking vignettes.

Do Not Oppress the Stranger

Oct 23, 1993 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

As my bar-mitzva parasha, Lech Lecha has always carried a special measure of meaning for me. It marks the beginning of Jewish history with a story of exile. “The Lord said to Abram, `Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you'”(Gen. 12:1). And so did the Schorsch family, millennia later in December of 1938 from Nazi Germany. I even bear the name of Abraham’s son Isaac, born in this same parasha. Yitzhak is a joyous name filled with hope and affirmation. It means “he shall laugh.” For Abraham, Yitzhak signified the capacity of having a child in old age in a strange land. For my parents, Yitzhak bespoke an act of defiance in dark times. Faith has the power to shape reality, as it is said of Abraham in our parasha: “And because he put his trust in the Lord, He reckoned it to his merit” (Gen. 15:6). In short, my bar-mitzva in 1948, some eight years after we arrived in America, linked my life forever with Lech Lecha.

The Power of Circumcision

Oct 15, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

Unlike Shabbat, circumcision is not a creation of the Jewish religious imagination. It was widely practiced in the ancient Near East, though not in Mesopotamia from where Abraham and his clan migrated. Many of the building blocks of the Torah are borrowed from surrounding cultures. The most notable example is the system of animal sacrifices as the preferred way to worship God. The synagogue, with verbal prayer based on a sacred book, is the true religious breakthrough of Judaism and not the tabernacle in the wilderness or the temple in Jerusalem. The originality of the Torah often lies in its inspired recycling of older religious materials. Adroit adaptation invests a common custom with new meaning that is often stunning.