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Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Lech Lecha Genesis 12:1-17:27
By Shlomo Riskin
Efrat, Israel – : Twice-repeated tales in the Torah
always alert our interpretive, intellec¬tual faculties. In this week’s
portion, Lech Lecha, famine in the Promised Land forces Abraham and Sarah
to head for Egypt. Abraham suddenly understands that Sarah’s beauty
spells danger. “….Now I know that you’re a beautiful woman, and when
the Egyptians will see you, they will say this is his wife and they will
kill me, and you they will keep alive. Please say you are my sister, that
they will be good to me for your sake, and that my soul may live because
of you” (Gen. 12:11-12).
Abraham’s fears prove correct. Sarah is taken to the royal household,
and her ‘brother’ receives gifts of cattle and slaves. But before she
joins the harem, a plague strikes Pharaoh’s court, arousing suspicion
that this woman must be Abraham’s wife, not his sister. Realizing how
close he’s come to violating another man’s wife, Pharaoh sends Abraham
away, flocks and all.
The uncanny similarity between the experiences of Abraham and those of his
son later in Parshat Toldot (Ch. 26), when Isaac and Rebecca head for
Egypt because of famine, illustrates the Torah’s ex¬egetical principle
that “maasei avot siman lebanim” (the occurrences of the fathers are a
sign of what will happen to the sons). But similarities don’t end with
Abraham and Isaac. We find as many, if not more, parallels between Abraham’s
Egyptian so¬journ and the plight of the Children of Israel in Egypt.
Nahmanides (1194-1270) understands that in leav¬ing the land of Israel,
Abraham commits a sin: “It is because of this deed that the Exile in the
land of Egypt at the hand of Pharaoh was decreed for his children”(Gen.
12:10). I would suggest that an even deep¬er connection is to be made
between Abraham and Sarah in Egypt and the Jewish enslavement by the
Egyptians, with major lessons to be learned by us today.
First of all, both Abraham and Jacob leave Israel for Egypt because of a
famine. With Abraham, this departure leads to Sarah’s “enslavement”
in Pharaoh’s harem; with Jacob, this departure even¬tually leads into
the enslavement of the Jews.
Next, Abraham fears that the Egyptians will kill him and take Sarah after
he’s dead. And when Jacob’s descendants multiply in Egypt, Pharaoh
de¬crees that all male Jewish babies shall be cast into the Nile, while
the female babies will be allowed to live.
Third, Abraham finds a way out of danger through his ‘sister’ Sarah.
And Moses is also saved by his sister Miriam when she hides him among the
reeds and the bulrushes. Because of her prophetic vision, it is not an
exaggeration to say that the redemp¬tion of the Jewish people began with
a sister.
Fourth, Pharaoh takes Sarah into his household, his harem, where he
intends to enslave her; sim¬ilarly, Pharaoh takes the Jewish people into
his home, Egypt, where he enslaves them.
Fifth, to thwart Pharaoh’s plans and make sure that Sarah is not
violated, G-d sends plagues, (‘ne¬gaim gedolim,’ 12:17). When G-d
wants to put an end to the Egyptian enslavement, He casts Ten Plagues upon
Egypt.
Sixth, Pharaoh sends Abraham away just as Pharaoh will later send away
Moses. And seventh, when Abraham is packed off, it’s with gifts and
ma¬terial wealth, and when Pharaoh finally declares Moses persona non
grata, his people don’t leave empty-handed, but carry off gold and
silver.
Clearly, from a literary-parallel perspective, Abraham in Egypt
foreshadows the slavery of the Jews. And if we find a moral message in
Abra¬ham’s Egyptian sojourn, then this message reach¬es our ears with
a powerful reverberation since it must first pass through our collective
memory as slaves. By linking Abraham with slavery in Egypt, the Torah is
teaching the generations that Abraham’s sins have a significance beyond
their seeming in¬nocence.
There are two sins, thus two messages, but they are connected. One: Is it
really possible that so soon after entering the Promised Land, the first
famine frightens Abraham? We’re talking about the man who left his
birthplace and his homeland. Has he no faith that G-d will bring rain? Has
he not faith that he will be able to “make it” in Israel despite
financial hardship? Abraham sinned, and the moral lesson to be learned is:
never leave Israel. If we seem¬ingly can’t make it in our own land, won’t
it be much more difficult to make it in a land in which we are strangers?
Two: It’s one thing to save your own life by claiming that your wife is
really your sister, but can you risk someone else’s life in order to
save your own, because there is no question but that Sarah faced a degree
of risk inside the harem! But what really compounds Abraham’s plan is
when he adds, “..they will be good to me for your sake”. Apparently
Abraham anticipates that Pharaoh will be good to him because Sarah is
beautiful and harem-bound. Even if the profit he reaps was not his ab
initio choice, nevertheless Sarah is still being used to further Abraham’s
own ends. Moral lesson: our human and especially familial relationships
must be devoid of any of the subtle ways used in taking advantage of
another, even if it’s done non-intentionally. Even more than this: We
often tend to forget that each person is his own ultimate reality, an end
unto himself, and that using someone as a means for our ends enslaves
them. And this even includes one’s spouse and one’s children. This is
why the experience of slavery has been seared into our deepest Jewish
consciousness.
Hence, we must learn from Abraham’s experience to live in our homeland
even when it is not easy to do so. And that we must be faithful to our
loved ones even when it is to our disadvantage. We must always see our
friends and family members as subjects in their own right rather than as
objects of our will or even as extensions of ourselves. As Martin Buber
masterfully taught, we must deal with human beings from the perspective of
“I / you” rather than as “I/it”. Four thousand years after
Abraham, have we learned these lessons? Have we internalized them?
Shabbat Shalom
Shlomo Riskin
Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone
Chief Rabbi - Efrat Israel
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