Parashat Lech Lecha

October 31, 2025
9 Cheshvan 5786
Parashat Lech-Lecha
Genesis 12:1 -17:27

Dear Friends, In this parashat, Lech Lecha, Go forth (Genesis 12:1-17:27), Avram was not told to leave his father’s house but, rather to go forward from his father’s house. We are told that Avram was 75 years old, which, until very recent times, was considered quite old. So, as we begin our story as a people, an old man is told to make a new start, go to a new place, leave his father’s house, and start all over again. Imagine leaving your father’s house after all this time.

“Adonai said to Avram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing.”
(Genesis 12:1-2)

Avram’s impetus for change came from within, not from human decree. There is no sense that an outside force made him leave all that was familiar. When we meet Avram at his advanced age, we have no idea how long the Divine has been communicating with him. We know almost nothing about his life before he, Sarai, and nephew Lot are on the move.

Here is what we know. Avram, or Avraham, as he is called after his name change, appears to us without a backstory. Who was he? Why was he chosen to enter into this covenant with the Divine on our behalf? This is after all our origin story; shouldn’t we have more information than where he came from and the extent of his family’s journey from Ur to Haran. (Sidebar: Ur was a city in the region of Sumer, southern Mesopotamia, in what is modern-day Iraq. While Haran was an ancient city of strategic importance, it is now a village in southeastern Turkey. It lies along the Balīkh River, 24 miles (38 km) southeast of Urfa.) And unlike so many other hero’s journeys, his is not the journey of the young. We can assume he has lived a full life before we meet him.

The rabbis, in their discomfort with this lack of information, wrote many midrashim about Avraham and why he was the one to enter into a covenantal relationship with the Divine: a covenant that we are still bound to today. It is amazing that this covenant included a vision of a future for his offspring that would not always be easy. Along with the promise that they would be fruitful and multiply, they would also be struck by adversity again and again.

We live in an age today where at 75 one can still have a living parent and where women who would have been considered long past the age of having children are having children. It seems that the lessons taught about Avraham when I was a child have been given more complex contours, more shadings, and more possibilities. He was made to seem perfect, a hero beyond measure, erasing his complexity and humanity.

The first story about Avram and Sarai is about their sojourn to Egypt to escape the famine, where he asks that she say that she is his sister, because she is so beautiful and having a beautiful wife will place him in danger. The famine appears to happen after they have just unpacked their bags; they have no time to settle in. This man and his wife are being stretched, and it will happen over and over again throughout the narrative. Through everything that happens to them, they keep going.

The story we are given in this Torah portion has numerous chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of Avraham and Sarah, not all of them good. When we look closely, we can see ourselves in Avraham through the choices that life has put in front of us; sometimes we get it right and sometimes not we don't quite hit the mark.

It is these qualities that make them exemplars for all of us. They manage to go forward and start again and again. Avraham and Sarah’s names are changed. Something is added: a letter found in the name of the Divine. Their name change comes from the Divine. From my perspective, it reflects their willingness to go forward despite the obstacles they encounter. And yet even as they go forward, they continue to be linked to the past, as are we.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Linda Shriner-Cahn