The Making of a Man (Lech Lecha)

Parashat Lech Lecha may be one of the richest portions in the Torah for exploring what it means to be a man. We usually approach it as the beginning of Abraham’s journey, the birth of a covenant, and the emergence of the Jewish people. But read through the lens of masculinity, it becomes something even more complicated. Abraham is not introduced to us as a perfect man. He is introduced as a man who must become something different from what he has been.

Over six chapters, Abraham demonstrates extraordinary courage, generosity, loyalty, and faith. Yet he also acts out of fear, places his wife in danger, struggles with infertility, participates in the exploitation of Hagar, and fails to intervene when a vulnerable woman is mistreated.

Here is a man who can defeat armies but cannot always manage the conflict in his own household. A man who can negotiate with kings but struggles to protect the women closest to him. A man who wants to become a father but must learn what fatherhood demands beyond producing an heir. And this tension is precisely what makes the portion valuable for contemporary conversations about masculinity.

The Torah does not offer us a finished ideal of manhood. It offers us the formation of a man, with all the contradictions that process entails. As we follow Abraham’s journey, three moments deserve particular attention.

The Courage to Leave — and the Fear That Follows (Gen. 12:1–13)

Abraham’s journey begins with God’s command, Lech lecha — leave your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house (Genesis 12:1). He must separate himself from the familiar structures that have defined his identity and step toward a future he cannot yet see. It is an extraordinary act of courage.

Yet only twelve verses later, that same courageous man becomes frightened. Approaching Egypt, Abraham fears that Sarah’s beauty will lead others to kill him. Rather than confront that danger directly, he asks Sarah to identify herself as his sister so that his life might be spared (Genesis 12:11–13). The contradiction is striking: Abraham has the courage to abandon everything he knows, but not yet the courage to face danger without transferring some of the risk to his wife. 

How familiar is this tension today? Men are often encouraged to demonstrate courage through independence, professional ambition, risk-taking, and public achievement. Yet those same men may struggle to acknowledge fear, admit insecurity, or recognize when their attempts at self-preservation place an unfair burden on someone else. Abraham’s story challenges us to distinguish between courage as an outward performance and courage as an inward moral discipline. Leaving home takes bravery. So does accepting responsibility for what our fear causes us to do.

The Strength to Fight — and the Wisdom to Refuse Power (Gen. 14:14–24)

When Abraham learns that his nephew Lot has been captured, he mobilizes 318 trained men, pursues the captors, and rescues Lot and the other prisoners (Genesis 14:14–16). Here is Abraham the warrior: decisive, capable, and willing to risk his safety for another person.

Yet what happens after the battle is just as revealing. When the king of Sodom offers him the recovered wealth, Abraham refuses to accept personal enrichment from the victory (Genesis 14:21–23). He also makes clear that his allies should receive their rightful shares (Genesis 14:24). Abraham possesses the power to fight, the ability to win, and the opportunity to profit. But he does not treat victory as permission to take everything available to him. His strength is demonstrated not only by what he can accomplish, but by what he chooses not to claim.

That distinction matters in contemporary conversations about masculinity. Too often, male strength is measured through dominance, conquest, accumulated wealth, or the ability to impose one’s will. Abraham offers a different possibility: a man can exercise tremendous power without making power the center of his identity.

This is particularly important when considering male group behavior. Abraham organizes men around a shared mission of rescue. Their solidarity is directed toward protecting others rather than humiliating or exploiting them. The question for today for any community of men is not simply whether men can become strong together. It is what their collective strength is being used to accomplish.

The Courage to Rescue Men — and the Failure to Protect Women (Gen. 16:1–6)

Perhaps the most troubling contradiction in Abraham’s development appears in the story of Hagar.

Desperate for a child, Sarah gives her enslaved Egyptian servant Hagar to Abraham so that he might have an heir. Hagar’s consent is never described, and her subordinate status raises profound questions about agency and power. When Hagar becomes pregnant, conflict erupts between the women. Sarah blames Abraham, who responds by placing Hagar entirely under Sarah’s authority: “Your slave is in your power; do to her what seems good to you” (Genesis 16:6).

Sarah subsequently treats Hagar harshly, and Hagar flees into the wilderness. Now consider the contrast with the previous example. The man who mobilized an army to rescue his nephew now declines to intervene on behalf of a vulnerable woman within his own household. Abraham knows how to confront an external enemy. But when the injustice emerges from within his intimate circle, he relinquishes responsibility.

This may be one of the Torah’s most uncomfortable and important lessons about masculinity. Men can be brave in public and passive in private. They can defend their friends against outsiders while remaining silent about the harm those same friends cause. They can celebrate loyalty, brotherhood, and protection while failing to extend those commitments to people who lack power.

In contemporary terms, this is the challenge of the bystander: the man who knows something is wrong but chooses not to intervene because doing so would threaten his comfort, relationships, or standing within the group. Abraham’s treatment of Hagar forces us to ask whether our moral courage extends beyond the people we naturally identify as our own. It is easy to be brave when protecting someone we love. It is considerably harder to challenge someone we love when that person is causing harm.

The Man Abraham Is Becoming

These three episodes should prevent us from reading Lech Lecha as a straightforward celebration of an extraordinary man’s virtues. Abraham is courageous, but also fearful. Powerful, but sometimes restrained. Loyal, but inconsistently protective. He can recognize obligations to others while failing to see the full humanity of someone living under his own authority. And perhaps that is precisely why his story deserves our attention.

We live in a culture that frequently offers men competing and equally unsatisfying narratives: that masculinity must be defended through dominance and toughness, or that masculinity itself is principally a source of danger and harm. Abraham invites us into a more demanding conversation: What if becoming a good man is not about proving that we are strong, but learning when our strength is needed, when it must be restrained, and whom we have failed to protect?

The Torah does not ask us to pretend that Abraham was flawless. It asks us to follow him as he encounters tests of courage, responsibility, power, relationships, and faith. The defining question of Lech Lecha may therefore be more than “Where are you going?” It may be: “What kind of man are you becoming along the way?”