Lech L'cha

Last week I had the chance to study torah with Rabbi Arthur Green and a bunch of other lay people. The week's parsha was Lech L'cha, the beginning of the Avraham story, so we studied that. More specifically, we looked at a passage from B'reishit Rabbah, a midrash collection from somewhere between the third and fifth centuries (common era).

This source tells a strange parable (a mashal). What follows is my translation, augmented by a few notes, from the Hebrew (he didn't give us English): One day [a man] crossed from place to place (that is, was travelling) and he saw a tower (birah) "on fire" (doleket). He said, this tower has no owner? [A man] peeked out and said "I am the owner". The parable ends here, without telling us why the man seems unconcerned that his tower is burning. Fortunately for us, the midrash doesn't end there. :-) It continues with a nimshal, an explication.

The traveller, the midrash says, is Avraham Avinu, who said: this world has no owner? And ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu, God, peeked out at him, saying: I am the ruler of this world. According to this midrash, God didn't reveal himself to Avraham until Avraham deduced that the world must have a creator/ruler and went looking. Avraham was a seeker; God didn't just speak to him out of the blue and say "lech l'cha" (go forth from your homeland to the land I will show you, etc).

We talked in the group about the alarming vision in the parable. The translation of doleket isn't entirely clear; Rabbi Green initially did not translate it (wanting to see what we would come up with) and then we more or less settled on "on fire" -- but he suggested that it could also mean "full of light" (think "blazing with light" in English; when you say that you usually don't mean a literal fire). "On fire" suggests brokenness in the tower; did Avraham see brokenness in the world? I suggested that seeing a tower "full of light" might inspire one to seek hospitality, a very different interpretation. (This seemed to meet with some approval.) Someone else in the group drew a connection between the birah doleket and the burning bush. Another suggested that Avraham's birah doleket could be an internal event, not a vision but a question he was "on fire" with. (Nice.)

I'm used to thinking of Lech L'cha as God choosing Avraham, but maybe Avraham chose God first. I'm told that Heschel wrote a book that explores this question, God in Search of Man. That sounds like something I should take a look at.

My own quasi "lech l'cha" experience was not nearly so clear-cut as Avraham's (which is good!); now I wonder a little whether this interpretation applies a little to myself. Not consciously, for sure, but the subconscious is a funny thing sometimes.

Food for thought.