Parashat Lech Lecha – A Lesson for 2022

I’ve lost count of the times someone has told me that they find it hard to relate to the events that took place in the Torah.  After all, here we are over three thousand years after the fact.  Times have changed.  People have different attitudes and the last time I looked, none of my neighbours spent their time living in tents.  Admittedly, there are some who enjoy camping out, particularly during the summer festival season (and many of them cheat by ‘glamping’), but this is for a very limited time.  Yes, it’s fine if you are an army-type or wish to achieve a DoE award…but living a nomadic life, such as that practised by Avraham, Sarah and their entourage, is strictly off the scale of many people’s idea of habitation.

On the surface, as 21^st Century citizens, how can we connect to the many episodes that are vividly described in this week’s Parasha?

Avram (later to be renamed Avraham by Gd), a 75-year-old man is told by Hashem to leave his entire life behind, namely his ‘land, birthplace and father’s house’ to travel southwards to a country that will eventually end up being bequeathed to his descendants who will comprise of a ‘great nation’.

He obeys Gd’s command and shortly after he arrives in Canaan then flees to Egypt to escape the famine ‘that was severe’.  He enters Egypt and his wife is seized by Pharaoh’s officials.  Even after Avram and Sarai are reunited, Avram’s troubles continue.  There follows an argument between Avram and Lot’s shepherds over territorial rights pertaining to grazing land.

They come to an agreement which leads to Lot and his caravan moving down to Sodom.  This in turn embroils Avram in the war between the four kings and five kings, where he has to send 318 men (or according to the Midrash, only his servant Eliezer) to rescue Lot who has been captured in the conflict. And we are only up to Chamishi (the fifth Aliyah)!

I have provided a brief sketch of how turbulent Avram’s life was.  There was a great deal more to come. 

Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers, Chapter 5, Verse 4) tells us that:

‘Avraham our father was tested with ten trials and he withstood all of them, to make known how deep was our father Avraham’s love of Gd’.

The Tiferes Yisrael (Rabbi Yisrael Lipschitz d.1860) explains that Avraham was made to pass these to ‘demonstrate to all mankind his great love of Gd and was therefore selected by Gd for his great destiny as the Patriarch of the Jewish nation’ (Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Avrohom Davis, Metsudah Publications, 1979).  However, we note that the Mishna doesn’t expound on the nature of the tests themselves.

Rashi, the Rambam,Rabbeinu Yona ( d.1264) and many others present their own interpretations of the list of trials that Gd set upon Avraham.

Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartinura (d.c.1515) suggests the following:

1.    Avram is thrown into a fiery furnace.

2.    Gd tells him to leave his homeland to be a stranger in the land of Canaan.

3.    Immediately after his arrival in the Promised Land, he encounters a famine.

4.    The Egyptians seize his beloved wife, Sarah, and bring her to Pharaoh.

5.    He faces incredible odds in the battle of the four and five kings.

6.    He is told by Gd that his children will be strangers in a strange land. 

7.    Gd tells him to circumcise himself at an advanced age.

8.    The king of Gerar captures Sarah, intending to take her for himself.

9.    Gd tells him to send away Hagar and her son, Ishmael.

10.  .Avraham is told by Gd to sacrifice his dear son Isaac upon an altar.

(source: Chabad.org)

Note that, except for the first test which is found in the Midrash, all the others appear in Parshiot Lech Lecha and Vayera.

With this in mind, the Tiferes Yisrael’s comments make more sense.  Avraham was so devoted to Gd after everything that had befallen him that he was truly worthy of being our first Patriarch.

Returning to my initial question, how can we, in this day and age, relate to Avraham’s experiences?

The common thread that runs through all of the tests are the physical and emotional barriers that present themselves to Avraham at every juncture of his life.  No sooner has he overcome one challenge, than he is faced with the next.  He doesn’t have a chance to rest.

Does this sound familiar to us?  For the last two years, we have faced a devastating pandemic which was swiftly followed by a war in a far-off country that has shaken the world to its core.  We ask ourselves whether it is more expensive to stay home and face soaring energy bills or go out and spend exorbitant amounts of money on our food.  The UK is still reeling from the loss of the Queen and witnessing the third Prime Minister in four months.  All the while, we are fearing the actions of an unpredictable dictator who could launch a nuclear attack at any moment.  Where is our opportunity to rest?  Is Gd testing our mettle too?

A recent article in the Jerusalem Post caught my attention.  It was entitled: ‘Going to religious services will make you live longer’ (30^th September - https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-718578)

The study, in the publication PLOS ONE, focused on the mortality rate of Black American men over the age of 50 and their attendance at church services.  The researchers who carried out the analysis found that those men who attended church on a regular basis had a lower mortality rate than those of the participants who didn’t.  You can read the study in full at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0273806#sec007.

A 2016 Harvard study in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association: Internal Medicine (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2521827) examined and evaluated data from over 75,000 American women of all faiths (with the majority being Christian) reported the same findings.  Its senior author, Tyler Vanderweele said in a New York Times interview that:

‘This suggests that there is something powerful about the communal religious experience.  These are systems of thought and practice shaped over millennia, and they are powerful.’

This is not the first time I have heard of such studies.  There seems to be empirical evidence of something similar in the UK.  In 2018, The Independent reported the findings of another study under the heading ‘Religious people live four years longer than atheists’ (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/religion-live-longer-muslim-jewish-christian-hindu-buddhist-life-expectancy-age-a8396866.html)

Humorously, the Tablet, an international Catholic Weekly, increased that to six years demonstrating that sometimes inflation is not all bad!  (https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/9242/religious-people-live-up-to-six-years-longer-than-agnostics-and-atheists-study-finds),

These studies, pulled together with others, are indicating that there is an empirical link between a person’s faith (however one wishes to interpret this on a scale of religious practice) and general wellbeing.  This doesn’t mean that anyone who attends a place of worship is necessarily healthier than someone who doesn’t, but on a significant scale (if the research is to be believed), those of faith are more internally fortified and this impacts on their overall wellbeing.

Lockdown deprived us of our energy source, namely our Shuls but it didn’t disconnect the umbilical link to our spiritual home.  When we come to Shul, we leave our woes behind us, even if this happens to be for a short period of time.  We spend time speaking of and to Gd, praying for things to get better, to be able to overcome the tests that we are facing in our lives, both as individuals and as members of the Jewish People. 

With this in mind, I can appreciate how Avraham, through all of his trials, never lost belief that Gd would come through for him in the end.  His unshakeable faith was there when nothing else seemed to make sense.

As Rabbi Sacks ztl famously wrote in ‘Letters to the Next Generation: Reflections for Yom Kippur, 2016’

‘Faith is not certainty; it is the courage to live with uncertainty.  Faith does not mean seeing the world as you would like it to be; it means seeing the world exactly as it is, yet never giving up the hope that we can make it better by the way we live – by acts of chein and chessed, graciousness and kindness, and by forgiveness and generosity of spirit.’

Avraham, despite every challenge that faced him, held onto his faith.  As King Solomon famously wrote in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes 1.9 – ‘There is nothing new under the sun’ and how right he was. Am Yisrael chai.

Shavua Tov.