Prequel or Re-Make?
Prequel or Re-Make?
Lech Lecha: Glimpsing the Beyond and Finding the Self
Everybody is interested in a good genesis story, yet conspicuously the written Torah doesn't supply one for Avraham. Instead, Parshas Lech Lecha introduces us to a theologically mature man already conversing with God. A deluge of "started from the bottom, look at me now" style narratives may saturate the current mass media market. Still, surely there could be nothing more urgent than what commentators see as the ultimate discovery of meaning?
There is an oft-cited Midrash that young Avraham looked up at the sun and thought of it as a God. But then night fell, and the moon took its place in the heavens. In due time he realised that there must be a higher imperceivable entity pulling the strings.
This Midrash, as well as others, leaves the nature of Avraham's metaphysical search open to broad interpretation. Indeed the panoply of biblical commentators imagines his process as anything from rational to mystical to emotional intuition.
If we were poetically inclined and would hazard to address Avraham's query, it would probably look something like this verse in Isaiah:
"Lift high your eyes and see:
Who created these?
He who sends out their host by count,
Who calls them each by name:
Because of His great might and vast power,
Not one fails to appear." {Isaiha 40}
From here, Rabbi Yaakov Leiner of Ishbitz homiletically understands that God's name is the paradoxical 'who.' He is a question that is also an answer.
But how does one come into spiritual dialogue with this God?
Rabbi Leiner answers that every element of the world is composed of two forces in a way that the inherent duality of existence engages us to set our sights on the supreme one above. Kabalah speaks of the masculine and feminine. In popular parlance, we could refer to Jung's Anima and Animus or, in Physics, special relativity versus Quantum theory. The polarity inherent in nature is abundantly clear.
Rabbi Leiner's interpretation of Isaiah sheds profound light on Avraham's quest for religious meaning. Religion is an answer that retains relevance only if we look at the world with sustained wonder. Without the latter, faith becomes a mere sacred metaphysics that we superimpose onto our unyielding selves.
As the Midrash expands the pre-Lech Lecha narrative, Avraham and his brother Charan are willing to sacrifice their lives for monotheism by jumping into King Nimrod's fiery furnace. Avraham walked away unscathed whilst Charan expired, consumed in flames; why?
Charan's faith was mimetic. He was mimicking Avraham's outer edifice rather than establishing inner foundations.
He was trying to be the Avraham 2.0, the Avraham re-make, and everyone knows that Re-Makes are soulless.
A perfect imitation of a Van Gough painting will fetch comparative pennies to the original; the artwork lacks the reservoir of personality behind it.
Avraham's attachment to his faith is of a separate dimension to that of Charans. This distinction can be related to how the Vilna Gaon majestically conceptualises the concept of a 'Bris' or covenant between God and us. When the Torah describes participants entering a covenant, the 'Bris' between the individuals is said to have been cut. The Torah's depiction of a covenantal vow and the physical reality of a 'Bris Milah' circumcision symbolise a dependence built off an acknowledged lack. We are missing a piece of ourselves without a connection with God. The latter is a relationship of another magnitude altogether.
An Ikea tabletop with sockets for the legs to be inserted will be more sturdy than my woodwork class stool, whose legs I attached with gallons of gorilla super glue. Why? The Ikea table has a lack which is being filled, whilst I had superficially imposed the legs of my stool.
We can see now that Avraham perceives a dialectic between opposing forces, not as a philosophical argument but as a sense of mystery and awe. It was a process of tuning his ear to the frequency of God's 'still, small voice' speaking to him.
In Avraham's approach, one senses the difference between a reductionist and an expansive worldview. Many 'new atheists' ignore that anything becomes mundane when broken into its essential parts. Take our earlier Van Gough painting versus its imitation; they are identical entities when reduced to their individual paint strokes. But just as all good art exudes the personality of its painter, the universe expresses a purpose beyond itself.
Because of the mystery and awe essential to the spiritual quest, our Torah doesn't prescribe an Avraham prequel as a road map to meaning. Our search is too deeply personal. Although we must listen to others' guidance to build a connection with God, ultimately, only you can navigate the path to nurturing a genuine relationship.
One of the reasons I am sceptical of the 'self-help' genre is its basic assumption that there is a cookie-cutter fix for every struggle. When we treat the advice of famous figures as cannon, we invariably abandon our true selves in a headlong race to be 'like everyone else'. Such a life does not and cannot support tolerance for reflection and wonder. Ironically the 'culture' only compounds our generation's lack of self. Civilisation has morphed into what Huxley {an author who imagined a dystopian world of forced conformity} might have called a world of standardised, mass-produced normal human beings.
A Chassid once asked the Rebbe Of Kotzk, "Where does God reside?" he profoundly answered, "wherever you let him in". To authentically find meaning in our lives, we must first discover that unique space inside us that only God can fill. We are retrieving the missing piece of our searching soul's puzzle.
The Mystics analogise the Jewish Neshama to God's inner breath; our genuine identity is inextricably tied to our creator. We can read Lech Lecha literally as 'go to yourself.' The journey is imperative, but as we see in this week's Parsha, the destination is unknown.
Good Shabbos