Category: Bereishit

The parsha opens with the finality of death, with Sarah’s death. “Sarah’s lifetime — the span of Sarah’s life — came to 127 years.”

How does one sum up a life?

Here a life is measured by the years lived, each number a treasure. Rashi shows us how to pull back the numbers to reveal greater symbolic meaning: each number reflects how well Sarah lived, her extraordinary qualities — beautiful, and blameless.

Startling in its simplicity, the verse also breaks from the norm of Sarah’s narrated life. From her debut at the end of Parshat Noah, Sarah’s life is thinly drawn. She is Abraham’s sidekick, a critical partner to his journeying, who bravely sets up home time and time again. She listens in on Abraham’s relationship with God, understands before he does that the promise of progeny must come from them both. She is the elderly mother of Isaac, who fights for him to thrive in her home.

But who is she really, this woman whom God directs Abraham to listen to her voice? What does she think and feel? How does she absorb the multiple twists and turns in her family life? Taken by two kings, kept waiting for a child for too many years, locked in oppressive struggle with her maidservant. Doesn’t it seem that just as the Bible focuses on Sarah’s experience, the moment passes too quickly? The spotlight might shine on her momentarily, but her life is largely kept in the figurative “ohel,” tucked into the interior of the narrative.

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What dictates our moral actions? Is the summum bonum of our morality confined to the extrinsic command of a higher authority or do we possess an inner conscience that lends our actions a life of their own? Does religion surrender to an external voice or an inner one? Is our generation — the bearers and interpreters of the Oral Law — “greater” than the generation that stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, listening to the awesome and unambiguous command of God? Is the ideal to supress our moral intuition in favour of submission to a “higher” rabbinic or divine authority? Are we creatures of submission or autonomy, assent or protest, command or conscience?

The narrative of the Akedah exposes us to the dichotomy of religious living and the challenge of literary interpretation:

It needs rigorous unadulterated total analysis. It must be fought and grappled with, challenged, expounded and explicated.

It requires total silence. Not a word said, not an opinion voiced, just pure submission and silence. The only response: “הנני” — I am here.

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My grandmother always used to say you must have “mazal” — or good fortune — for everything. I think that even the stories we tell, and those we hear, need a little luck to get our attention. Some of the weekly Torah readings are so full of big drama that “minor” stories get little or no notice. This week, Parshat Lech Lecha is packed with interesting and gripping stories, to the extent that the war of the four kings and five kings in chapter 14 gets short shrift. In addition to containing what sometimes seems like a laundry list of names and places, the very mention of God’s name and Abraham’s name do not appear until midway though the story. The reader is left to wonder what the purpose of the chapter is.

The midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 42:1) uses the verse in Psalms 37:14 to explain the entire incident of the war. The whole motivation of the warriors in capturing Lot was just to kill Abraham the “upright.”

The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow;
to cast down the poor and needy, to slay such as are upright in the way;

The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent the bow (Psalms 37:14) — this alludes to Amraphel and his companions. To cast down the poor and needy (ibid.) — to Lot. To slay such as are upright in the way (ibid.) — to Abraham. Their sword shall enter into their own heart (ibid. v. 15), as it is written, And he fought against them by night, he and his servants, and smote them, etc. (Genesis 14:15).

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“And the whole earth was of one language and of common speech…and they said, “Come let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven and let us make us a name” (Genesis 11:1-4).

Leading up to the 2016 United States presidential election, I asked my then 4-year-old son if he was interested in learning about who was running for president. “Running for president?” he asked, and then yelled out, “I bet they can’t run as fast as this“ as he ran at full speed across the room.

Homonyms, like “run,” are just one example of how conveying meaning through speech can be confusing. This confusion is often magnified exponentially amidst people speaking different languages. One would think then, that in an ideal world, in which humanity has the best chance of cooperating and flourishing, people would all speak the same language. Yet, we see in the Tower of Babel narrative that unity and shared language led to such an egregious sin that God responded by mixing up humanity’s languages. How could it be that speaking the same language would more likely lead to sin than speaking multiple languages?

One metaphorical interpretation of this narrative is that when we are surrounded by people who all speak the same language, who all have the same thoughts, ideas, and interpretations of events, we are apt to start believing that our way of thinking, or even that we ourselves, are not only right, but godly. We are then in grave danger of believing we can build towers that reach heaven. What is the solution? As God decreed: we need different languages. We need to be amid people who speak differently than we do, who have a diversity of perspectives and visions that challenge our ways of thinking and keep us humble.[1]

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And so we commence, once and ever again
together traversing another Torah year.
What shall the glowing words
reveal this time?
What encounters occur
twixt ancient verses and this-moment hearts?

* * *

I confess that whenever the Torah cycle comes back round to Genesis, a feeling of profound intimidation arises in me. Every single word and letter, jot and tittle of the creation verses seems to be packed with the mysteries of the universe; how can I skim through them as I would the back of a cereal box?! They demand slowing to a near standstill, and devoting entire essays on just one or two words. And that is precisely what I plan to do here.

One of the most mysterious and intriguing phrases in the creation verses is ruah Elohim, the “wind” or “spirit of God.”

1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And a wind from God hovered upon the face of the waters.

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One of my favorite women of Tanach makes her first appearance in this week’s parsha. Serach, the daughter of Asher, is named as one of the “70 souls” who accompanied Jacob to Egypt — but she is one of only two women listed (the other one is Dinah), and the only granddaughter of Jacob to have a name in the entire book of Genesis. She appears only once more in the Torah — as one of the few individuals named in the census taken in the Book of Numbers, chapter 25, just before entering the Land of Israel. Over 200 years passed between the two mentions of her name, making her remarkably long-lived (for comparison, Moses lived for 120 years, Joseph for 110 years, and Jacob for 147).

Although Serach gets nothing more than a namecheck in the written Torah, the Oral Torah gives her far greater importance. From reading midrash, it is clear that Serach is the master of the power of speech, using it to repair vital broken connections within the nation of Israel.

According to the midrash, when the brothers returned home after Joseph’s revelation, they grew scared about breaking the news to Jacob. How could they suddenly tell their father, who was old and frail, that Joseph was alive, and the second in command over Egypt? They were anxious that the shock might kill him.

Read the full article on the Times of Israel