HaMirpeset Shelanu - Issue 3

This week's HaMirpeset Shelanu is written by Jacob Cytryn, our program director. Thank you Jacob for sharing your thoughts on the parashah with us!

Parashat Lekh Lekha
We are taught throughout our lives that Avraham Avinu (Our Father, Abraham) is worth emulating. Whether it is הכנסת אורחים, Welcoming Guests, unrelenting faith in God, an astonishing innovation such as monotheism, or the ability to stand up to authority and fight for something we know is right, אברהם - Abraham - is a paradigm that the Jewish tradition, from Joseph and Moses through our parents and teachers, tells us to emulate.

I hope you will excuse me for pointing out a reason why, in evident disagreement with more than three millennia of our tradition, Abraham's depiction in the narratives of בראשית - Genesis - totally freaks me out.

Abraham intimidates me because he seems so fully developed and confident from the first time we meet him. Unlike the maturing, dynamic trajectories of other characters from the תורה, Torah, most notably Jacob, Moses, and, most of all, God, Avraham seems to be pretty exceptional and static from our first interactions with him. He follows God's exact commands in the opening of פרשת לך לך, The Portion of Lekh Lekha - apparently buying in completely to heeding a voice he has never heard that asks him to abandon the only worldview he knows and promises him that someday, he, aged and childless, will be the father of "a great nation." Later, Abraham follows the command of this God, to circumcise himself, then goes on to argue confidently and emphatically with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah's righteous, does not seem to bat an eye at God's request to sacrifice his beloved son, and more. Even when Avraham seems to mess up - with his treatment of Hagar and Ishmael in next week's פרשה - next week's Torah Portion - he does not seem to learn from his mistakes, to grow, to be a human example I could imagine aspiring to imitate as a complete character.

I choose to salvage אברהם - Abraham - from this critique by reframing his back story. I have learned from my years of work with children and adults of all ages that few things are more crucial to an individual's success than self-confidence and, flowing from that confidence, the ability to feel safe enough to take risks. This is a lesson I learned firsthand from my own מדריכים - my own counselors - during my first few summers at camp and is one of the great transformative processes that Ramah catalyzed for me and many others I know.

Unlike most characters in the תורה, The Torah, we meet אברהם - Abraham - relatively late in his life. He is already a grown man, one who, as we learned at the end of פרשת נח, the Portion of Noah, has already left, with his father and nephew, his homeland and extended family. One way to explain all but the most miraculous episodes of his courageous life (God speaking directly to human beings is a leap I am willing to make when it comes to the תורה) is that אברהם's - Abraham's - maturity and comfort with who he is and his surroundings allow him to respond so bravely to all God asks. He appears to be super-human because we only see a specific slice of his life, at a time when he had acquired the self-confidence to respond to God's nudges by embarking on phenomenal leaps of faith.

From inside our own experiences it can be difficult to imagine having אברהם's - Abraham's - courage. In thinking, however, about others - our best friends, loved ones, and mentees - we can often identify the type of incremental growth over time that allows us to face life's great challenges with אברהם's - Abraham's - aplomb. May we all merit to recognize and enjoy the part of our lives that the תורה - The Torah - never shares with us about אברהם, Abraham, the transformative experiences, surrounded by loving teachers and friends, that build within us the strength, the character, and the vision so that, perhaps eventually, we can become our own paradigms of humanity.