Lech Lecha: What's in a Name?

This past week was the 12th anniversary (or 13th-I cannot remember) of my becoming a Bat Mitzvah. Although there are no monumental words I have for this occasion, I am going to suggest something. Having now spent a year exploring the parshiot, week by week, engaging the text and connecting it to my own life, not necessarily delving into commentary, this year is a little more busy. We have already read the whole of Genesis and Exodus in the past two months alone. Therefore, writing a full-blown D'var Torah may not be the most feasible thing for me each week. However, to the best of my ability, I will post my "Torah challenge," which I send weekly to my student pulpit in Billings, MT. My hope is that you find the questions I pose intriguing and meaningful.

A (belated) Shabbat Shalom!

Genesis 12:1-17:27

In this Torah portion, God makes a covenant with Abram promising to make his ancestors a great nation. God changes his name to Abraham. Abraham has a child with Hagar, and names him Ishmael. God then promises Abraham's barren wife, Sarah, that she will have a child. (1)

What’s in a Name (Part I) (Gen 16:1-16)

Children are important in the Torah. Although those crying out for children usually comes from barren women, Abram is the one who gasps to God: "What can You give me, seeing that I shall die childless?" (15:2). Abram is the first one to cry out for a child. Yet not until a chapter later is Abram’s call answered (although through Sarai’s decision).

Sarai, desperate for a son, gives her handmaid, Hagar, to Abram in order to procreate. However, Sarai gets jealous of Hagar’s pregnancy and sends her away into the wilderness. While away, she is visited by an angel who tells her in Chapter 16:11

 וַיֹּאמֶר לָהּ מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה, הִנָּךְ הָרָה וְיֹלַדְתְּ בֵּן, וְקָרָאת שְׁמוֹ יִשְׁמָעֵאל, כִּי-שָׁמַע יְהוָה אֶל-עָנְיֵךְ

And the angel of the God said to her: 'Behold, you are pregnant, and shall have a son; you shall call his name Ishmael, because God has heard your affliction.

Hagar, a woman with little significant who is despised by Sarai, is spoken to by an angel of God while she is despairing in the wilderness. The angel tells Hagar to name her son Yishmael, literally meaning God will hear.

What does it mean that God will hear? Is it referring to the past, to Hagar, or to the future, to Yishmael? If either of them are the case, how can we understand this name in context of Sarai’s hate of Hagar (does it mean God does not hear Sarai?)?

Or, can we understand this as meaning that Abram’s call was answered?

What’s in a Name (Part II)? (Gen. 17:1-16)

Sarai and Abram begin our parsha being called by these names. God sends them on a journey, intending to establish God’s covenant with them. In the end, when the covenant is established and Abram and Sarai have listened to God’s instructions, God rewards them.

Gen 17:5 וְלֹא-יִקָּרֵא עוֹד אֶת-שִׁמְךָ, אַבְרָם; וְהָיָה שִׁמְךָ אַבְרָהָם, כִּי אַב-הֲמוֹן גּוֹיִם נְתַתִּיךָ

Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for the father of a multitude of nations have I made thee.

Gen 17:15 וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, אֶל-אַבְרָהָם, שָׂרַי אִשְׁתְּךָ, לֹא-תִקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמָהּ שָׂרָי:  כִּי שָׂרָה, שְׁמָהּ

And God said unto Abraham: 'As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.

Both Sarah and Abraham receive a ה (hey) in their name. The letter hey is the letter that shows up twice in God’s name, the tetragrammaton, yud-hey-vav-hey.

What does it mean that Sarah and Abraham are given this ה, which is part of God’s name? Who have they become, through this?

The Lubavicher Rebbe has an interesting thought on the hey added to Abraham’s name. “Up until this point, the thrust of Abraham's life was his spiritual relationship with God; from this point on it was to be his role as a leader of the masses, a teacher of the Divine truth to the “multitudes.”” Abraham’s hey is representative of the Godliness he now possesses. Now, he can pass on God’s teachings through his own life. (2)

As Reform Jews, we too can learn something from this. Do we need God to come to us and bestow us with God’s good will, or should we attempt to act, as we already know, b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God and demonstrate Godliness from the beginning? If that is so, how do we add the Godliness into our lives and pass it on to those around us?

Another interesting thing to consider is that this section describes how we must circumcise our children and make them a part of the covenant. Only once Abraham is given his ה is he told these laws and made to do so.

How does circumcision make one part of the covenant of the Jewish people? Why is Abraham only told to do this, to circumcise himself and essentially “become” a Jew, at the end of the Parsha? What does he have to do in order to deserve the covenant?

www.myjewishlearning.com

www.chabad.org

Cycling the Covenant

This morning, I participated in the Sovev Yerushalyim Second Annual Bike Race. More than 1500 people showed up from around the country to participate in either the 40km or 20km ride, a beautiful trip around the hills and parks of Jerusalem. We rode on streets and roads, paved bike paths and rocky 4x4 trails. Except for about 100m, I was always riding with other people, other Israelis, who were either busy discussing plans or the difficulty, or intensely concentrating on the path in front of them. About halfway through the ride, we came to a sharp turn, where a logistics man was standing with a sign, directing us where to go. Instead of him cheering us on, we were the ones cheering for his efforts and thanking him for his contribution. I commented to the woman riding next to me that that isn't likely to happen in America. She said it's because in Israel, we're all family and cannot stay out of other people's business.

Two kilometers down the road, I saw this almost prophecy come to fruition. A man had been riding in front of me and I started following him closely, because his technical skills for certain parts were strong. After a bit of that, we began talking and he started to ask me about myself. Before I knew it, we had finished the hardest uphill part for the ride. I was shocked. This man, a complete stranger, made my ride easier, helped pass the time, and gave me some food to tide me over for the rest of the ride. More importantly, he shared my conviction that Israel is a land where you can really connect to nature, where people care about nature, where you can interact with nature not fifteen minutes from your front door, almost everywhere in this country! He demonstrated the principle כל ישראל ערבים זה לזהץ, all of Israel is responsible for one another.

His kindness and awareness of Israel reminded me of this week's Torah portion. Behukotai (tilchu), walk in my ordinances, is the last parsha in Vayikra, verses 26:3-27:34. God commands Moses to tell the people about what shall happen if they do keep God's commandments, immediately followed by what happens if they disregard the commandments. The positives are a successive inflation of good things, from the basic needs of food, to safety, to peace, to fruitfulness (having many descendants), to the high point, a spiritual connection with God, as God will dwell among the people (26:4-13). These blessings seem simple enough, especially as they follow Maslow's hierarchy of needs (God may have preempted Maslow by a few years).

Next comes the curses, what will happen to the Jewish people if they choose not to follow God's ordinances. The successive verses (more than double the space it takes to spell out the blessings) vividly dictate the problems that will befall the Jewish people if they err and fall away from God's ways. This description gets increasingly more graphic, the apex in Vayikra 26:29 with parallel imagery to Eicha, with humans consuming their own flesh and blood. Yet the punishment does not stop there. The punishment ends with the Jewish people being scattered among the people's of the earth (26:33), constantly having other people's fighting them. And the land will lay fallow (26:34-35). However, the very end of the parek, the chapter, has God decidedly saying that God will not forget the Jewish people, or the covenant God made with us.

Indeed, today I bore witness to that covenant in action. There I was, an American who is part of this scattered people, in the land. I spent my morning accompanied by a mass of individuals dedicated to this land, to this people. They come from all different ideologies and personal ways of living, yet all of them came out this morning to revel in nature (as well as work on their physical fitness). The man who rode alongside me spoke about the slope we must travel in order to become physically fit. We cannot simply go out and run a marathon. Rather, we must train and work towards that final goal, beginning with short distances and eventually working our way up to the full 40km run.

Such is the message God wanted to give us: we will never receive all of God's bounty in one go. Rather, we must demonstrate that we deserve it. We must work our way up to the final stage, the spiritual connection with God. If along the way we slip, there is a potential for negative consequences (but as any two-year-old learns, these too pass). Even in those hard times, even when we have failed to keep God's ordinances, God will remember us. This morning, I saw how God has remembered us, after so many years of exile from this country. We Jews have finally returned home. I have come home. And I will do my best to guard this land and help fulfill God's covenant, in whatever way I can.

Shabbat Shalom!

Trumah: God's blueprint

Every building in the process of being built starts with a rough sketch, eventually becoming a hard sketch, then a blueprint, a model and so on. This process entails that all details of the structure are known to everyone involved and that no surprises show up along the way. That initial sketch though, physically describing the dream to become reality, is the real masterpiece. It takes something from nothing, creating form and design straight from the imagination.

It should come as no surprise that the Torah also contains aspects of detailed architecture. Although the Jews spent years building the pyramids in Egypt, and also have the history of a giant ark in their back pockets, the first time the Jewish people are instructed to build something under the auspices of being Jewish, they are at the foot of Mt Sinai, receiving life instructions from God. Rather fitting then, that they should receive the building instructions for an alter in which God's presence can be felt and convened with.

However, we often dislike intricately detailed instructions on how to do things. This parsha contains those minutia that are a personal plague, especially as description and not depiction; two and a half chapters worth of minutia to be exact. Exodus 25:10-27:19 is a line by line description of how the ark of the covenant should be built; the kind of wood, the kinds of decorations (elaborate and extraneous to the actual building itself), the curtains and the knobs. Considering that this would be the place God planned to rest, as God remarked:ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם, let them make for me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them (Shemot 25:10). God obviously has an idea of what God desires/needs, but why? Why does it matter what the place where God resides looks like? Even bigger than that, isn't God all around us (even if we are unaware of God's presence), as is read in Berashit 28:16?

These questions and more bombarded me as I perused this week's parsha, parshat Truma. Although named Truma (meaning giving without expecting anything in return), and in a way, the parsha is about giving the ultimate sacrifice without payment, a place for God to reside and in which they can perform future sacrifices, the parsha seems to be more of a physical instruction manual than a spiritual one. However, maybe God is also giving a gift to the Jewish people. Without their knowledge, the building of this holy site and the dedication/determination that will go into it, likely brought the builders an experience of spiritual commune. Not something to take lightly, nor something that everyone can say about their lives. In addition, the joy the ark would bring was worth the sacrifice of time and effort that went into it, so it makes more sense to have detailed instructions, making the process as simple and transparent as possible. Yet that still begs the question, for what does God need such an elaborate sanctuary, with certain colors of blue, purple and red; cherubim; gold and curtains?

Instead of thinking of this ark of the covenant in terms of what God needs, we must think of this in terms of what the Jewish people need at the current time in their Exodus. They have just left permanent residence to follow some guy they don't really know, into the desert, without any chance of safety and permanence along the way. Rather terrifying for me to consider. Therefore, this ark offers a solution of permanence that may still be transported, granting the Jewish people a semblance of belief that might be hard to come by in an otherwise disparate situation. The specific directions buoy the people by demonstrating that there is order in the world and the structure gives the people a physical reminder of God's presence in their lives.

Although we don't have an ark of the covenant and frankly wouldn't all be able to access it if one existed, we do have many ways of representing our Judaism to ourselves. We have necklaces and bracelets with symbols of our Jewish identity, tattoos with important Hebrew words. We may don t'fillin or a tallit, pray on a daily basis or keep Kosher. Whatever the ways, we also must have the physical representation of God's presence in our lives. The challenge is to recognize that presence and appreciate it, respect that it often times must be seen before us before we can realize it. Therefore, this week, my goal is to find the physical presence of God everyday, in the variety of different activities I take part in, to see where I feel God's presence most. Also, the question of whether or not I need a physical item or place to feel God's presence, or if it is inside of me.

God's presence in often felt for people in synagogues. However, this past week, a synagogue in Ra'anana, the town where I work, was vandalized. The link to the article on the vandalism can be found here. This outrage demonstrates to me that not everyone, even in a place where Judaism is in the majority, respects and appreciates the variation among people (and Jews). I cannot understand how people think that prayer in a reform way is blasphemous, simply because it is not Orthodox or an aspect of the service was not included.

May this be a Shabbat of rest, menucha, and peace, shalom.

May it be God's will. Amen.