Lekh Lekha: October 31, 2020/13 Heshvan 5781

In this week's parashah, we get our first introduction to the patriarch of the Jewish nation, Abram (who will eventually be known as Abraham). God commands him to "Go away from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you". But unlike Noah, who God chose because of his righteousness, there's no indication of how Abram came to deserve God's favor.

There are a couple of well-known midrashim about Abram's childhood (the Torah's narrative first meets him when he is 75). The first envisions a young Abram searching for divinity in the polytheistic society of his homeland of Haran. Rather than worshipping all the various gods of his peers, Abram resolves to find the supreme deity and direct his worship there. Abram sees the sun, and he determines that it must be the greatest of the gods. Then, night falls and the sun appears to be defeated by the moon. So Abram decides to worship the moon. But at dawn, the sun appears to vanquish the moon. Therefore, Abram decides that there must be some greater God who is over both sun and moon.

The next story sees Abram a young man, left in charge of his father's idol shop. A woman brings an offering of food for the idols, and Abram, realizing the absurdity of expecting that clay idols would eat the food, takes a stick and smashes all but the largest idol. When Terach returns, Abram tells him that the largest idol, asserting its preeminence, smashed the rest of the idols in order to keep the food for itself. Terach scolds his son for his lie, as the idols had neither power nor agency, being merely clay. Abram asks his father why one should worship the idols if they are not actually the gods they represent, rather than the gods themselves. Abram is brought to the great king, Nimrod, who orders him thrown into a fiery furnace, and if his abstract concept God really exists, then God can save him (this idea of throwing people into a furnace as a test of God's existence shows up again many generations later in the Book of Daniel). When God does save Abram, his brother Haran professes his belief in Abram's God and is thrown into the fire too, but he burns to death.

The unifying thread in these two vignettes is that Abram's journey to worshipping God comes not through miracles but through rational consideration. Neither the sun nor the moon nor fire, water, wind, or any natural phenomenon can stand above any other one, so there must be something that governs all of them. The people are worshipping clay statues that are manufactured and sold on a daily basis, so clearly there is no real divinity to them. A faith built on observing miracles may give us more of a sense of wonder, but it's all superficial. Haran believed, or at least claimed belief, based on miracles, and his faith was incomplete, so his prayer in the furnace went unanswered. This is because there is a difference between believing in God and knowing God. While miracles can help create a sense of awe that is important to contextualizing the greatness of the Master of the Universe, we can only contextualize that which we know. Miracles, even if they are the flashy parts of God's power, are not the way in which we experience God on a regular basis. God, as we have been saying for a few weeks now in the second blessing of the Amidah, "makes the wind blow and the rain fall". If we relegate God's divinity to lightning bolts and plagues, splitting seas and remarkably long-lasting jars or oil, we will miss the daily appearance of God in our lives. Siddur Mishkan T'filah, the prayerbook published by the Reform Movement in North America, makes this observation in its section headers. The litany of blessings traditionally known as "Birkot HaShachar", praising God for doing things like clothing us, helping us see, supporting our steps, and many other things, is called by the Reform siddur "Nisim B'chol Yom" - Everyday Miracles. By recognizing the Divine provenance of our daily blessings, we can understand God, and once we understand God's presence in the world, we can worry about the signs and wonders that God can do. In the parashah, Abram's partnership with God, symbolized by his covenant and circumcision (and that of all the males of his household in perpetuity) brings with it a renaming. Abram becomes Abraham, and his wife Sarai becomes Sarah. The addition of the letter ה, which appears twice in the name of God, to their names is symbolic of God's presence in the day-to-day existence of the world. So too, should we merit to carry God with us wherever we go.