Note: The following is a Dvar Torah I just shared at my shul. It is about ALL that it means to live our authentic selves (political and cultural tones of the term aside).
We know that there are pivotal events in our lives that become the prism through which we see and discern all that happened, happens and will happen to us. Often it may be a tragedy either in our lifetimes or well-hidden in past generations of our family tree. It could be some significant change or revelation we come to about ourselves and our place in this world. It could be a traumatic set of circumstances. It might be a supremely joyful event. How do we not forget such formative experiences in thinking about who we are when we consider the ramifications of these life-changing and defining occurrences and their impact on our authentic selves? All of this is part of our own journeys.
Our Parsha begins as G-d instructs Avram to leave all that he knows from the past – his land, his birthplace, and his father’s house—that is to completely cut himself off from all that has occurred in his life up to this point. But is this really even possible? We know that Avram took the people of his household and a good amount of property with him. What else did he have with him as determined by his experiences and legacy as he set off in a completely different direction then past generations of his family tree may have portended, following the instructions of God to do so?
R. Ya'akov Yosef of Polonnoye (1710–1784) one of the earliest followers of Hassidut teaches as follows:
"And the Lord said to Avram, Go, you, out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's home, to the land that I will show you; and I will make of you a great nation, etc." And the uncertainties will be clarified later. For the Rambam writes in the sixth chapter of Hilkhot De'ot (halakha 1) as follows: "It is natural to be influenced, in sentiments and conduct, by one's associates and fellow citizens. Hence, a person ought to associate with the righteous and shun the wicked. If the inhabitants of one's country are evil, he should leave for a place where the people are righteous… [or] he should live by himself in seclusion. And if they do not allow him, etc., he should go to the wilderness... Now you will understand, "Go you out of your country" – from your country to live among your kindred. And when you see that they do not allow you to conduct yourself in a righteous manner, distance yourself further also from your kindred and seclude yourself in your father's home. And if you are unable to serve God while with them, distance yourself even further from your father's home to a land that I will show you. (Toledot Ya'akov Yosef[6], Lekh Lekha 1)
Let’s consider what is being stated here. When we were all young we were taught the conventional narrative that Terach was an idol worshipper and represented everything we are not, while pure and good Avraham learned everything including his faith in God from mid-air, with no credit going to any past events in his life. Here in the beginning of Perek Yud Bet of Bereshit, he is told to leave everything behind, to seclude and distance himself from all that is not right, that characterized his past, in incrementally increasing degrees of separation. If there was nothing to leave of value, this would not be hard. But was this really the case? Is such a complete reboot from nothing even possible for us as humans, with our memories and interactions with all elements of our lives? How do we hold onto what was positive and constructive as well as formative, if we discard all that we were and did, never to look back or consider its impact on our lives?
Our Midrash, often helping us to fill in missing pieces of our narrative teaches that when Avram was born to Terach when the latter was 70 years of age, the astrologers came to Nimrod and proclaimed that this child was dangerous to the future of his fiefdom, as we learn in Baba Batra 91a. Nimrod then proceeded to go to Terach and try to get him to sell the child to him for large amounts of gold and silver, indicating he can always have future children. Terach however, not only did not agree to this horrific notion, but he took his son and his wife and hid them in a cave for three to thirteen years (depending on various versions of this story), bringing them food and all they needed for sustenance. Terach showed he needed to protect this child and also something about what was more valuable – the life of that child and not the promise of great riches. In this particular midrash, Avram comes to the realization that God, The One Who Created All, had to be something far different and far above and beyond the many different forces that were embraced by those who followed the conventional idolatrous belief systems of the time. He felt that something was different, that he himself was different from those around him and from the culture that was part of his story. It could be this seclusion in this cave that allowed him the needed space and opportunity to come to this realization about himself and how he was so different from those around him.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks teaches that we must also look to the cultural backdrop of all of our experiences and consider our place within them. He cites the work of
… three great American-Jewish sociologists, David Reisman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney in their 1950 classic, The Lonely Crowd. Their argument was that particular kinds of historical circumstance give rise to particular kinds of people. It makes a difference, they said, whether you lived in a society with a high birth- and death-rate – where families had many children but life expectancy was short – or one on the brink of growth, or one in the early stages of decline. Each gave rise to its own type of character: not that everyone was the same but that you could discern certain traits in the population and culture as a whole….
Abraham was commanded to leave behind the sources of both tradition-directedness (“your father’s house”) and other-directness (“your land, your birthplace”). He was about to become the father of an inner-directed people.
His entire life was governed by an inner voice, the voice of God. He did not behave the way he did because that is how people had always acted, nor did he conform to the customs of his age.
He was different, he took chances and he went outside of the conventions of his time. We are taught by Rashi and many classical commentators that this was for his own good – that the very words Lech Lecha mean to go for your own sake. Avram was doing something to improve his situation but had to take a huge chance in doing so, one that would potentially alienate, separate and isolate him from all that happened before in his life. This complete recalibration of self from tradition-directedness and other-directedness that tied him to his past to inner-directedness meant taking on a new identity and in so doing so, Avram’s authentic self now becomes something quite different than that identity by which he was known until that point, as a resident of a community, as his parents’ son, and so on.
Rambam, in his opening to Hilchot Avodah Zarah, the fourth section in his Sefer HaMadah , teaches that Avram’s purpose and station in life is defined indeed by the many generations that proceeded him. Rambam recounts the history of humanity from HaAdam, the first human being created by G-d, as he acknowledges that it is important to understand how we reach certain thresholds in our collective history that will ultimately impact upon individual initiative and destiny. He goes on to explain how generations of humans made huge mistakes in realizing how wondrous the sun, moon and stars as well as other phenomena were and ultimately forgot that these entities were created; but rather thought that they themselves had some inherent power and therefore were worthy of worship. They did not understand that God wished to set up the universe in such a fashion so that every created element had its part to play and that the totality of all was G-d’s goal in creating the parts. They were outer-directed in considering that what they saw ruled them in some fashion and tradition-directed in following previous generations in believing this to be so. This, explains, Rambam, was the source of Avodah Zarah, the absence of a sense of the magnitude of The Divine, G-d, and instead reduction of awe that should be reserved for The Creator of All to worship of what could be seen in daily lives – the constellations, facets of nature, and so on. It was in this environment that Avram was raised and it was this perspective he had come to believe he could no longer accept or live within its confines.
In the Midrash, we are taught that from an early age, Avram did not believe in these visible “powers” of nature and felt there was something else – another force that was responsible for all that is – G-d. As such, he was the first monotheist. One can only imagine what it must have been like for him to try to forge his way, different from all those around him, denying the lies he had heard told and had to be confronted with up to this point, and the loneliness he must have felt in doing so. Anyone who has gone through such a significant coming to terms with self must feel empathy for him as a human being in this situation – the potential for isolation and disorientation it conveys. Everyone else was acting as though what they had been told was true was just that, and yet he could no longer continue living what for him was untruth. He was compelled to search for and take on his authentic identity and existence.
Nehama Leibowitz uses the phrase “he was wandering in his mind” during this time, amplifying Rambam’s point that he had been “wandering in his heart” and trying to process all that he had heard and learned along with his questions until he found a truth he could accept. He had already arrived at a point where he was ready for God to instruct him to go forth and craft a new reality for himself – this was the result of everything he had been through and it certainly did not come from mid-air.
What made Avram what he was and what he would become? Here is Jonathan Sacks’ inner-directedness. Avram had discerned that the generations of looking outward to how things appeared just did not work for him. In making this discovery, he had to reformulate his reality and consider what it meant to live his authentic life. Looking inward, he was able to consider how he would then move to a different type of outer-directedness, namely one focused on God, in whom he believed and had faith. As he did so, he would begin a new tradition-directedness for future generations of monotheists. As such, his place in general history, as well as Jewish history is singular, pivotal and irreplaceable. He teaches all of us to look inside and reclaim our authentic selves. In so doing, we pull what is positive and constructive from our past, just as he benefited from Terach hiding him in a cave in which he could consider how different he was. Upon coming out, he was more readied and prepared to take his place in history as a guide to us all in showing us how to live authentically, question the past, and honestly consider what our place in the world should be.
Shabbat Shalom!
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