This week’s parsha is Parshas Lech Lecha. The things that I will write are probably ideas that others are writing this week, ideas that are frequently tide to this parsha, and ideas that we all need to hear again to strengthen us in this time of unfathomable hate.
It is stated in tradition that everything that happened to our forefathers – to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov – is a map of what will happen to Bnei Yisrael over and over throughout history. In Parshas Lech Lecha, Hashem promised Avraham Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) and had him walk it to make himself familiar with the land that was promised to him for the future. This was the beginning of our people’s love for this land.
History is here. Avraham had to leave the land because of famine, but he came right back.
Avraham brought all of his resources to the Promised Land, and the land flourished. The Jewish people returned to the Promised Land in 1948 and took a wasteland and made it an agricultural and technological wonder.
Avraham’s nephew Lot benefitted from Avraham’s success but undermined that connection by letting his sheep eat in the wrong pastures. The text says that Avraham said to Lot that the land was not big enough for them to dwell together and tradition tells us that Lot stole by grazing his sheep on the property of others. Perhaps one could also wonder if by grazing his sheep on the land of others he wasn’t denuding the property, destroying its environment and productivity. Israel walked out of Gaza, for the sake of peace, and left behind economically successful settlements. The land was now denuded. The agricultural villages that were fully functional and now empty, were destroyed; their greenhouses laid waste.
One could say that Lot then made a bad choice as he moved to Sodom. Before Sodom reached its epitome of debasement and needed to be overturned, it was the center of a great war. This war is known as the war of the five kings and the four kings. Avraham heard his nephew was in trouble – kidnapped by the victors along with the conquered kings - and he went, without hesitation, to rescue him. He didn’t just rescue Lot. He rescued all of the kings as well and brought stability to the land. After the war, the king of Sodom offered Avraham all of the spoils of the war, and Avraham refused.
Any other military power who would have come to their aid would have demanded far more than the spoils of the immediate battle. Even then, however, Avraham knew that he had to refrain, that he had to show that he did this act of valour for its own sake. And this too is not so far from today. Jews spend a tremendous amount of time trying to convince the world of our motivations. Israel is constantly trying to convince an insidious media of a truth the media refuses to believe - that Bnai Yisrael just wants to dwell in our land in peace.
Parshas Lech Lecha ends in an interesting place, and I hope that we can all draw inspiration from it. Avraham - really then called Avram – reacts to Hashem once again promising the land by asking how that can be if he has no children. He calls out; he challenges. He feels the fear of expecting miracles from the impossible, from what seemed impossible. And Hashem answers him and transforms him.
We feel like we are in an impossible situation right now. We feel grateful for every positive word uttered, for every government that speaks out in support even as their populous buys in to delusion. Hashem was leading Avraham on a path, on a very specific path, and it seemed impossible to him at the time.
We are being flooded with information that makes it seem as if we have no control over our world right now. Everything has gone topsy turvey – and it has, because that feeling is true. We do not have control over the world; But Hashem does. And Hashem can do anything.
May we soon see an overturning of the craziness of the world. May their be peace and May Hashem send Moshiach soon.
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