Sermon Archives

Family, Nation, Kehilah

I vividly remember pushing Noam in a stroller in a crowded Washington Heights pharmacy on a Friday afternoon when he was perhaps four months old. I turned a corner and his stroller bumped into another stroller inhabited by a baby Noam’s age. The woman pushing the stroller saw Noam and exclaimed to the baby in her care, “Pinny! Look, it’s your friend Noam! Say hi to Noam!” 

The babies stared at each other. I looked at the babies staring at each other and eventually introduced myself to the woman who was pushing Pinny’s stroller, “I’m Noam’s father.” She introduced herself to me. She was Pinny’s nanny and was friends with one of Noam’s babysitters and they all spent a lot of time together during the week.

It usually takes longer than four months, but there is a transition that we go through as we mature in which people identify us as our parents' children, then we become known in our own right, and eventually we are known as our children’s parents. And, of course, we can be known in different ways in different contexts. I tell my children that I am very famous between 16th Street and Alaska Avenue. And perhaps that hyper-local fame casts a shadow on their identities. But, I loved being referred to as Noam’s father, that afternoon in the pharmacy and I love it to this day whenever I am introduced as the parent of one of our children.

Pararashat Noach contains the first chapter of the story of Avraham and Sarah. There will be thousands of divrei Torah next week about God’s selection of Avraham, about Avraham and Sarah’s leap of faith, about their journey from their homeland  to Eretz Canaan, and about their iconoclasm. Don’t forget, should you happen to hear one of those divrei torah next week, (perhaps even from me),  that the story begins this week and it begins with a distinct form of family created by Terach. 
 

וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת תֶּ֔רַח תֶּ֚רַח הוֹלִ֣יד אֶת־אַבְרָ֔ם אֶת־נָח֖וֹר וְאֶת־הָרָ֑ן וְהָרָ֖ן הוֹלִ֥יד אֶת־לֽוֹט׃

These are the generations of Terach - note that Terach and his family are sufficiently significant in their own right to warrant one of only ten occasions in Sefer Bereishit where the Torah pauses to introduce an important genealogy with the rare phrase וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת תֶּ֔רַח. 

There are twenty four generations named in Sefer Bereishit, but only ten verses where the phrase appears. Those moments are pivots, places where the Torah’s attention turns from one focus to the next. 

Terach’s three sons are listed in his genealogy  along with Terach's only grandson Lot. 

Already this family stands out from every other family in the Torah. Terach is the only individual in the Torah who named a child, Nachor, after that child’s grandparent. In fact, Nachor is the only individual in the Torah who shares a name with his ancestor. 

How many of you named a child after a grandparent or are yourselves named after a grandparent? Only one person in the Torah did that.

What is the meaning of Nachor sharing a name with his own grandfather? Terach valued intergenerational family relationships. He named his son after his father and then the Torah itself includes Terah’s own grandson Lot in the Torah’s description of Terach’s genealogy. 

Only in Divrei HaYamim - the Book of Chronicles which completes Tanakh, do we find a handful of individuals who seem to share a name with their distant ancestors. Terach stands out for his unique devotion to build a blended family that spans three generations. 

Terach’s story then takes a tragic direction, Avraham’s wife is revealed to be barren, and Terach’s son Haran dies in the family’s ancestral homeland of Ur Casdim. Lot, Terach’s only grandson, is orphaned.

וַיִּקַּ֨ח תֶּ֜רַח אֶת־אַבְרָ֣ם בְּנ֗וֹ וְאֶת־ל֤וֹט בֶּן־הָרָן֙ בֶּן־בְּנ֔וֹ וְאֵת֙ שָׂרַ֣י כַּלָּת֔וֹ אֵ֖שֶׁת אַבְרָ֣ם בְּנ֑וֹ וַיֵּצְא֨וּ אִתָּ֜ם מֵא֣וּר כַּשְׂדִּ֗ים לָלֶ֙כֶת֙ אַ֣רְצָה כְּנַ֔עַן וַיָּבֹ֥אוּ עַד־חָרָ֖ן וַיֵּ֥שְׁבוּ שָֽׁם׃ 

And then Terach embarks on a journey. He takes Avram, his son, and Lot his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter -in-law, Avram’s wife, and they all leave their homeland to journey to the Land of Canaan. And they reach Charan and settle there.

Charan is midway between Ur Casdim and Eretz Canaan when you remember that the travel route between Mesepotamia and Eretz Yisrael was along the fertile crescent and went north through Syria rather than straight across the open Arabian desert.

Next week, when we read Parsaht Lekh Lekha, we will be reading about Avraham completing a journey that his father initiated. 

The first implication of this hidden first chapter in the story of Avraham is one of the most significant ideas that I learned from Rabbi Chaim Brovender, my first rosh yeshiva. Avraham was on his way to Eretz Canaan before he heard the voice of God. And he was journeying to Eretz Canaan after he heard the voice of God. To an outside observer there may have been no discernable difference. Living our lives in the presence of God does not necessarily entail a dramatic outward change. Fundamentally and essentially, being in a relationship with God  is an internal change which then animates subsequent external changes. 

But this week, I am struck by the Torah’s revealing so much about Avraham’s family life back in Mesopotamia. Avraham’s family is a multigenerational blended family. Terach, names a son after his father and then adopts his grandson. Terach brings three generations of his family and his daughter-in-law as well on a migration from their homeland. 

Next week we will learn that Avraham takes Lot along with him to Eretz Canaan and that becomes one of the most fraught and significant relationships in Avraham’s life. Along the way to the emergence of Yitzhak as the inheritor of the mission of Avraham and Sarah, it is Lot who comes the closest to being Avraham’s successor, and perhaps it was Lot who disappoints his surrogate father the most.

But we are only introduced to Lot in this week’s parasha, we have two more weeks at least to contemplate his character and, ultimately that story does not end until his great, great, great granddaughter Ruth returns to Bet Lehem and becomes the ancestor of David.

This week I am thinking about how so many of us  - how I have been - shaped, not only by the love and guidance of my parents but by extended networks of friends and family. 

Some of you know that I left DC on Wednesday to attend a funeral and participate in the burial of my mother’s best friend of the past fifty-seven years. At the funeral, I reflected on what it means to grow up with the knowledge of unconditional  love from my parents and to also feel unconditional love from their closest friends as well. I’ve stood beside a lot of mourners at a lot of funerals but our capacity to offer support is amplified when we are able to hug a friend we have known for our entire lives.  The passage of time and the deep relationships that ensue enable additional facets of supportive presence. Most funerals I attend feature Psalm 23. On Wednesday I heard it recited by a grieving husband and remembered watching him mouth the words along with me when I stood at my own father’s funeral more than thirty years ago.

Recently, I had occasion to share with some of you how much I cherish, and am intimidated by, the example of my father-in-law z’l, who would invite the most lonely and needy schleppers he picked up in shul to join his family for Shabbat dinner because he truly believed that the Torah was true and its mitzvot were obligatory and maybe that shlepper was Eliyahu HaNavi and 7 out of 10 times this worked out very well for Sara’s family and 3 out of 10 times things got a bit unpleasant or scary.  I am so fortunate to have known how excited he was for me to marry his daughter, and for encountering his example of hospitality before Sara and I began our own lives as hosts. Just like Sarah Immeinu, my in-laws were role models for the radical forms of hospitality that the Torah prescribes.  

The Jewish community, and the Orthodox community in particular, takes a lot of pride in the tenacity with which Jewish parents convey love to our children and pass the Torah into their hands along with that love. Avraham and Sarah’s decades-long struggle to do just that becomes the Torah reading on Rosh Hashanah, heard live by more Jews than any other selection from the Torah. But Avraham’s family of origin was not a nuclear family. It was a multi-generational blended family. And, at their best, Jewish communities envelope adults and children in a network of love and support and kind rebuke and friendly encouragement that allows all of us to reach our potential as human beings. 

Sefer Bereishit is the story of a family being transformed into a nation. Watch for that transition in the coming weeks and pay attention to the moments when the Torah describes subtle shifts in our ways of interacting with one another and the ways in which we come to care about one another and take responsibility for one another. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is Kayin’s unanswered rhetorical question from the first chapters of Sefer Bereishit and the book cannot end until someone answers that question with the only acceptable answer. 

(The answer, by the way is “yes.”)

In between a family and a nation is a kehillah, a congregation or community. Avraham’s family of origin prepared him and prepares us to form bonds of love and concern and care for one another without regard to biological or familiar ties. Just as we are known in some places as our parents' children or as our children’s parents or as brothers or sisters to our siblings, we are known by the people we daven alongside! It’s a great card to deploy in Jewish geography: “I sit next to him in shul” or “she sits in the row behind me.”

I’ll do one: Do you remember Paul Schafer - David Letterman’s band leader? He davened for the amud at my shul when I was in high school and he was saying Kaddish. I had no idea who he was at the time. I was surprised the first time I saw that this guy I davened with was on TV every night.

But, as with everything in life, the more you invest, the more you will benefit. If there are people you recognize from shul whose names you don’t know, introduce yourself. I promise it isn’t awkward. If there are people you only know by name, chat with them at kiddush or invite them for a Shabbat meal and get to know them. Sign up to attend the new members dinner next week and help include the newest members of this community into our growing network of love and support. 

This has been my third holiday season at Ohev Sholom. And now, just about wherever I go, when I share where I live and work, people say, “Oh, do you know so-and-so? I think they daven at that shul.”

And I say, “yes I do.”

Shabbat Shalom.