From your land, Your Birthplace, Your Father’s House
Avraham is commanded to set out on a journey from his homeland and birthplace to an unfamiliar land, but the command is worded in a strange way (Genesis 12:1). It is not clear why God needs to specify the point of departure in such detail (“your land”, “your birth place”, and “your father’s house”), whereas in stark contrast, the destination point is vague and obscure (the land that I will show you”).
The Midrash explains that the multiplicity of descriptions of the place left behind serves to emphasize the sacrifice that comes with leaving (See Genesis Rabba, Lekh Lekha 39: 9).
Avraham sets out to leave his country – from his place of national and ethnic affiliation, from his neighborhood and the camaraderie of community, and from his close family – from the warmth of his familiar roof and hearth. God has not yet revealed Avraham’s destination. Accordng to the Midrash, the purpose of obscuring the destination is to infuse meaning into the journey itself – to the essence of moving forward and moving away: "…And why didn’t He reveal it to him? In order to grant a reward for each and every step” (Ibid.).
The Torah presents the experiences of disengagement and searching at the forefront of the text. The Yalkut Shimoni midrashic compendium offers an opposing view:
Rabbi Yitzhak said: Consider the analogy of someone who traveled from place to place and saw a burning fortress.
He said: this fortress must be lacking an owner!
The master of the fortress looked at him and said: I am the master of this fortress.
So too, Avraham our forefather considered that the world had no leader. God looked at him and said: I am the master of the world. (Yalkut Shimoni 247)
Avraham had been busy searching before God commands him to set out. Following his wandering, God sends him to continue pondering and wondering – to follow his curiosity, and to leave his land and birthplace. The Yalkut Shimoni does not mention the purpose of the journey or the Land of Canaan at all; the only thing mentioned is that the response to Avraham’s doubts is provided via the journey itself.
The Sefat Emet emphasizes the self-sacrifice bound up with the journeying process demanded of Avraham. “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, from your father’s house” – the repetition here is reminiscent of the commandment to love God “with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your might.” According to the Sefat Emet, Avraham is asked to give up on everything that is precious and dear to him in order to arrive at a place of perfect faith in God; in order to develop correct attitudes. As with the Yalkut Shimoni, the Sefat Emet sees the emphasis of the biblical verses as focusing not on the loftiness of the Land of Israel, but on the great relinquishment and on the required process and journey.
In other words, the Midrashim and the commentary of the Sefat Emet argue that the Torah’s instructions are first to “turn from evil” and then to “do good.”
As I read the verses, ideas came to mind that go in a different direction from the above. Avraham’s doubts could be responded to in two ways: “go there” or “go away from here.” God chooses not the first way, but the second way. This serves as a reminder to Avraham that every journey to a given location is also a journey away from somewhere. By returning to the departure point and emphasizing its different features, the Torah points our attention tward the baggage and the world of associations that Avraham is taking along on his journey. The goal is not disengagement, but connection – connection between worlds. Avraham is asked to broaden his horizons, to widen his world, to live in a continuing dialectical conflict of oscillation between two poles, to forever be bifurcated in his worldview. The society closest to Avraham’s heart will be heterogeneous. At times he will have to find balance between the two poles that influence his life, and at times he will be torn between them. His life will now be found between human justice and self-negation in the face of the Divine imperative; between liberty and humility, between the power of charisma and the recognition of the “Master of the fortress”, between unmediated nature of the world, and the knowledge of meaningful existence, between universalism and particularism.
The personality of Avraham is one of a role model for the Jewish people. Rabbi Dr. J.B. Soloveitchik, in his book From the Depths, writes about a dual mission and burden: to further the dignity of humanity, as well as maintaining the sanctity of the covenantal community. “We are called by God who revealed Himself on the level of universalistic creation, and also that of the unique particularistic covenant, to accept up on us a dual mission, human universalism and the singular confrontation of the covenant” (From the Depths [Mima’amakim], p. 82).
Avraham’s inner conflicts and fragments of memories of his father’s house continue to guide us today, during the big crises of yearning for the principles of natural morality to be actualized, and at times of wonderment at the need to sacrifice these principles on the altar of halakha and mitzvot. Most of all, they guide us in the clear appraisal of the necessary balance between these two sides, amidst hope and prayer that we, too, will be noticed by the “Master of the fortress.”