Thought for the Week

I suspect that these days an Iraqi emigrant fleeing from Syria and claiming to do so because God had told him to leave would not get a very sympathetic hearing.

First: What is the family situation that Avram leaves when he sets off from Haran to Canaan? After all, when one is travelling, one leaves From somewhere as well as heading To somewhere else….

We learn a lot, but (as usual) not enough. It is interesting to untangle the relationships and to do the math. We never hear whom Terah marries, nor his son Haran, but at the end of Parashat Noach, in Genesis 11:22-32 we get a lot of background, even if there are gaps. Serug was thirty when he had Nahor. Nahor Snr. the son of Serug has had Terah his firstborn (of many) when he is 29; (i.e. Serug is now 59); Terach seems to have three sons almost at the same time, that is to say, none of them is formally named a Bechor, a Firstborn – when he is aged 70! These are Abram, Nahor Jnr. (named for his grandad) and Haran. (Serug the Great-Grandfather 129…)

Haran also becomes a father, then dies – does the mother too? we are never even told he married! – and so Avram adopts Lot his nephew. He is married to Sarai but has no children of his own, while Nahor is married to Milkah daughter of Haran. (No chocolate jokes please! – Sarai might be linked to ‘Princess’ and ‘Milka’ to ‘Queen’.) By this time it seems to be accepted that Sarai is unable to bear children.

Then Terach suddenly (and for no given reason) decides to leave Ur and move to a place named after his dead son – can this be? The son can hardly have been named after the land… and he takes with him just one son, one daughter-in-law and one orphaned but adopted grandson and they intend to make a new start in Canaan but end up somehow staying in Haran. This means Terach leaves one son and the grave of another behind in Ur – yet later on (22:20-24) Nahor with Milkah will be reported as having had twelve sons of his own, the grandchildren Terach never knew. What feelings might have led to this separation, or have been caused by this separation? Terach has also left his own father and grandfather and will live sixty more years after Avram has left him. (I am just scratching the surface here – you need paper and pencil to work out cross-relationships….)

God had sent Adam eastwards, and Cain eastwards, and Noah into a wooden crate he had to build himself but the direction itself was immaterial… Now in Genesis 12:1-7 God gives for the first time a specific (albeit unnamed) destination – God will go with him, maybe even go before him, and show him it when he gets there. God can do this because God can see over the horizon, God knows already which land is where and God can decide how to allocate it.

Avram is 75 when he leaves his father (and mother?) in Haran and heads south to a Land which God has promised as a part of the Covenant, but which is already inhabited. Avram, the nomad, is told he is entitled to a Land….. to a homeland of his own, even though – as it transpires – it comes with many issues attached. There will, it seems, always be those who will bless us as his descendants, and those who will curse us. It goes with the territory.

This is a tricky issue for many – as liberal Jews we do not wish to read a text literally and fundamentalistically, but the fact is that Judaism is based not on any abstract ”Peace” but on ”Covenant” and on ”Justice”, on a relationship to God and God’s demands upon us – whereby observing the Covenant and working for Justice should lead to Peace. (Many today seem to forget that implementing Justice also involves punishing those who do evil, not constantly forgiving them or even rewarding them for it. I would not trust many politicians to train a dog, let alone raise a child…) In the famous Jewish Trinity ”Al HaTorah” comes before ”ve’al Gemilut Chasadim” as a basis for the world. We are not just about ”doing Good Deeds”….. there is a judicial framework for these in our texts.

One cannot separate ”Jewish Ethics” from Religion and Ritual, and from Zionism, they are three parts of the whole. It is only our enemies who have, especially in the past couple of years, tried loudly to separate the bits of Judaism which THEY can tolerate from the bits that they condemn and they have even had the chutzpeh to expect Us to condemn them as well! They have called Religious Jews ”Extremists” and they have called Zionist Jews ”Settlers” or ”Colonialists” and they presume to believe that They have the right to decide for us what Judaism should be. THEY ARE WRONG!

”Lech Lecha….” – Israel comprises now many, many Jews who have left, or whose ancestors had left, their ancient homelands and often also their families (when they had any surviving family members left.) This text echoes, it resonates in the present day.

And what about the future? The question is being asked by many Jews all over Europe now: ”Is it time at least to start thinking about leaving, leaving the home, maybe even leaving other family members, and striking out to a new life in an old land?” I recently attended a communal event in Germany where all three members of the Podium declared they saw little future for Jews in Germany, one had already made aliyah and two were thinking about it. An Israeli in Berlin told me a year ago that he now understood why his grandparents had left Berlin for Palestine in the 1930s, because people were shouting ”Kill the Jews!” in the street outside his flat.

Currently many Israelis, disenchanted with the current political and economic situation, are leaving Israel for the Diaspora – they are free to do so, of course, but one wonders how many of them, having experienced the Diaspora and the strains we experience here, may later decide to return after all… ”Lech lecha….” The recent horrific attack in Manchester was high-profile but comes after a lengthy increase of lower-profile ”incidents”. One begins to wonder: ”Where would one go? Whom one would take with? Whom would one be prepared to leave behind? What would one be prepared to leave behind? And would one feel a helpless victim, or somehow guided by God?”

There are many ways of saying ”Lech Lecha” and many people saying it – my late friend and teacher Rabbi Albert Friedlander once told me that when he was a boy the graffiti in Nollendorfplatz in Berlin screamed ”Juden Raus Nach Palästina!” whereas when he revisited more recently it said ”Juden Raus Aus Palästina!” Whereby it was doubtful whether those who sprayed this meant to add ”Please Come Back Here Instead!”

If our enemies should ever (God forbid!) reach the stage of demanding or insisting that We, as Jews, as a People, ”return to where We came from” we could face the irony of becoming emigrants going from Europe TO Syria and Iraq, on the basis that this is where God spoke to our ancestor Avram. Now THAT would make an interesting book.

In the meantime, let us hope that – whatever else they say and do, not all of which we have to agree with – those who bless us will be truly blessed and those who curse us will be truly cursed.