Abraham’s Choice
D’var Torah for Parashat Lech L’cha
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
At the family table, when we do all take the time to get together—siblings,
spouses, children—the stories of how we all got here soon becomes the gist of the
conversation. Some of us can reach back
in memory or even personal experience and recall long-gone relatives, remnants
of another generation and another land.
Some of us are only just beginning on our path, brash confidence and
trepidation mingling within us and making us anxious about our future.
Lech L’cha (Genesis 12:1-17:27) is the beginning of our
story. It’s the beginning of the Hebrew
People; it is the start of every family’s journey.
What was there before? Before
Abram got the call from God to leave his father’s home and country and head off
toward some mysterious, as yet undefined goal?
Perhaps there was nothing. A
cultural void. Or maybe it was as things
were before Creation began—chaos. Maybe
there was no family or society, only individuals who somehow found themselves
on the same path, just as others found their soulmates on different paths. Maybe there was war, pestilence, or
famine. Perhaps there was persecution.
But in any case, as Abram (not yet renamed Abraham) gazed about his
native land, he realized that where he stood at that moment was no longer where
he needed to be. In following God’s
call, he could have ventured forth on his own, leaving behind everything and
everyone he knew. But Abram was the very
model of responsibility. He had family, possessions,
servants to take care of. In his custody
was an orphan boy—the son of his brother Haran.
He couldn’t leave them.
And so, urged by a call that only he heard—Lech l’cha, “go for yourself”—Abram, his wife Sarai and nephew Lot separated
from the rest of the family and set out for a new land, to discover and build
for all posterity a New World.
Many adventures befall Abram in this new home, once he gets there. There are challenges he never expected,
including a war at which Lot, his nephew, is captured and sold into
slavery. Acting quickly and heroically,
Abram redeems Lot and comes back victorious, having freed also all the other captives
and all the possessions that were seized in the war. Almost home again, at a major crossing of the
roads, he is met by two important leaders:
the king of Sodom, whose city’s population and riches had been freed by
Abram, and Melchizedek, the high priest of a God worshipped in a city called
Salem.
“Take the gold and give me the people,” offers the king of Sodom. But Abram knows that this is a trick. The gold is blood money, ill-gotten gains of
an immoral industry. He refuses even one
cent of it.
The other person who comes out to greet Abram is high priest of a faith
and belief system that mirror Abram’s.
Melchizedek offers Abram not material wealth, but a blessing from the Almighty,
a supreme God who is Creator of heaven and earth.
The choice is a no-brainer for Abram.
Offering a tithe to Melchizedek, Abram makes his first political
alliance in the New Land.
The symbolism of this choice is hard to misread. Melchizedek represents not only holiness, but
also the values of just and righteous leadership. The city where he serves, Salem, is destined to
be the geographical intersection where all these forces converge. As he did when he began his journey, so now,
too, in making alliances, Abram stakes his future on God’s promise. He has faith.
Making the right choice is easy for men like Abraham. He just follows his instincts. He is confident that he will get there if he selects
the right door, the right path. Unlike
most of us, who consider over and over which path we should take, Abraham
simply knew what to do.
That’s what makes the upcoming elections such a difficult one for so
many of us. We’re bombarded by ads;
cynicism has taught us not to trust our leaders; to read sinister meanings
behind self-righteous words. Worldly experience
has made it all too clear to us that politics is all about alliances and that your choice, no matter how right it
seems to be, isn’t always going to win.
So much depends on who supports which candidate, what groups have
endorsed him or her and will demand their payback come the morning after the
polls close.
For most of us, it’s complicated.
The issues are not always clear-cut.
There are ups and downs to every initiative and proposition. By this point in the process, we’ve either
made our minds up or are still in the “undecided” category, holding out for
just a little longer. Either way, we
wish the election were over already.
There’s just too much tension involved in making choices that matter,
choices not between what flavor ice cream we would like next, but choices that
might determine the very course of our life, that might shift our political alliances,
that might test our moral compass. Why,
in this year’s election, there’s even a choice to be made about the way in
which our lives might end, given half a chance.
But there’s a lesson to be learned from old Father Abraham. As easy as it might be to just let things be,
to leave well enough alone, we can’t go back in time to a generation that no
longer exists. We need to look forward
into the future and get on the path that will lead us to it.
Abraham’s lesson is not that life decisions come easily to him, but
rather, that he made them. It’s no simple matter to move a thousand
miles away when you’re already old and established—and Abraham, according to
the Torah, was 75 when he did just that.
Nor is it easy to turn back a fortune when it is handed to you on a
silver platter. Abraham wasn’t blessed
by God for simply existing, but rather for the choices that he made. Moreover, Abraham also has a huge lesson for
us in how he reached his conclusions.
It’s is in the moral compass that he followed in making these decisions. He first chose to leave his homeland because what
he saw all around him was wrong—and he understood that he was powerless to
change things there. He chose again when
he took his entire family—one could say, his entire community—with him,
including his wife, an orphan and even the servants who depended on him for
their daily bread. And once again he
chose morally when he elected to ally himself with Melchizedek and not the king
of Sodom.
Abraham’s choices were determined by his values of justice and
compassion, of freedom and faith.
That’s the big lesson of Lech L’cha. It’s to go forward, never to remain
complacent, and all along the road, to bring righteousness, justice and
compassion into this world. It may not
be easy, but that’s the worthy choice.
©2012 by Boaz D. Heilman
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