Our Blog

Lech Lecha – drash for Or Shalom Jewish Community Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat, Friday November 8, 2024, 8 Cheshvan, 5785. 

By Deborah Gavrin Frangquist

At last Sunday’s Open Floor dance in Sausalito, our teacher was Andrea Juhan, one of our wise senior teachers. As we began to fill the gym floor, I kept thinking, “What a gathering of the clan!” There were numerous teachers there to dance, including one of my very first teachers and many people with whom I have danced for years, and yet the floor was also open to newcomers of all shapes and ages. As we danced, it occurred to me that the gathered clan of dancers welcomes everyone. There are temporary limitations due to the size of the gathering space, and at the same time the clan is infinite and beyond time and space.

This week’s Torah portion includes the origin myth of another clan which has gathered, separated, and regathered over and over, beyond time and space. This is our clan of the spiritual descendents of Abraham and Sarah. The parsha is called Lech Lecha, which means “go forth” or “take yourself” or maybe “go be yourself.” Abram, as he is called here, is told to leave his native land, his family, and his community to go to a place not yet identified, which the Divine will show him later. In the rest of the portion there are at least four times, depending how you count,  when the Holy One specifically says that that land is for Abram and his descendents forever. [Genesis 12:7, 13: 14 – 17, 15:7ff, 17:8] There are also three references to the people already living there. [Genesis 12:6, 13:7, 15:19ff].

Lech Lecha begins with Abram and Sarai starting out with their whole household. It ends with the circumcision of Abraham, his thirteen-year-old son Ishmael, and all the males of the household. Circumcision is designated as the sign of the covenant between Abraham and the Holy One, a covenant which includes the assignment of the land of Canaan to Abraham and his offspring forever. As part of that covenant, the Divine renames Abram as Abraham and Sarai as Sarah.

It’s no surprise that over the centuries these texts have been interpreted as a kind of eternal land grant. They have been central to the Jewish longing for Zion expressed over and over in scripture, and they are part of the claim by the modern State of Israel to lands that had long been occupied by other peoples. Right now that claim is expressed in violence, destruction, and death, in Gaza and Lebanon as well as in Israel.

I want to draw our attention to two other parts of the same parsha. Abram’s nephew Lot accompanies Abram and Sarai on their journeys, but at a certain point, after they have traveled to Egypt and then back to the Negeb, their herdsmen start arguing with each other because there are too many cattle for the land. Abram says to Lot, let’s stop this quarreling. There’s plenty of land, let’s separate. You choose where  to take your herds and household, and I will go in the other direction. Lot chooses to go to the fertile plain of the Jordan River, Abram remains in Canaan. 

We are not seeing this kind of peaceful problem solving now. We see forcible removal of Maasai and other communities in Kenya and Tanzania from lands where they have herded animals for generations. The official justification is land conservation, although then the governments authorize large-scale commercial farming for export as well as international tourism, including game hunting. In Israel, the justification for restricting water rights and land access by the traditional farmers, as well as for the evacuation of more and more of Gaza, is safety for Israeli citizens, including large numbers of people settled on occupied territory. These actions exacerbate enmity and make future violence more likely, so that no one feels safe. On this continent, the justification for repeated genocidal removal of Native Americans from their lands was a cynical combination of supposed desires to “civilize” the indigenous people with greed to take over their territory. That led to catastrophes such as the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, and the dustbowl, for which we as a nation have barely begun to do teshuvah. Abram’s decision to share the land by mutual agreement offers a much better precedent than the land use laws of modern nation states.

In another intriguing incident, Lot and his household are carried off during a skirmish among local chieftains, including the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abram gathers his retainers and defeats Lot’s captors. As he is bringing Lot home, the king of Sodom comes with what seems to be a kind of peace deal. He suggests that Abram keep all the booty from the raid but let the people go home. Abram however says that he will keep nothing that belongs to the king, other than what his troops have actually consumed and a share for the men who fought with him. Abram says he will not get rich at the expense of other people. He does not prolong the quarrel. 

At last Sunday’s dance, Andrea invited us to focus on opening space around ourselves rather than on occupying space. I found it a not so subtle shift from my usual mindset, which was to enjoy dancing among and with other people, but also to be cautious about being surrounded by people who are mostly younger and taller than I am. It turned out to be easier to dance with a sense of opening and sharing space than with a sense of needing to defend space. I enjoyed my dance more, I felt safer among my fellow dancers, and I think the experience healed the next piece of my childhood sense of not being welcome and of needing to be careful about intruding on people. I wonder where else I – and we – are being unnecessarily cautious in ways that reflect old wounds rather than present reality.

Or Shalom is a Reconstructionist congregation. Reconstructionists approach Judaism—and life—with deep consideration of the past and a passion to relate it to the present. The website of Reconstructing Judaism says we are commited to “Thinking, dreaming and making decisions in conversation with community—the community gathered around us today, the voices of our ancestors, and, as best as we can anticipate, the needs and aspirations of the communities of tomorrow.”

So tonight I bring Andrea’s invitation: Let’s experiment with opening space rather than occupying space. Let’s try letting down our guard with each other, with people we disagree with, with people we have thought of as dangerous. This is not just about land use but about any deep disagreements. Let’s see what happens when we start with the assumption that together we can figure out how to share our world.