Parshas
Lech Lecha
Mind
Your Surroundings
By:
Daniel Listhaus
וַיֹּאמֶר
ה'
אֶל
אַבְרָם לֶךְ-לְךָ
מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית
אָבִיךָ אֶלהָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ:
וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ
לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ וַאֲגַדְּלָה
שְׁמֶךָ וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה
“Hashem
said to Avram, 'Go for yourself from your land, from your birthplace,
and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I
will make of you a great nation; I will bless you, and I will make
your name great, and you will be a blessing.'”
-Lech
Lecha 12:1-2
The mishna1
mentions that there were ten tests that Avraham avinu
was given and he passed all of them, demonstrating the incredible
amount of love Avraham must have had for Hashem. One of these ten
tests is the opening passuk (verse)
of this week's parsha.2
Hashem commanded Avraham to leave his birthplace and his father's
house and to keep traveling until Hashem would tell him that he had
reached his destination. Imagine getting into your car and start
traveling to an unknown place with no idea where you were going, and
no clue how long it would take to get there. Certainly only someone
with absolute trust and love would be willing to blindly follow such
instructions.
The
passuk3
tells us that upon commanding
Avraham to leave his house, Hashem promised that He would bless
Avraham and make him into a great nation. Rashi4
writes that this is what Hashem was hinting to in the words “lech
lecha” - literally “go for
yourself”. Hashem conditioned Avraham's having children and
ultimately becoming a great nation as well as becoming famous in the
world on his listening to the tzivui (direct
commandment) to leave his land and be prepared to journey to the
mysterious land which Hashem promised to later show him. It was
therefore for Avraham's benefit and pleasure that he leave his land
in order to merit these blessings.
Although
this Rashi seems
pretty simple on the surface, it becomes problematic when one reads
the next Rashi. The
next Rashi5
comments that the reason that
Hashem needed to promise these three things specifically was because
of the following. When one travels, there are three things which
consequentially diminish. When one is on the road there is less
opportunity for reproduction, money gets spent faster, and it is
almost impossible to maintain a good name because one is never
settled in a single place long enough. Therefore, Hashem promised
Avraham that if he obeys the commandment to leave, Hashem will
guarantee that he will still merit children and become a father of a
nation, become extremely wealthy, and maintain his good name.
These
Rashi's seem to
contradict each other. The first Rashi explains
that the berachos were
conditioned on Avraham's leaving, yet the second Rashi
implies that these berachos
were only necessary to persuade
Avraham that despite the fact he was traveling he would receive these
things. However, we all know that an ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure. So why not the following simple solution: Let Avraham
stay home and not diminish his possibility of having children, his
money, and his name, and there would be no reason to have to promise
the things that he would be missing by traveling away from home?
Perhaps
we could suggest the following. Certainly, Avraham avinu
could have not traveled and
still have been able to have children, and granted he could have
become wealthy and achieved a great name. However, the quality of
these things would have a ceiling based on the affect of staying in
his father's house. In commanding Avraham to leave his birthplace and
home, Hashem was telling him that he must go for himself, for his own
benefit and pleasure in order to be able to achieve the superior
quality of these things. Somehow staying in the house of Terach or
even in the vicinity of his birthplace would have a limiting affect
on Avraham's potential.
The
problem with this answer, though, is that Avraham already proved to
the world that the fact that he grew up in the house of avodah
zarrah was something he had an
immunity to. The medrash6
describes that Terach used to
run an idol shop. One day, Terach had to leave town and Avraham took
over running the business for the day. While on the job, a man
entered the shop to purchase an idol. Avraham asked him, “How old
are you?” The man replied, “Sixty years old”. Avraham then said
to him, “You mean to tell me that you are sixty and yet you wish to
purchase an idol to worship that was made a day ago?” The man,
embarrassed, left the store without buying anything. Later that day a
woman came with flour and wanted to buy an avodah zarrah to
feed and worship. Avraham took a stick and started smashing all the
idols in the store. Then, he placed the stick next to the largest
idol. When his father came home he asked Avraham what in the world
had happened. Avraham told him that the idols had started fighting
with each other and finally the biggest idol came and smashed all the
other ones. This event ultimately led to him brought before Nimrod
and being thrown into the furnace in front of the entire community in
order to demonstrate what happens to someone who does not believe in
the avodah zarrah,
however as we know, Avraham came out alive and a tremendous kiddush
Hashem was made.
Clearly
Avraham avinu was
someone who was not affected by those around him. He made his own
decisions, came to his own realizations, and was not willing to
believe in things which made no sense to him, even if those
alternatives would have allowed him to live a care-free life with no
restrictions. He did not care what his family thought of him, he did
not care what his community thought of him, and he did not care about
what Nimrod thought of him. If so, why was it necessary for him to
move out of his birthplace? Everything he was to gain he could have
just not lost by staying put and additionally, he seemed to be immune
to his environment so what was there to lose by staying?
Later in the parsha, during the Bris Bein Ha'besarim
between Avraham and Hashem, Hashem promised Avraham that he will
give Eretz Yisroel to his children. When describing the
boundaries of Eretz Yisroel, Hashem says, “To your
descendents I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the
great river, the Euphrates River....”7
Rashi8
writes that despite the fact that when the Torah mentions the four
rivers which came out of Gan Eden, the Euphrates was mentioned
last,9
still the Torah refers to it here as the “great river” simply
because it was close to Eretz Yisroel. Rashi continues
to say that the slave of a king is a king and one who stays close to
a ruler will be bowed down to. In other words, the types of things we
associate ourselves with and the types of people we are close with
not only has a profound affect on the way we are perceived by others,
but even has an affect on how we begin to feel about ourselves. The
river mentioned last of the ones going out of Gan Eden,
becomes a “great river” merely by being adjacent to Eretz
Yisroel.
Similarly,
Rashi tells us that
one of the Pharaoh’s had seen all the miracles that Hashem had done
for Sarah and the house of Avraham. He therefore declared, “Better
my daughter be a slave in Sarah's house than a main wife in another
household”, and he gave his daughter, Haggar as a maidservant for
Sarah. Even Pharaoh realized that people are affected by who they
spend their time with. There is no comparison between a maidservant
in the house of Avraham and being a main wife in a different house.
Avraham's household was one of pure royalty, worshiping only Hashem
and meriting miracles, and those who were around him benefited
greatly.
Perhaps
with this we could better understand the reason why Avraham had to
leave his father's house. When it came to telling Avraham to leave
his land, granted he could have had the berachos
to
some degree by staying where he was, but indeed it would have been of
lesser quality. Even Avraham, who was a master of fighting avodah
zarrah and
seemed to be immune to the people around him, would have still been
lacking because of who he would be hanging around with. In order to
achieve the highest quality of the berachos
he had to separate himself and leave the bad environment behind him.
Certainly this was a difficult task for Avraham to be willing to
leave his land where he had done so much and proven to be immune to
the ideologies of those around him, yet he was still willing to pick
up and move in order to reach higher and achieve the berachos
with
a superior quality that could only be achieved by completely
disassociating himself with those around him.
If
this is true of Avraham, it is surely true of us as well. May Hashem
help us choose the paths we take carefully so that we do not find
ourselves associating with those who will lessen the quality of who
we are able to be.
1Avos
5:4
2There
is a machlokes (dispute) how
to count the ten test. Some Rishonim learn
that Avraham being thrown into the fire, though not explicitly in
the Torah, was the first test. Others learn that this nisayon
(test) of “lech
lecha” to move away from his
family was the first test.
3Beraishis
12:2
4Rashi
Beraishis 12:1
5Rashi
Beraishis 12:2
6Beraishis
Rabbah 38:13
7Beraishis
15:18
8Ibid.
9See
Beraishis 2:14
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