LECH LECHA
Lech Lecha, Go! Or Go into yourself, (Genesis Chapters 12-17) is the first parsha about Abraham. It takes us from the time he leaves his father’s house up until the promise of the birth of Isaac. It includes a tour of Canaan, a brief sojourn in Egypt where he pimps out Sarai, an out of character chapter on him as a warrior. We have the birth of Ishmael, the commandment to circumcise males as a rite of passage into the tribe, and the changing of Abram and Sarai’s name to Abraham and Sarah. A theme throughout the parsha is that Abram will be blessed and his descendants will be a great nation.
I want to discuss four themes.
Trees as teachers
Pilgrimage
How connect with the divine
Changing of names.
Trees as teachers. The parsha’s opening words, Lech Lecha, can be translated as get going or something more like go into yourself, to dig deep into who you are. So Abram gets up and goes from Haran and literally the first place he stopped was alon moreh. Alon Moreh, as I learned from R. Zelig Golden, literally means “Teaching Tree.” I’ve read translations that include the “plain of Moreh (Artscroll) or “terebinth of Moreh” (JPS). These translations miss the fact that Moreh means teacher. It’s an easy interpretation to say that Abram is told to go deep into himself, and the first place he stops (along with his whole entourage) is a teaching tree.
One possible interpretation is that Alon Moreh refers to a sacred place where one can learn great mysteries. The place is made sacred by the sacred grove. Sacred groves as places of mystery and learning are common in indigenous practice. It is also possible (and these are not contradictory possibilities) that the place is named after a tree who teaches.
If you have never learned from a tree—now is a great time to learn this practice. Wander in some woods and find a tree to which you are drawn. Ask permission to sit and hang out with the tree (that’s good manners—you shouldn’t walk into someone’s house and start talking without being invited). Be with the tree. Share back and forth. It will feel a bit silly, but stick with it. Another practice is to sit in the woods and ask yourself what you can learn from the trees around you. How do the trees be in the world? What are the lessons for you?
Lest you think this is too weird and not Jewish, the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria believed that trees were resting places for souls. He performed a tree ritual in the month of Nisan to redeem souls who were caught in trees. (Howard Schwartz Tree of Souls, p. 165.) Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav, the originator of Hitbodedut, was once staying in an inn and cried out loudly enough in his sleep that he woke up the whole place. He asked the innkeeper if the walls were made from trees that had been cut down as saplings before they were mature, and the innkeeper said yes. Then Rabbi Nachman said: “All night I dreamed I was surrounded by the bodies of those who had been murdered. I was very frightened. Now I know that it was the souls of the trees that cried out to me.” (ibid) So if talking and listening to trees is good enough for the Ari and Nachman, we too can be with trees and listen to them.
Nachman asserts that trees have souls, just like humans. That they can be murdered, just like humans. This is a statement of the philosophy of Animism, that all beings are alive and have equal ontological status, we are all just differently bodied. Imagine if we lived in a world where the clear cutters of a forest could be tried in court for murder of premature trees, or the different kind of creepy crawlies that depend on a diverse age forest. That would be a different world.
How can trees be teachers for us? Do you believe that trees have souls? What are the implications of believing that they do and what are the implications of believing that they do not? If you’ve ever engaged in a conversation with a tree or a grove, what did you learn?
Pilgrimage. Pilgrimages are trips to sacred spots in order to experience sacred power. They are common in indigenous cultures. Pilgrimages can be transformative both because of the experience of sacred power in the power spot, and because of the journey itself in which the pilgrim often experiences a special kind of community and/or has an opportunity to put aside all of his/her worldly concerns and change his/her focus to the sacred. Abram’s trip to Canaan (12:6-10) sounds a lot like a pilgrimage to me that marks out a sacred route to sacred power spots.
It’s eminently reasonable to construe the trip as a simple tour of the land which the divine had just promised him. However, Abram builds two altars at different spots along the tour for no stated reason. When he builds the second altar, he calls upon the name of YHVH, the first time he does that. One spot is Alon Moreh (12:7) and the other is between Beth El to the West and the Ai (hey, ayin, yood) to the east. (12:8). Beth El means the house of God and I can’t find what Ai means, though it might mean “ruin.”
We have viewed Jerusalem as a spot filled with sacred power, and that certainly has been my experience. Biblical Jews were commanded to make three annual pilgrimages at Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot to experience this sacred power. And the power of a beloved community. Jerusalem as a center of Jewish life post dates our arrival in the land, because Jerusalem was originally controlled by the Jebusites until it was conquered by David. I am speculating, but I would guess that this pilgrimage tradition predates the command.
Why is any of this important and why am I including it? I think that one characteristic of indigenous religiosity is a sensitivity to sacred space, a sensitivity that is suppressed in Judaism after the destruction of the Temple. Indeed Abraham Joshua Heschel, a very popular Jewish theologian, declares Judaism a religion of sacred time and denigrates sacred space. But I think that a sensitivity to sacred space is crucial if we are to repair our relationship with the more than human world. Because the more than human world is always place based—there is no such thing for a bird as an abstract sky; there is only the specific sky through which s/he flies.
Have you ever been to a place where you felt sacred power? Sacred power spots are teachers. What lessons, if any, did you learn?
How connect with the divine. Up to now, when the divine interacts with a person, it is presented as a simple conversation. 7:1 “Then YHVH said to Noah, go into the ark with all your household, for you alone have I found righteous in your generation.” Or 13:14 “And YHVH said to Abram, after Lot had parted from him, “Raise up your eyes and look out from where you are.” I want to highlight the word of YHVH coming to Abram in a vision and then the performance of a ritual that leads to a deep trance and another vision.
“YHVH’s work came to Abram in a vision” (15:1). This is the language that will be used later on when the prophets have visions. Childless, middle aged Abram is told that his descendants will be as number as the stars. Abram is not very confident that what YHVH tells him will actually come to pass, so he basically asks how he can be sure. (15:3,8) The divine tells him to perform this ritual where he cuts all these animals in half and puts a half on each side. At least as I can make sense of the text, this ritual leads him into a deep trance at night where he sees the future, including the exile to Egypt, the return to the land, and that Abram himself will live to a ripe old age and die in peace. The vision concludes with a smoking oven and a flaming torch passing between the pieces of the animals (15:9-17). To me, a key verse is 15:12 “As the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great dark dread descended upon him.” It’s possible to interpret this as Abram simply falling asleep and having a vision, but I think it is something more than just falling asleep.
Again, why is this important? If my interpretation is correct that Abram enters a trance, trances take us out of our everyday consciousness and to different realms. This sense of different realms is at the heart of the experience of the sacred. If we cannot experience these other realms, then our religious behavior involves taking on faith the existence of these realms based on what some human says to us, rather than relating to the experience of the sacred through our own experience.
When we studied this text in 5783 (2023), one of the participants said that it sounded like a divination ritual to her. That seems plausible to me, given that Abram is predicting/seeing his future. Divination always involves access to some other realm, since we can’t experience or truly know the future in our ordinary consciousness; we can only speculate on it.
Have you ever had any experience with trance? Was there anything revealed to you in your trance? How was that revelation “caught” by someone—that is, did you relay your experience and what was their reaction? In a well functioning society, such sacred experiences would be validated by elders who would help make sense of what can be confusing visions.
Name Changes. Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah in Chapter 17. 17:5 “And you shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I make you the father of a multitude of nations.” Sarai’s name is changed in verse 15 to Sarah. The usual commentary is that the name change adds a letter from the name of the divine as a sign of favor.
Names are powerful. Jews are given Hebrew names at birth in addition to vernacular names as a way to bind ourselves to our people, including our ancestors. In Ashkenazi Jewish practice, there have been periods where it has been a frequent enough practice to change the name of someone who is ill in order that the angel of death can’t find them and so avoid having them die. But you wouldn’t change your name if you already knew you were going to recover. Here it is like the name change is because their old names aren’t sufficient to their new exalted status, almost as if the added “H” is akin to being named Sir Paul McCartney instead of just plain Paul.
There’s no apparent reason for the name change. Abram just appears to be hanging out and God appears to Abram. Abram falls on his face and the divine tells him that he is adding a “hey” to his name while also telling him that he will become a great nation.
The most famous example of a name change in the Hebrew Bible is of course Jacob becoming Israel (Genesis 32:29) and that came about as a result of Jacob’s actions and his request. Israel means God wrestler, and thus the change reflects something about Jacob. Israel is what Bill Plotkin would call a “mythopoetic identity” that is a statement of who you are in the deepest sense that you discover through intense spiritual practice. But that’s not what seems to be happening with Abraham and Sarah.
I want to expand the discussion of alternative names because in our society you can have an alternative identity that is not accompanied by a name change. We think we know what people are really about, but maybe the teacher really lives for her garden or the guy who works at the local convenience store is a really talented artist and they both have chosen to not particularly publicize their passion for any number of reasons. These passions might be who they are at a deepest level, far more than their social identities in terms of work or family
Do you have an alternative name? Did you take it yourself, or was it, in some sense, given to you? How significant is the alternative name to you? Do you have a passion that reflects your true self? If you were to give it a name, what would it be?
QUESTIONS
How can trees be teachers for us? Do you believe that trees have souls? What are the implications of believing that they do and what are the implications of believing that they do not? If you’ve ever engaged in a conversation with a tree or a grove, what did you learn?
Have you ever been to a place where you felt sacred power? What lessons, if any did you learn?
Have you ever had any experience with trance? Was there anything revealed to you in your trance? How was that revelation “caught” by someone—that is, did you relay your experience and what was their reaction?
Do you have an alternative name? Did you take it yourself, or was it, in some sense, given to you? How significant is the alternative name to you? Do you have a passion that reflects your true self? If you were to give it a name, what would it be?
