Idealogian

Lech L'cha - Hearing God's Call

"Lech l'cha mei'artz'cha umimoladt'cha umibeit avicha, el ha'aretz asher ar'eka" (B'reishit 12:1). Seemingly out of the blue, God calls out to Avram and tells him to pick himself up and move to a foreign land, where God will make his descendants into a great nation. Who is Avram and why is God talking to him? On this point the Torah gives us very little information. The only background we have regarding Avram was provided in last week's Parshah - he is the son of Terach, he married Sarai (with whom he had no children yet), and he moved with Terach from Ur Kasdim to Charan (B'reishit 11:29-31). That's a startlingly short biography for a man who has just been chosen to be the progenitor of God's chosen nation, and it certainly provides very little insight into why Avram in particular was picked.

Chazal were clearly bothered by this. They tell us various stories to try to fill in the blanks - Avram looked up at the stars and logically deduced monotheism, Avram smashed his father's idols, Avram's faith was tested when he was thrown into a furnace - but, whether historically true or not, none of this is actually written in Chumash.

The omission is especially strange considering that Avram/Avraham Avinu is the first person to truly develop a relationship with God.* Assuming that "ma'aseh avot siman labanim" - the actions of our forefathers are intended to be examples for how we, their descendents, should live our lives - and that we too are supposed to develop a relationship with God, why doesn't the Torah describe how Avram comes to know God, so that we may emulate Avram's approach in our own lives?

Many answers have been given to this question. Rav Michael Rosensweig suggested that the Torah doesn't want to present any one way of approaching God. Individuals should feel some degree of freedom to approach God in their own unique way and should not feel constrained to following a precise path set forth by Avram. Rav Mosheh Lichtenstein explained that Avram's spiritual journey is between him and God and is, to put it bluntly, none of our business. For God to reveal details of their relationship would almost be an invasion of Avram's privacy.

While both of these approaches may be true, they don't fully explain the Torah's presentation. Even No'ach is described as being an "ish tzaddik" (righteous man) and "tammim" (perfect, whole-hearted), as well as having "walked with God" (B'reishit 6:9). The above approaches explain why we don't get a detailed history of Avram's formative years, but couldn't we at least be told that he was a tzaddik? Shouldn't the Torah at least explain that there was this really great guy named Avram who found favor in God's eyes, and God liked him so much that He chose him to be the father of a nation and therefore instructed him, "Lech l'cha...?" Why aren't we given any mention at all of Avram's greatness or his destiny until after the command of "Lech l'cha?"

A friend of mine (though I can't recall who) once suggested what I think is a very novel approach to this question. Though I'm not at all convinced it's correct, it's still an intriguing possibility to consider: perhaps Avram wasn't anything particularly special until now. Why did God choose him and only him for the command of "Lech l'cha?" Well, who says He did? How do we know that God didn't give the same command to numerous other people in Avram's generation (either simultaneously or one after the other)? Perhaps the only difference between Avram and everyone else, and what therefore made him special, is that Avram listened. He heard God calling out to him and chose to followthat calling.

This approach seems somewhat far-fetched (and perhaps even slightly heretical) until we realize that Chazal themselves say something very similar, only with reference to a situation much later on in Jewish history. The Sifri on D'varim states that before giving the Torah to the Jews, God went to all the other nations of the world and offered it to them. After a brief synopsis of the laws included therein, they all rejected it. Only B'nei Yisra'eil responded with acceptance - "Na'aseh V'nishma" (Exodus 24:7). It is B'nei Yisra'eil's willingness to listen to and obey God's command that sets them apart from all the other nations. And in that context, Chazal's statement is even stranger - God had already promised Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya'akov that He would choose their descendants as a nation. To make the offer to other nations, then, seems more than a bit strange. But if God did that, it seems at least reasonable for Him to make the command/offer of "Lech l'cha" to more than one person.

If this is true (and perhaps even if it isn't), the Torah is teaching us a very important lesson about how Avram began his relationship with God: he simply listened to God's call and responded to it with action. And this is something that is very relevant to us as we try to emulate Avram and build our own relationships with God. With all that's going on around us all the time, it's often very easy to miss the call of God that is subtly present in many aspects of our daily lives.

When your alarm clock goes off in the morning, do hit the snooze button five times? Or do you hear the call of t'fillah b'tzibbur (communal prayer services), or at least sof z'man k'ri'at sh'ma (the end of the period in which the sh'ma may be recited in the morning)? When you see someone new in your neighborhood, do you just smile and nod your head, as if to almost (but not quite) say, "Hello?" Or do you hear the call of hachnasat or'chim (welcoming guests), go over and introduce yourself, and invite the person over for a Shabbat meal? When you get an e-mail regarding a shiur that will take place in your shul, do you simply hit the delete key, or do you hear the call of talmud torah and make an effort to attend?

The lesson we can learn from Avram is that you don't need to start out as a tzaddik or a tammim. You simply need to choose to hear what God is saying to you. And if you pay close enough attention, I believe, you'll find that God talks to all of us; we just need to learn how to listen.

* Adam, Chavah and Kaiyin each speak no more than one or two sentences to God, all in self-defense after being accused of wrong-doing. No'ach, though described as having "walked with God," does not say a single word to Him throughout the entire story. As Chumash presents things, Avram is the first person to (eventually) converse with God, certainly a prerequisite for any serious relationship.