In Jewish Currents today: Lech Lecha
on deja vu and change
Hello, readers,
I have a dvar Torah in Jewish Currents’ Friday email today; excerpt below, and read the full piece here (scroll to the bottom).
This week’s parshah, Lech Lecha, was also the weekly Torah reading that followed the 2016 election. I remember feeling then that its description of God’s assurances to Abraham rang hollow in the face of my shattered liberal optimism. Now, I find myself an unsurprised but still despondent leftist, grappling with the déjà vu of returning to this parshah after the same awful result, consumed with the feeling that we have been unable to collectively change course.
The rabbinic commentators are also familiar with this feeling of living the same events over again. In fact, they read this disconcerting sentiment into the text of our parshah. Lech Lecha tells the story of Abraham’s early relationship with God, as mediated through the divine promise of land and progeny. The rabbis understand the events of this parshah as prefigurative: “You find that everything that is written in Abraham’s regard is written regarding his descendants.” Thus, just as Abraham travels to Egypt from the promised land of Canaan fleeing famine, so does his grandson Jacob and his family. Just as Abraham is threatened with death by Pharaoh, so are all the Israelite firstborns in Egypt. And just as Abraham leaves Egypt wealthy after conflict, so do the Israelites after their liberation from slavery.