Lech Lecha: vague instructions

Lech Lecha: vague instructions

In Lech lecha, Gd  instructs people: Avram, Hagar. Sometimes the instructions are specific: cut up some animals, name the child Ishmael, circumcise all the males. Other instructions are nebulous: Go forth to the place I will show you. The instructions are followed.

When Avram goes to Canaan, he does not know where he is to go, what he is to  do. He just goes.  Once he starts, he just keeps going.  When the famine strikes, he goes to Egypt.  At that point, he knows that he has gone beyond the boundaries. He has come to an organized civilization, where the monarch can have anything he wants: His possessions, his wife, his life.  Is it the organization of the society that informs Avram that he he will not inherit this land?

What does he do with his wife?  They  will be rewarded/penalized  for her beauty, he will be killed to make her available.   They come to a deception plot: brother and sister. Now he is showered with gifts until the truth is uncovered.  Later, when Sarai says to Avram, in the context of the treatment of Hagar:  "Gd judge between me and you", was this experience part of the  judgement? Did this episode indebt Avram to Sarai?

When Avram rescues Lot, there were no instructions given.  This was an undoing of Cain and Abel.  Avram risks his life ( and his fortune) to rescue someone with whom he has just argued, someone whose values are questionable ( settling in the wealthy, but evil Sodom).  Avram  did what he thought to do.  After the battle, he made up the tithe to Malchizedek

Some of Gd's demands are hard.  Self mutilation ( milah) and cutting on the genitals of every male in the household, including his 13 year old son, Ishmael.  But the uninstructed actions are even harder.  The vague suggestions that we imagine we are hearing from Gd drive us on the path.

It is not all in the rules.

Noah: Selection

This is the parsha of the selection: who will live and who will die.  Among the animals and the birds and the insects, only a remnant will live to repopulate the species.  Gd makes the selection this time.  

Today is Rosh Chodesh ( New Moon)  In the musaf prayer it says " and saves their souls from the hands of the enemy" Gd sometimes saves from the enemy's selection ( like my father)... Sometimes not. 

This parsha also contains the tower of Babel, The stairway to Heaven   The Led Zeppelin  song contains the phrase: " sometimes words have two meanings"   I think that the multiplicity of meanings is the subversion that led to the failure of the tower.   Before the description of the construction of the tower, the text reads: 

א  וַיְהִי כָל-הָאָרֶץ, שָׂפָה אֶחָת, וּדְבָרִים, אֲחָדִים.	1 And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.

Every person understood everyone else.  Every word had one meaning. As the technology evolved, as the hierarchy developed a bureaucracy, the meaning of words became vague.  Thinking became clouded by the ambiguity of meaning.  This is a tremendous current  problem.  In   medicine, words like diagnosis, prognosis, outcome;;; are all ambiguous.  I am sure that the important words in other fields are also less than perfectly clear. 

The multiple meaning of words is applied to the beginning of our parsha:  Noah was a righteous man in his generation.  Had he been in Avraham's generation, perhaps he would not have been selected.  Perhaps vice versa.  Ultimately, we do not know the criteria  for The Selection. 

Bereshith: The Web

Pared down to three letters, the first word of the Torah is רשת, a network, a web.  There was a scaffolding upon which the world was created, an outline, a starting point  It is a place in which we are all trapped

It struck me this year  that תִּשְׁרֵי is included in the word בְּרֵאשִׁית.  It is the month in which we read the beginning if the Torah.  It is the month in which we outline our plan for the coming year. We dwell in the succah, the barest of dwellings.   תִּשְׁרֵי , also contains the implication that it will all be שְׁרֵי, all right. Everything will be correct(ed)  And then there is the homonymous sharia. 

In a web, everything is connected. An act at one node, at  any point in the network, is transmitted everywhere. The implication of any action is so widespread that the ultimate ramifications can never be fathomed. Imagining the consequences is almost  paralytic. 

But we see action. Doing the forbidden, disappointment and murder, oppression.  The web has been shaking since the beginning. The beat goes on. 

The End of Torah

Haazinu: patterns

We always read Haazinu on Shabbath Tshuva, the Shabbath between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. 

the Shabbath when we hope that our resolutions for improvement will result in a favorable year. 

And we read a parsha about an inevitable spiral.  Gd's favor results in complacency that ends in rebellion.  The rebellion leads to defeat by cruel enemies.  The arrogance of the enemies results in their downfall.  Gd's favor returns to Israel

What do we do with the cycle? of course, this describes a national, not a personal cycle.  And the timing of the cycle is not defined.  Perhaps we can hasten the good and delay the bad.   But we are trapped in the cycle.   This is a prophecy of logical sequence.  It becomes the way we view our history. 

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Zoth Habracha: subtlety

There is hardly a veneer of superficial meaning in this parsha.  It is all subtllty, symbolism.  But Moshe"s transgression is prominent.  The failure to glorify Gd at the waters of Meriva. The humblest of men failed to show the necessary humility. 

Now, before Yom Kippur, we examine our deeds, why we do not enter into our rewards.  Our little And, the avoidable errors, the wrong big decisions, the wrong small choices. The failure to do better. What we can reveal to ourselves and what will remain hidden until the death bed.

The bracha is vague to make it more (often) true.  The bracha is a prognosis and a prediction and a prescription

The parsha ends with the fulfillment of the ultimate prediction, the one we bet money on ( life insurance).  It ends with Moshe's death.

Nobody fulfills her full potential.