Monday, November 2, 2009

Lech L’cha: Go Forth, delivered Shabbat morning 10/31/2009, Rabbi/Cantor Rhoda JH Silverman

לך לך֛ These opening words of our parsha flow off the tongue beautifully in Hebrew. Any attempt at a literal translation, though, stumbles clumsily past our lips. Lech, that’s easy - “Go!”, but the l’cha raises a bit of difficulty. A word which, as is common in Hebrew, incorporates both preposition and pronoun together, it could be “to you” or “for you.” No combination of these words translated separately quite captures the essence of Lech l’cha. Rather, לך לך֛ is most accurately understand as a phrase evoking motion; the best definition, “Go forth!” implies an imperative 2nd person singular, with the ‘you’ understood rather than stated. Ah - the challenge and fun of translation, and from a Jewish approach to text, a source for rich comment.

Much of the commentary on this parasha focuses on the subject of Lech l’cha, the ‘you’ – which is, of course, Avram, who we will soon know as Abraham. The midrashim, the legends, explaining why Avram is the focus of this imperative lech l’cha are endless. The most famous, the one we learn so well as children in religious school that as adults many of us are surprised to find that it is nowhere in the Biblical text itself, may be the story about a young Abraham smashing his father’s idols and thus bravely and boldly displaying faith in a singular and invisible God. Another lovely midrash which seeks to explain why Abram is chosen to be the subject of the biblical ‘Go Forth’ imperative imagines God finding Avram from among the rest of humanity in the same way that a king finds his precious pearl buried in the dust of the earth. Still another has the Mesopotamian ruler Nimrod seeing Abraham’s rise as the father of numerous and blessed progeny predicted in the stars of the sky.

The focus of these legends are firmly on the ‘l’cha’ – an attempt to understand the choice of who. Why Abe? And, more honestly, as Jews who trace our lineage back to Abraham, what we are ultimately striving to understand is, “why us?” The tendency towards creating this apologetic explanation of why Abraham was chosen, and by extension the Israelites, for covenant in our biblical text - why us and not someone else or some other people - is rife with theological difficulty; and, Reform Judaism has openly struggled with this difficult concept of chosen-ness since its inception. I’d argue we are still struggling with finding that balance between particular- and universal - isms. By focusing on the l’cha of our command lech l’cha, however, we remain focused on this challenging question of chosenness which is frankly, in my opinion, ultimately unanswerable without a critical understanding of the historical context.

Instead, let us focus on the Lech, the verb instead of the subject. This instruction can give us clear direction, and here that English understanding “Go forth!” is extremely useful.

The opening lines of our text are filled with the promise of blessing. At first glance, it appears that we will be the passive recipients of blessing. ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה, “then they, all the communities of the earth, will be blessed through you” as if Avram’s actions will lead to all of us receiving blessing. This promise of future blessing appears in two other places in Genesis but with a slight emendation. In each place it reads, והתברכו בזרעך כל גוי הארץ, “then all the nations of the earth will make themselves blessed through your seed.”

The primary difference has to do with the verbal form of the word for “bless.” A brief grammar lesson. Hebrew verbs have roots that change meaning depending on their form, what we call in hebrew their binyan. In this week’s verse, the binyan is nifal, נברכו, which is generally translated as passive; hence, the translation ‘that the families/communities of the earth will be blessed through you.’ The later verses contain the hitpael verb form, התברכו, which is an active, reflexive form, ‘they shall bless themselves.’ So which is it? Do we receive blessing because Abraham was chosen; OR, do we create our own blessing because of actions we take?

Biblical scholar, E.A. Speiser argues drawing on those parallel verses that come later that even in our opening passage of Lech L’cha, the phrase should be translated in the active, reflexive form teaching us that in order to gain blessing, we each have to Lech l’cha, we have to ‘go forth.’ Ultimately this is a choice, but it isn’t God’s choice, or our ancestor’s choice. This is a choice that each and every one of us has to make.

A word to our Bat Mitzvah
Sfat Emet, a late 19th century chasidic commentator viewed the command lech l’cha to be less about geographic movement than about being willing to carve out a new path separate from the past, being able to continually move forward, in his mind, to ‘keep walking.’ In modern psychological speak, we might call this ‘individuation’ - where an individual is able to take what she needs from what has been given her and is able to formulate her own path, make her own healthy decisions, and formulate her own opinions and unique ideas. May you, lech l’cha, go forth!, from today using all of the ideas and tools for life that you have been given so far, to hitbarech, to create your own blessing while remaining an active and full participant in our congregation and the extended Jewish community.

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