Dear Friends,
Just two words. Sometimes it only takes two words to transform history. If we had three, we might cite “We the people…” But two…
So opens our Torah portion this week. “Go Forth…” In Hebrew, “Lech l’cha…”
They were God’s first words to Abram – later Abraham – commanding him to leave the place of idolatry of his birth and to Go forth to the land which God would show him, there to make a great nation and be a blessing to the world. Of course, that land would be Canaan – now Israel – and more specifically, Jerusalem, and the people would be Am Yisrael – the People of Israel, or us.
And, it all was predicated on that initial communication to Abram to “Go forth.” Simply put, possibility demands departing and going forward. Stasis is simply remaining in place.
The Jewish people, and more, the Jewish enterprise as a partner with God and covenantal people of priestly dimension, has required that we continually go forth. This is not merely a description of our lives across historical epochs and places, but intellectually and spiritually we have incessantly journeyed onwards, like the opening of Star Trek, to go where no man has gone before.
Jewish life included being the first to embrace the God of Creation, not crafted idols created by human hands.
Jewish life transformed religious experience by offering text, not temple, making the Jewish people fully liberated to live on every continent.
Jewish life developed our language and theology of Hebrew, among the oldest and newest languages, which actually demonstrated “Going forth” by reinventing itself with the State of Israel in the 20th century.
And, Jewish life went forth, from trauma to trauma, to thriving in new lands – Spain, Poland, America – on its way to reestablishing a Jewish state in Israel, two millennia after the last state had been destroyed by the Romans.
I guess those two little words have succeeded to move and motivate us for 3500 years. We have become experts at “Going forth.” Our question for this week, is, “To where, next?”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
Just two words. Sometimes it only takes two words to transform history. If we had three, we might cite “We the people…” But two…
So opens our Torah portion this week. “Go Forth…” In Hebrew, “Lech l’cha…”
They were God’s first words to Abram – later Abraham – commanding him to leave the place of idolatry of his birth and to Go forth to the land which God would show him, there to make a great nation and be a blessing to the world. Of course, that land would be Canaan – now Israel – and more specifically, Jerusalem, and the people would be Am Yisrael – the People of Israel, or us.
And, it all was predicated on that initial communication to Abram to “Go forth.” Simply put, possibility demands departing and going forward. Stasis is simply remaining in place.
The Jewish people, and more, the Jewish enterprise as a partner with God and covenantal people of priestly dimension, has required that we continually go forth. This is not merely a description of our lives across historical epochs and places, but intellectually and spiritually we have incessantly journeyed onwards, like the opening of Star Trek, to go where no man has gone before.
Jewish life included being the first to embrace the God of Creation, not crafted idols created by human hands.
Jewish life transformed religious experience by offering text, not temple, making the Jewish people fully liberated to live on every continent.
Jewish life developed our language and theology of Hebrew, among the oldest and newest languages, which actually demonstrated “Going forth” by reinventing itself with the State of Israel in the 20th century.
And, Jewish life went forth, from trauma to trauma, to thriving in new lands – Spain, Poland, America – on its way to reestablishing a Jewish state in Israel, two millennia after the last state had been destroyed by the Romans.
I guess those two little words have succeeded to move and motivate us for 3500 years. We have become experts at “Going forth.” Our question for this week, is, “To where, next?”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
