Shabbat Table Talk
Parashat Lech Lecha
Erev Shabbat, 7 November 2003
Week of 2 November to 8 November 2003
Torah portion: Genesis 12:1-17:27
Haftarah: Isaiah 40:27-41:16
Readings for Sunday, 9th November: Ezek. 47:1-12; 1Cor. 3: 9-17; John 2: 13-22.
Introduction:
What is this condition of right love? It is, that one should love God with an excessive, powerful love, till one’s soul is totally involved in love of God, and one is constantly obsessed (“shoge”, mad) by it, as though ill with love sickness, when there is no place in one’s mind free of the love of that woman with whom one is obsessed-neither when one sits nor stands, eats nor drinks. More than this, should be the love of God in the heart of those who love Him and are obsessed by Him. This is the meaning of the command, “You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul...” and also of King Solomon’s allegory, “for I am love-sick” (Rambam).
These words of the Rambam apply to Abraham. Abraham, the central character of this week’s Parashah is one of the great models of homo religiosis. He is the “obsessed lover” in search of God. He is, in fact, the first biblical character to actively seek God. Searching implies “wandering” and “roaming.” Abraham wandered and roamed not only the physical world but the mental map of his own mind, as well. In his search for the Ultimate, answers were but springboards for further questions.
Abraham, an obsessed Lover
1. Dissatisfaction. Abraham lived with his wife Sarah in Mesopotamia, with his father Terah and household. He was not a happy man. He had the uneasy feeling that his father’s factory of idols had nothing to do with the real God, though he did not know God nor God’s Name (Midrash). His spirit, more like a barren wasteland than a fertile crescent, was restless and dissatisfied. His wife was also barren for she could have no children (Genesis 11:30). When he was honest with himself, he knew that if he remained here, he would die. Yet why leave the comfortable and secure life for an unknowable future! But no matter how he tried, he could not silence the voices of disquietude within himself. Each day these voices grew louder until one day he heard a Voice that said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” He did not know whose Voice it was but he got up and left though he was not told where he was to go, nor the route he was to take.
2. Physical Wandering. God said to Abraham, “Go to the land that I will show you” (12:1). This is a way of saying that God took Abraham from his home and made him “roam and move about from place to place’ (Rashi). Through wandering Abraham would discover the place of destination. Between verses 12:4 and 12:5, days, weeks, months passed in wandering. He was searching for a place he could not name and for something that had no label until one day he suddenly knew that he was go to the land of Canaan.
“To the land that I will show you”: he wandered aimlessly from nation to nation and kingdom to kingdom, till he reached Canaan, when God said to him, “To your seed I shall give this land” (12.7). This was the fulfillment of “to the land that I will show you” and therefore he settled there…before that, he did not yet know that that land was the subject of the command…that is why he later said to Abimelech, “God made me wander from my father’s house” (20.13). For indeed he wandered like a lost lamb (Rambam).
When Abraham arrived in Canaan, he knew that he could not settle there for he found widespread and severe famine in the land. So he went down to Egypt (12:10) and stayed there until the famine in the land of Canaan was over.
3. Mental wandering. While Abraham wandered physically with his feet, he also wandered mentally in his mind from answer to answer. Each answer was but a springboard for a new set of questions. In this fashion, he discovered the One for whom his heart sought.
The Rambam wrote,
When this giant was weaned, he began to roam in his mind, while he was still small. He began to think by day and by night, and he would wonder, “How is it possible that this sphere moves constantly without there being a mover, or one to turn it, for it is impossible that it turns itself?” And he had no teacher or source of knowledge but he was sunk among senseless idol worshippers in Ur of the Chaldeans; his parents and the whole people worshipped idols and he worshipped with them. But his mind roamed in search of understanding till he achieved the true way and understood out of his own natural intelligence.”
Wandering describes our first patriarch. Wandering describes the Shulamite woman in the Song of Songs who said, “I sought him everywhere but I could not find him” (Song 3:2) and the Samaritan woman in John’s gospel who said, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” These biblical characters had their moments of intimate and fulfilling encounter with God yet wandering is the mark of a true lover. Love knows no satiety; hence the search and the wandering continue.
Reflection:
1. Reflect on Dissatisfaction as a sign of the passionate Lover. Did you ever stop to think that your very restlessness could be a sign of your thirst for God? Did you know that when you seek meaning and fulfillment in your life that you are in reality seeking for God? The satisfied person who has all the answers may indeed be the “dead man walking” of last’s week Parashat reflection.
2. Remember: Never be satisfied. Keep studying. Keep learning. Keep an open mind. No answer is ever final.
Bibliography: Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Avodah Zarah and Hilkhot Teshuva 10.3; Midrash Rabbah Genesis Vol 1 (New York 1983); Fox: The Five Books of Moses (New York, 1995); N. Leibowitz: The Chumash (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1993); Plaut: The Torah, A Modern Commentary (New York, 1981); Zornberg: Genesis, the Beginning of Desire (Philadelphia, PA, 1995);
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This week’s teaching commentary was prepared by Maureena P. Fritz, N.D.S., B.A., B.Ed., M.A., Ph.D., President, Bat Kol Institute, Jerusalem.
