by Diane Cohler-Esses, delivered at Minyan M'at

1. If I was an investigative reporter and I could have access to the
mysterious storyteller of Lekh Lekha, I would have a number of questions.
First: why is it that God commands Abraham to leave his birthplace? He's
already left his birthplace; it plainly says so in Chapter 11 vs. 31:
"Terach took Avram his son, Lot, the son of Haran, the son of his son, and
Sarai his daughter in law, the wife of Avram his son. And he went out with
them from Ur Kasdim to go to the land of Canaan. And they went as far as
Charan and settled there."

While it appears from Lekh Lekha that Abraham is our great hero, going forth
on his autonomous journey into the unknown, actually it is his father who
first goes out into unfamiliar terrain, who leaves his birthplace, his land,
the house of his father and sets out for the land of Canaan, taking his
family with him. While it is true that about half way there he gets stuck in
Charan, still it is he who initiates this journey. The truth is, Abraham,
rather than making a heroic solitary journey, simply completes his father's
journey.

And here's another misleading detail: We're told of the death of Terah,
before we're told of the call to Abraham, as if it happened before Abraham
left Charan. But let's see. Terah dies at the age of 205. He is 70 when
Abraham was born. And Abraham is 75 when he leaves Charan. So Terah is a
mere 145 years of age when Abraham leaves Charan. He still has a lot of
living to do; in fact he lives another sixty years, well into the lives of
his grandchildren Isaac and Yishmael. He is even alive during the time of
the Akedah. One wonders if he ever met his grandchildren.

Rashi also notices this odd placement of Terah's death in the story and
explains it as follows:

"that it shouldn't be made known to all, that they will say that Avram did
not fulfill the commandment to honor his father, since he abandoned him in
his old age, and went on his way, therefore the Torah calls him dead"

In other words, Rashi tell us, the goyyim won't notice that Avram abandons
his father in his old age. So even our trusty old commentator agrees that
the Torah is engaged in a cover up!

And finally I have a complaint about how you shape your story. First you
drone through the seemingly insignicant genealogy of Abraham's family, bury
within it the detail of Terach's embarking on a journey to Canaan (as if we
wouldn't notice!) and then you end that chapter with Terah's death. Then, as
if Abraham's own journey has nothing at all to do with his father's life and
journey you begin a new parsha. It seems to me that you are willfully and
intentionally suppressing a story here, a story artfully hidden behind the
story of Lekh Lekha. Even the very name of the parsha hides the fact of
Terah's contribution to our solitary hero. The Torah, as it is currently
put together, takes pains to preserve the myth of the autonomous hero going
forth, for himself, breaking all bonds, unfettered, unrelated to the past --
God's word his only guiding light.

2. But wait a minute. Stop everything. I'm not an investigative reporter.
It is true, I am married to one, but I'm a rabbi, an interpreter of texts.
And in fact, I resist my husband's frequent interrogations of the Torah,
acting as if he's uncovering the scandal of a duplicitous divine narrator.
He seems to think this book somehow duped the Jewish people, that they've
built an entire religion surrounding this deception. And, even though I
don't in the least bit agree, I do feel that in this case the competing and
contradictory narratives that emerge in chapter 11 and 12 merit using my
husband's approach to the Torah. At least to begin with. Now I will continue
this drash as myself and see if the two exegetical styles can marry each
other successfully.

3. The popular image of Abraham is that of idol shatterer. In fact it is so
popular that many people think the story is part of the Biblical text. I
myself reached adulthood, after 13 years of schooling at a Modern Orthodox
Yeshivah, thinking the story was in the Biblical text. In fact, soon after
graduating from college I went flipping through the pages of Genesis looking
for it, and was surprised I couldn't find it. This particular midrash of
Abraham smashing his father's idols and humiliating his father in the
process reinforces the illusion of disconnect we find in Genesis. It's as
if, rather than chapters 11 and 12 being read as a seamless whole, Chapter
12 and the midrash are read as a seamless whole, rendering a radically
different story. What emerges is a story with Terah as villain and Abraham
as theological hero, black against white, idol worship against monotheism
and, perhaps most tragically, son against father.

But, if we incorporate the story's hidden details into the story, the reader
emerges with a surprisingly strong bond between father and son, one that
influences and shapes Abraham's life. It is not, after all, Abraham alone,
drunk on God's word, going out into the unknown, despite or because of his
father's spiritual backwardness. Rather it is Abraham's journey that is a
completion of his father's journey, and, indeed, charted by his father. God
simply says to go to the land that "I will show you" and Abraham goes to
Canaan, the final destination of his father's journey.

Thinking of Terach's restored role in the story, one begins to wonder: why
did Terach leave his birthplace and everything he knew? Why did he want to
go to Canaan? Why did he get stuck in Charan? What was it like for him to
see his son continue that journey, the journey he himself could not
complete? Did Abraham and Terach ever meet again?

4. There are additional pieces of text, and extra-textual material that can
help us answer some of these questions. (And now the investigative reporter
meets the darshanit and perhaps even marries her (!), both working to
uncover clues for the sake of a fuller, more balanced account, both aiming
for the truth.)

First why does Terach make the journey?
While the narrative does not state the reason explicitly, immediately
preceding Terach's journey is the fact of Sarai's barreness. Linking these
two juxtaposed details I suggest that Terach's journey is spurred forward
out of anxiety and hope for the next generation. This anxiety must have
been exacerbated, to say the least, by the earlier loss of his son Haran.

So why does he get stuck? Again, we can find clues in the brief passage at
the end of Chapter 11. There is a sound play between the names Haran,
Terah's son (and Abraham's brother), and Charan, the place where Terach gets
stuck. The reader is thus invited to associate the two-- person and place -
concluding that Terach gets stuck in the place of his own grief, in the
place of his lost son, unable to keep going forward. He is unable to travel
past the place of his own shattering loss, into even greater unfamiliarity,
greater loneliness.

Turning to sources of Near Eastern history we discover Charan was a
religious center devoted to the Assyrian moon god. This adds another
dimension to our story. We can imagine that Terach was not ready to leave a
place of familiar religious worship (Ur was also a center of moon worship).
Hobbled by grief, if not by his age, he may not have been prepared for the
change in consciousness required by leaving his religious community behind.
The fact that Terach's name evokes the word Yareach (moon) suggests that the
moon and moon worship were at the very heart of his identity, an identity he
cannot quite transcend, a name he is not prepared to change. And in fact if
we search his family's tree there is a strange repetition of chets and
reishes. Consider, in addition to Terach and Charon, Nahor, Terach's father
and Nahor Terach's son. It's almost as if there is an incestuous system of
sounds operating between the generations, a system almost impossibly
difficult to break out of. How does one learn new consonants for one's
internal conversation, for one's very identity and for addressing one's God?

And finally there is some crucial information provided by studying a map
about the terrain of Abraham's journey as opposed to his father.
The family goes from Ur to Charan, presumably traveling by the banks of the
Euphrates, providing both a path and a secure source of water. However,
from Charan to Canaan there is no river to guide the way. Either Abraham
travels hundreds of miles through a desert to get to Canaan or he travels
out of his way to reach a trade route where he can barter for water as he
travels. His journey is a far more physically insecure journey than his
father's. Perhaps once the elder man reached Charan he was simply, on so
many levels, incapable of going further.

What we are left with then, is an eminently human story, a story of a father
and son, neither villain, neither solitary hero, rather, both rebels, rule
breakers and journeyers. The father leaves his birthplace and father's
house; the son leaves his father's house and completes his father's dream.
The father makes the journey, motivated by his son's desire to ensure a next
generation, and the son completes the father's journey, inspired by his
father's dream to keep walking forward. Neither alone, both enabled by the
other -- each depending entirely on the other for the shape of their own
life story.

I remember the very moment when I began to re-envision this story. It was my
year after rabbinical school; I was part of a fellowship program at CLAL,
spending Shabbat at the home of Dr. David Elcott, then director of CLAL. At
lunch we studied parshat Lekh Lekha. He was the one who pointed out that it
was Terach who actually began this journey. At the time I thoroughly
identified with the Abraham who broke all the rules and left everything. As
many of you know, I come from a community in which it is anathema for women
to become rabbis, in which it is even anathema for a woman to leave home before
she is married. No individual autonomous journey is allowed. No lekh lekha,
no lekhi lakh. And there I was, unfettered, a newly minted rabbi, going
forth. And forth I went. Here I am-- seven years, one marriage and three
children later. Now it's children, work, responsibility -- in sum, it's
encumbrance that defines my life. There is no more lekh lekha. Or at least
that's what it feels like. In fact I can barely make it out of the house to
go to the movies. Although I often hear the cinematic call, it's a voice I
can but too rarely obey.

Where does lekh lekha figure into a life filled with encumbrance? I imagine
this is a question for many once they are settled into the relentless
rhythms of work and family.

Now I think, informed by the full shape of Abraham's life and journey, it is
the call to go beyond the endpoint of your parents' journey. Not to stop
entirely where they stop, but to go as far as you can and keep on going --
while you at the same time prepare for the next generation to go much
further -- a new generation that inevitably will both surpass and humble the
previous generation.

It has been a humbling seven years. The realization has slowly hit me that I
am much more like my parents then I ever considered admitting. I know that
that's such a common experience as to be a cliche. But to me, in my long
Abraham-shattering-the-idol-phase, I admit, with some embarrassment, that it
came entirely as a surprise. I've also discovered that my parents don't have
the static, entirely conventional life stories I once imagined. They too
are journeyers: my mother an immigrant, and my father living through such
tumultuous world and familial events I often wonder at the very fact of his
survival.

Of late I have identified with Terakh, the person who has come to some point
of being settled in her life, the parent who focuses on preparing her
children for their own journeys.
And yet, I still identify with Abraham, but now the Abraham whose story is
told in the context of relationship to his own family. I still experience
the yearning of Abraham, the yearning to go beyond the round of the moon
with it's never ending circles of light and darkness, hope melting into
grief eternally.
And I find that challenge, the challenge of going beyond my parents' life
stories far more challenging in a life anchored by the daily-ness of
intimate relationships and responsibility. The script my parents have laid
out for me, the language they wanted me to speak, are always hovering,
waiting for me, seductive in their power to keep me in Charan. However, if I
focus more on my parents' life stories, rather then their desires for me, I
am inspired to go forward -- inspired to keep on stumbling forward, toward
Canaan.
Still, even at this point in my life, I strain against the fetters; I still
yearn to have my star soar, not wanting to give up following the dream, the
one charted for me by God, or maybe, very simply, by the previous
generation.

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