Cry My Beloved Countries: Parshat Lech Lecha

Every day before I pull into the parking space in front of my home, I make a U-turn in front of my neighbor’s house. A few weeks ago, they put up a sign in English, “Bring Them Home Now”.  I keep on meaning to ask them, why a sign in English?  I wonder, who is their target audience, for after all, we are the only English speakers on the block.  At any rate, since I was mulling over what to write in this week’s blog, it suddenly occurred to me that this was a fantastic segue for parshat lech lecha. For this week is when Abram is told to leave his native land and come to a new homeland that God is bringing him to. However, while looking closely at the opening of the parsha, which I thought I knew by heart –having been the torah reader in our synagogue for so many years–I noticed something new, which I plan to share with you.  Bear with me for a few paragraphs. What made me immediately connect the sign with the parsha, is that here is where it all began.

God said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse the one who curses you; And all the families of the earth Shall bless themselves by you.”  Abram went forth as God had commanded him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the wealth that they had amassed, and the persons that they had acquired in Haran; and they set out for the land of Canaan.

Abram leaves everything behind–including his old father Terach. He takes his wife, nephew and personal wealth, without a second thought. He is clueless about where he is going, told only by God that it is “to a land that I will show you”. Many promises are made to him: great nation; great name; blessings to him; curses to enemies. And he just goes as God commands him. Is it blind faith? Was something wrong or missing in his previous life that caused him to set out on such a journey, with a God who had just introduced himself to him. Was the world he was leaving so bad? Did he think a new place would be any better?  All of this is just food for thought.  But this is going to be his new homeland.  It is promised to him. Or is it?  Because when we continue reading, we see the following which I put it into a chart with the Hebrew so you can see it very clearly.

When they arrived in the land of Canaan,

Genesis 12: 6-7

I must admit that I never noticed this before. What most of us remember is that God promises the land to Abraham AND his offspring. And to be fair, only in verse 7 above  and in chapter 15 verse 18 (below) does it only say לזרעך to your seed/offspring:

What is the meaning that God’s first promise is only to his offspring.  I looked for some guidance from the English commentaries sitting in my library:

A Shelf from Author’s Library

First, I checked Nahum Sarna’s commentary on the book of Genesis (which is downloaded on my computer) to see if he picked up on that. But to my newly awakened eyes, he and other English commentaries sluff over it. Sarna’s comment is as follows:

The Canaanite: were then in the land: “Canaanite” here, as ‎often, is used generically for all the pre-Israelite inhabitants. God promised the land to Abram (v. 7), even though it was then occupied by others.

The commentary of Etz Hayim writes on verse 7:

I will assign this land: The identity of the land referred to in verse 1 is now established. This is one of the Torah’s seminal texts. Hereafter the history and destiny of Abram and his descendants, including the Jewish people of today, will be bound up inextricably with the promised land.

In the new revised version of The Torah–A Modern Commentary, put out by the Reform Movement:

[7] I am giving this land. This promise is to be repeated again and again to Abram and his descendants.

While this is very patriotic, notice all three commentaries have added Abram to a text which does not include him (at least not in verse 7). Finally, The Jewish Study Bible begins verse 10 with the following summary statement:

No sooner has Abram been promised the land and taken his tour of it, than the promise is thrown into great danger.

It would seem that none of the English commentators that I have in my personal library have picked up on the fact that in verse 7 (and only in this verse) is the land promised only to Abram’s seed (zera). True, Robert Alter in his commentary The Hebrew Bible on verse 6 writes:

The Canaanite was then in the land: Abraham ibn Ezra famously detected a hint here that at the time of writing this was no longer the case. In any event, the point of the notation, as Gerhard von Rad has seen, is to introduce a certain tension with the immediately following promise that the land will be given to Abram’s offspring.

But Alter does not follow up on this to make any points. So why am I making such a big deal of it?  Is it possible that God did not yet trust Abram at this point and only a bit later was willing to give the land to him and his offspring? Did he think it was too much for Abram to deal with (let’s not forget he was already quite old) and had just schlepped a long way from home? But then I decided to do a little bit of searching on Sefaria, which is a wonderful tool to have and makes life so much easier for those of us who, like me, prefer virtual libraries.

OUR ANCIENT COMMENTATORS

The thirteenth century commentator Nachmanides (Ramban) addresses this when he discusses chapter 15:18 (remember that’s the other source that refers to Abram’s offspring but not to Abram himself):

15:18) IN THAT DAY THE ETERNAL MADE A COVENANT WITH ABRAM, SAYING. Now the Holy One, blessed be He, promised Abraham the gift of the land many times, and all of the promises served a purpose. When he originally arrived in the land, He said to him, Unto thy seed will I give this land, (12:7) but He did not clarify the extent of His gift, for included in this promise is only the land where he walked, unto the place of Shechem unto the oak of Moreh. Afterwards, when his merits increased while in the Land, He bestowed upon him the additional promise: Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward, and eastward and westward, (13:14) meaning that He will give him all those lands in their totality, for the meaning of the expression, which thou seest, is not literally “with your eyes” for the sight of a person does not extend far. Rather, it means that He will give him [land which lies in] every direction in which he looks. It may be that He miraculously showed him all the land of Israel, as was the case with Moshe Rabbeinu. He further added in this second blessing: and to thy seed forever, and that his seed will increase as the dust of the earth. At the third time, He clarified to him the boundaries of the land, mentioning all the ten nations [who presently inhabited it], (19-21) and in addition He made a covenant with him that sin would not cause [the annulment of the gift]. When He commanded him concerning circumcision, He told him, for a possession forever, that is to say, if they will be exiled from it they will again return and inherit it. He also added at that time, And I will be their G-d, meaning that He in His Glory will lead them, and they shall not be under the rule of a star or constellation or any power of the powers above, as will yet be explained in the Torah.
Now at the time of the first gift, Scripture states, Unto thy seed will I give, the verb being in a future tense, and similarly in the second time, because until then He had not given him the entire land, and therefore, He said to him, will I give it. But at the third time, during the covenant, He said, Unto thy seed have I given, meaning that He will make the covenant for the gift that He had already given him. Similarly, at the time of the circumcision, when He said, for a possession forever, He said to him, And I will give unto thee, in the future tense. [Since, as explained above, this promises that if they will be exiled from the land, they will return and inherit it, the future tense refers to this future return to and repossession of the land.] Rashi wrote: Unto thy seed have I given. The word of the Supreme One is as if it were already accomplished. — But there is no need for this explanation in this passage.

In his commentary, Aderet Eliyahu (18^th Century), the Gaon of Vilna  raises the question of God’s promise to his seed, when Abraham still does not have children. He connects it with Abram’s building of the altar after the promise to his offspring, perhaps in his hope for progeny. The 19^th century commentator Malbim (Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser) points out that by referring to progeny God is instilling in Abram a higher level of prophecy than before. His focus is on God’s ‘showing’ Abram the future וַיֵּרָ֤א יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THESE TEXTS RELATING TO OFFSPRING

How important are these texts relating to progeny? Let’s not forget that Abraham had more than one son. And not only that but after Sarah died, he remarried and had many sons. Nechama Leibowitz brings this to our attention and points out that there are at least 6 mentions of the promises of land to Abram and his descendants, but twice only to the descendants.  She cites a wonderful midrash from Megillat Taanit 3 in which Ishmael quotes the Torah to prove that he has equal rights to the land, because he is from the “seed” of Abram:

When the sons of Ishmael came to bring the birthright to Israel’s attention the sages said: “Who will go and argue with them?” Gabiha ben Psisah, the guardian of the Sages’ study house, said to them: “I will go and argue with them. If they defeat me – tell them: you defeated a layman!” The Ishmaelites said: “It is written in the Torah, ‘On that day you made a covenant (brit) and said ‘to your seed I gave the land…’ We are Abraham’s seed, so we will share with you.” He replied to them: “You are bringing me a proof from the Torah, so I’ll also bring you proof from the Torah, as it is written (Genesis 25:6) ‘And Abraham gave gifts to the sons of the concubines (pilagshim)… and sent them far away from Isaac his son’ . Furthermore it is written (Genesis 25:5) ‘And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac’!” [When they heard this] they [i.e. the Ishmaelites] fled [my translation].

THE RELEVANCE TO US OF THE ABOVE SCHOLARLY DISCUSSION

You may have skipped some or all of the sources above, but I brought them in for a reason. First of all, I noted the fact that the land was not given initially to Abraham, but to his (at the time, non-existent) descendants. It is clear that the rabbinic sources had a field day trying to explain this. In order to inherit land one should be deserving of it, otherwise the promise will be carried forth to the next generation. But what if the present generation squanders the legacy given to it, that is, us? Do we still deserve to be in the land?  On Tuesday, November 5th, two enormous decisions were made by both the American population and the Israeli Prime Minister. Vox Populi chose a misogynist He-man for the next four years. This will be the legacy of the voters, for their wives, daughters and granddaughters to come. In Israel, the PM chose to fire his defense minister, the last remaining opposition and safeguard of values in his cabinet and the people went out in the streets to protest.  The people of America chose their destiny and what they want to pass on to their “seed”.  We, by voting in the present PM a few years ago, also let loose a canon, whose only interest is self-preservation. He is willing to throw us all under the bus, as David Horovitz wrote eloquently in his Op-ed. It reminds me of the attitude of Louis XV of France (1710–74), who may or may not have said “Après moi, le deluge”. But it is clear that our PM has given up on the hostages and only wants to stay in power. It is quite possible that the hostages have also been thrown under the bus and will never return under his so-called watch. This “legacy” of his is something that our children and grandchildren should never forget or forgive.

A PRAYER FOR THE FUTURE

My niece, who is a member of a congregation in Riverdale, sent me a prayer that her rabbi, Barry Dov Katz sent out to his congregants, the day before the election. He prayed that as they vote they should see

“our ancestors before our eyes…the many people who worked towards a nation where “all” could include everyone… As we vote, may we see the next generations before our eyes. They trust us to leave the world better than we found it… May we feel the weight of our responsibility…Because our ancestors and our children are watching…”

Shabbat shalom.