Radical Disruption and the Birth of Faith

So, I don’t know about you, Rabbi. I woke up this morning (after the re-election of Donald Trump) and my world was in chaos.

Adam Mintz (00:58.113)

I think it’s going to be a chaos that’s going to last for a long time. So, we better learn today and figure out how to deal with chaos.

Geoffrey Stern (01:05.924)

So, it also occurred to me that we’re starting to read the story of Abraham, actually he’s still called Avram. And he is, as I said in the intro, the founder of the Abrahamic religions and faiths. And if you do your math, that’s Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And if you look at other, I don’t know whether they’re called organized religions or universal type religions like Buddhism.

where you have Siddhartha, who discovered God on his own. This is a kind of a seminal type of story where we have the birth of faith, where someone for whatever reason discovers God, the spirit, and starts a movement. And from that perspective, it is absolutely fascinating. And we’re here in the third parsha of Bereshit. We’re moving right along. So, let’s go right to

Genesis 12 and it says, God said to Abraham, go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you and I will make you a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you shall be blessed. I will bless those who bless you.

and curse those who curse you and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. So already we have this sense of going on an adventure, going on a journey, taking the whole world with you. gets universal right from the get-go. You’re not only leaving your home, your parents, everything behind, but you’re going on a journey that

the world will be affected by, you will be blessed by the whole world. Abraham went forth as God had commanded him and Lot went with him. Abraham was 75 years old when he left Haran. Abraham took his wife Sarai and his brothers son Lot and all the wealth that they had amassed and the persons that they had acquired in Haran and they set out for the land of Canaan when they arrived in the land of Canaan.

Geoffrey Stern (03:30.074)

So, I could not this year, but notice this whole lech l’cha, we kind of all look at what the midrash says, what does it mean to “go to yourself”, but at the most basic level, this begins with a journey. It’s kind of like last week when we started with the story of Babel, it says, they moved into the Valley of Shinar We did an episode with the meraglim (Biblical Scouts), about this book (by Josh Levinson) about the mirror to understanding the whole Torah is understanding this journeying.. going on a trip. But because the Bible, the Torah is written so beautifully, it really parses every component of taking that trip. The Ramban says, out of my country and from my birthplace.

The reason for mentioning out of my country and from my birthplace and from my father’s house and not to just say he left home is it is difficult for a person to leave the country where he dwells, where he has his friends and companions. This is true all the more so if this is your native land and all the more if his whole family is there. Hence it became necessary to say to Abraham that he would leave for the sake of God.

So really the Ramban is just amplifying the text, but the text is the one that in a staccato fashion is saying, he didn’t just leave, he left his country, he left his birthplace, he left his family. It really is making that impact, is it not?

Adam Mintz (05:09.093)

He left everything. The key is he left everything behind. Went to a place that he had nothing.

Geoffrey Stern (05:18.77)

You know, I agree with you and it does say, El Haaretz Asher Ani Arekha to the land that I will show you, but I think clearly the emphasis is more on the leaving than on the going to.

Adam Mintz (05:31.448)

Yeah, well, the going is so unclear, right? He doesn’t know where he’s going to. Where he’s going is based on trust me.

Geoffrey Stern (05:43.603)

I guess the Bereshit Rabbah says again, similar to the Ramban, Bereshit Rabba says, Rabbi Yohanan said, go you from your land, from your district and from your birthplace. This means your neighborhood and from your father’s house and means from your father’s household. Why did he not reveal it, meaning the destination, that’s talking to the point we just discussed, to make it endearing, to actually give him a Schar mitzvah.

Adam Mintz (06:05.976)

Okay.

Geoffrey Stern (06:34.012)

for each one of these leavings. But there is no question of my mind, Rabbi. The key at this point is not so much where he’s going, it’s that he’s leaving. And the other thing is that unlike the other great stories in the world like the Odessey, he’s not leaving to return. This is not one of these myths where he goes out in the Odyssey and he comes back. He is leaving.

Adam Mintz (07:04.428)

That’s a very important point. He’s leaving not to return. That’s what’s disruptive about it. If you take a trip, you think about trips, right? So, you always know you’re coming home. So, whether the trip is a good trip or a bad trip, the trip you’re looking forward to, but that’s okay, because I’m coming home in a week. But if you’re not going to come home, that’s a very scary trip. And I think that’s…

point is a good point and that’s probably what the Ramban means when he makes the point that he left everything. That is very disruptive to leave everything.

Geoffrey Stern (07:40.964)

Absolutely. Now in the next Rashi, I really thought of you Rabbi. Because if you noticed, it says that he left with all of his belongings and the souls that they had gotten in Haran. What’s the Hebrew that it says, Asher asu b’Haran. It’s not even gotten, it’s which they made. And Rashi says the souls which he had brought beneath the sheltering wings of the shekinah,

Abraham converted the men and Sarah converted the women and scripture accounts unto them as if they had made them. This is Genesis, Rabbah So first of all, Rabbi, you are making a lot of beautiful, beautiful nishamot. And this, this Rashi has to resonate with you. And that made me think of you.

Adam Mintz (08:33.993)

This is the Rashi which is the source of all conversion. The very first time that we mention it. Avraham M’gayer the anashim. Now it’s interesting because I convert women too. And it seems according to this Rashi that I should let Sharon (my wife) convert the women.

Geoffrey Stern (08:48.174)

Okay, we modernize things. But what it said to me, besides making me think of you, what it said to me was that truly this was a movement. He was leaving behind his everything that he had and he was moving on, but he wasn’t going by himself. He already had followers.

Geoffrey Stern (09:18.628)

You could stop right here and say, well, what kind of a journey is this? Is he a refugee? Is he an explorer, an opportunist, a traveler, a truth seeker, a colonist? I mean, it’s really the focus is on the moving out. And I would have to say of every parsha, these two words are not simply the first two words of the Pasha. Lech L’cha is iconic, it’s a bumper sticker. It really…

is a de facto recognition of this amazing revolutionary mission, I would say. So, this is kind of fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern (10:03.824)

Later on in the Pasha, we’re starting to see there were some fights between kings, Lot is kidnapped. There is turbulence going on in the area. And before I get to the point I want to make, which is,

what he has called, again, people don’t leave their home rabbi unless there’s major disruption. You know, the Irish came (to America) because of the potato famine. Many Jews came to America because of the pogroms. People just don’t get up and leave. This is also a sense, just like last week we had a sense of the Tower of Babel, that there was something going on. Here there was a definite sense that there was a cause for him to leave. And I think that’s important too.

But while it talks about this war, the people that come to Abraham, Abram, to tell him that his nephew has been captured, they refer to him as the Hebrew, the Ivri. And so, you could definitely think in terms of Hebrew and Ivri as the name of the nationality. Of course, he’s not called the Canaanite.

and he’s not called a Harannik. So where is this place called Hebrew? Where is this place called Ivri? So, to quote just one of the many commentaries, our old friend Shadal, Shadal talks about refugee. That Ivri means for the other side of the river, from the other side of the track, so to speak. So, he talks about it, a palit, which is a refugee. And he really talks about sh’haya nahri bar’aretz. He was a stranger in the land. And that clearly is part of what we’re talking about. But Rabbi, there’s something that I’ve talked about before.

this concept of something was going on in the Middle East in the Fertile Crescent then, and it was rebellion. And there were people called Apiru. Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Rabbi, but I recently purchased this, a Koren Tanach.

Adam Mintz (12:42.47)

Its great, isn’t it? It’s amazing.

Geoffrey Stern (12:51.118)

It absolutely is. And I have quoted in it where, and I think what it does is for those of you who haven’t seen it before, it’s called the Koren Tanach of the Land of Israel. And similar to www.thetorah.com , it looks at the Parshiyot and the Hebrew Bible from modern scholarship, archeology, textual analysis, but it also is written by…

observant Jews. It says that right from the beginning. So, it’s kind of fascinating that it takes the best of scholarship and believes like we do, Rabbi, that there’s really no conflict. In this particular case, it says some scholars identify the term Ivri with the designation A-Pi-Ru, because b and p sound are often interchangeable in regional languages and its variants.

known from Sumer, Babylon, Anatolia, and Egypt, which refer to various groups throughout the second millennium BCE. And what about these people is fascinating is first of all, it’s derogatory, has a derogatory sense to it. It also refers to a violent person. The West Semitic group means someone restless. The term refers to lower class group migrants disrupt the social order.

Adam Mintz (14:01.261)

Right.

Geoffrey Stern (14:14.554)

a bothersome underclass of outsiders. So, this really kind of puts within brackets this whole lech L’cha. This guy Abraham was leaving his homeland, he might’ve been kicked out. We’re gonna see some of them in the Midrash. He was a rebel. He was a rebel with a cause, but it really, whether it’s…

Adam Mintz (14:28.675)

Right.

Adam Mintz (14:35.383)

Well, and a refugee, you see a refugee, is obviously current politics, but a refugee reflects how people see you. It’s how you deal in society and people see you. They see you as an illegal immigrant.

Geoffrey Stern (14:56.006)

Yeah. But again, that was only the Shadal focused on that. I think the Apiru adds even more. It wasn’t a simple refugee. And some of the Midrash and these Midrashim that we’re gonna read right now is so kind of core to the Jewish story that most people think it’s in the Torah. But guess what? It’s not in the Torah. It’s a Midrash. The Midrash Raba says that Abraham’s father was a,

and a store and he sold idols in it. And a woman came into the store carrying some flour. And the famous story goes that after she left Abraham took a bat and struck down and beat into shards all of the idols. His father came in and his father said, what happened? He says, well, the woman left some food and the biggest idol started taking it from the smaller idol.

The next thing you know, we had a food fight going on and everybody was destroyed and the father said, are you mocking me? So according to this Midrash, it really picked up on that sense of the Apiru, of the Ivru as a rebel. And what does he do?

Geoffrey Stern (16:16.72)

He understands at the end of the day, if you are questioning the religious basis of the society, you’re questioning the whole society. So, he takes him to the king. And what does the king do? The king, Nimrod, who himself is a rebel, I guess, because of his name (he rebelled against God) , but basically the story goes that he says bow down to the fire.

Abraham says, why should I bow down to the fire? That water can put out the fire. He says, bow down to the water. He says, I don’t bow down to anything except God.

Geoffrey Stern (16:58.588)

So Nimrod puts him into the kibshon shel aish, puts him into the furnace and says, let your God save you. But what it’s saying is he rebelled against religion as they knew it at that moment. He was a rebel.

Adam Mintz (17:12.959)

It is interesting that he, just to talk about this midrash, that he put him into the kivshan ha’esh. He put him into the fiery oven. He says, let your God show me. Right? It’s like this battle. You’re gonna be a rebel. Let your God save you now.

Geoffrey Stern (17:33.848)

Absolutely, a little Mida Keneged Mida (The punishment fits the crime) .. .. .. right? But from this comes all of the, I guess, commentators who projected on Abraham this philosophical discussion. We saw a glimpse of it a second ago, where he says, why should I go down to the fire? What about the water? And it’s kind of a reductio ad absurdum ..

You know, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go back to God. There’s got to be a mover if things are being moved. So, Maimonides really flushes it out. And of course, Maimonides is a philosopher. You can even say he’s an Aristotelian. There has to be a First Cause to make a second cause And if you look at the show notes in Sefaria, it really talks about the fact he describes Abraham with such awe and

and honor. He says he had no teacher. He came upon this by himself. He wandered about, he looked up at the stars and he looked up at things and he says there must be a first cause. And he kind of makes out of nowhere because all we have in our verses is Abraham left. But from that, he creates this whole philosophical journey that Abraham had.

where he said, you look at things, you need to go back to an earlier time. Things don’t happen by themselves. There’s causality. And I think that’s the traditional understanding of the text that we read today, that what Abraham did was he kind of pulled the rug out of those who worshiped objects. And I would argue he also pulled the rug

of local gods and that’s where the Lech L’cha comes in. He left the town, he left the gods behind, he said there’s something bigger out there, there’s a bigger god, there must be a universal god that controls everything.

Adam Mintz (19:41.084)

Well, that, of course, the whole, according to Rambam, what Avraham represents is monotheism. What he’s fighting against is these local gods. That’s polytheism. That’s multiple gods. He says these multiple gods can’t be the answer. The answer has to be one big God. That was the fight. That was what he was rebelling against.

Geoffrey Stern (20:08.466)

Yeah, absolutely. There has to be one big God. He has to be universal. He can’t be associated one particular place. But of course, to project onto Abraham concepts like infinite and omnipotent (omnipresent etc,)  and all of the things that we associate with monotheism, I think is a little bit of a stretch when all you have is lech l’cha .. .. M’artzecha miladecha .. It’s almost…

because it’s so negative in the sense of it doesn’t tell what he does, it tells that he left, it lets us all project. But there is another Midrash that I had never come across until I read Shai Held’s book about love. (Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life) And I also picked it up in the Chief Rabbi of England, Sacks’s book. (Radical Than, Radical Now p. 53)

Geoffrey Stern (21:05.11)

And it is fascinating. So, we’re going to spend maybe the rest of our time together today looking at that and some of the surprising conclusions. So, in Bereshit Rabba 39, it says, again, quoting our verse, the Lord said to Abraham, go from your land, from your birthplace and from your father’s house. And it says, this is analogous to one who was passing from place to place.

So, I love it already because it’s the first Midrash that takes into account Lech L’cha that takes into account that this is something that he saw when he was traveling. So, he’s going from place to place and he sees a building and I’m reading the translation from Sefaria with a candle burning in it. So, he sees a lighted window. He said, is it possible that this building has no one in charge of it?

The owner of the building looked out at him and said, I am the owner of the building. So, because Abraham our Patriarch was saying, is it possible that this world is without someone in charge? The Holy one blessed me, he looked at him and said to him, I am the owner of the world. And so, it’s kind of beautiful because it incorporates the story of his discovery of God with his journey.

But I would go even further. It’s clearly talking about a God who is caring. In other words, initially, if the other arguments, it wasn’t a God that necessarily had to be caring for the world, it had to be a causal relationship, the God who started the world. But this adds a whole other aspect to it, Rabbi. What are your thoughts on this Midrash at this point?

Adam Mintz (22:53.291)

Well, I’m interested in the candle. What’s that image? Is that what drew him to the building? That’s what made him realize? What is that image? Why does the Midrash need that?

Geoffrey Stern (23:11.057)

So, first of all, we all know what doleket means because we’re on madlik. Madlik means to make a splash, to make a spark, to light a bonfire. As Shai Held points out, it doesn’t mean at all a candle in the window. So, what he says is Shai Held

He quotes this Rabbi Isaac and he says, what may this be compared to a man who’s traveling when he has a palace in flames? Doleket is the translation that Shai Held gives. And he wondered, is it possible that this place has no one who looks after it? This gives a whole new meaning to the Midrash because now he’s seeing a house just kind of nowhere.

on the plains and it’s on fire. And he goes, doesn’t anyone care about this? Shai Held brings Rashi, actually he talks about this Rashi as a Rashi, attributed to Rashi. And here again, he tries to take it back to that original argument, which is called the teleological argument. Every,

ball on a billiard table, it moves because something else hit it. And there has to be that cue and the force forcing it. So, he said that Abraham saw heaven and earth, he saw the sun by day and the moon by night and stars shining. He thought, is it possible that such a great thing could be without it having a guide? So, this pseudo-Rashi doesn’t get the point that I think you and I are getting and the point that Shai Held wants to bring out.

He says, first of all, it was burning. And second of all, it’s making a much more profound point than just there must be a reason that this is here. He also quotes the Chizkuni. And it says, when Abraham saw that the wicked were setting the world on fire, he began to doubt in his heart. Perhaps there is no one who looks after this world. Immediately God appeared to him and said, I am the owner of the world.

Adam Mintz (25:37.566)

See that’s super interesting that it’s the bad people who are destroying the world. So, you say you’re a rebel, but you know, if you’re a rebel, you’re a rebel from bad people. want to, you want to stay away from bad people. So, he sees the house being burnt down by bad people. That’s a very interesting twist to the whole thing.

Geoffrey Stern (26:02.168)

It makes the whole story very, very different because now already Abraham is standing there and he somehow feels that he stumbled upon this house and that in and of itself raises questions because he’s not in the town anymore. And then he sees that it’s on fire and he goes, is anyone involved here? There’s already a sense of

Abraham senses within himself concern. What Shai writes, and I’m going to read it because it’s so beautiful, is Abraham refuses to look away. Confronted with the abyss of meaninglessness, he will not avert his eyes. But not only does Abraham refuse to turn away, he cares. Is it possible that this world has no one who looks after it?

Shai is putting this question into the same way of Abraham speaking to God at Sodom and Gomorrah. Is it possible that the God of justice would kill these people? So whatever faith Abraham finds, it will not be easy. It will be the faith of a man who is considered the very real possibility that chaos and bloodshed are simply all there is. The possibility shakes Abraham to the very core of this being.

According to this story, the founding father of the Jewish people is someone who will not hide from the reality of human suffering. This refusal to hide or look away is, I think, says Held, a manifestation of deep love. Faced with a world of fire, Abraham will not grow calloused or indifferent. He continues to care even when it hurts, and so he cries out. It seems to me that not only has this Midrash especially in the hands

of Rabbi Sacks in the hands of Shai Held become much more intriguing. Not only does it tie into the leaving and the traveling and the stumbling upon something, but I think, Rabbi, the way you read this, the way Held is reading it, is the real discovery is not out there, it’s inside. Abraham finds inside of himself this feeling that he cares about this house.

Geoffrey Stern (28:26.512)

And because he cares about this house that isn’t from his town, isn’t from his family, it’s just sitting there, he wonders, is there another being like me that cares about things? And he kind of discovers from this reading God inside of himself. You think I’m off?

Adam Mintz (28:45.825)

No, I mean, let’s just take it back a second. That’s really the, you know, the deepest point in this whole story of Lech L’cha, that it’s not about Avraham reacting to outside forces. The famous midrash about the idols breaking the idols, that reflects the fact that he’s worried about outside forces. But here what Shai Held is trying to suggest is that this is all going on within Avraham.

He’s bothered. He feels something. That’s a whole different read of Abraham and what makes Abraham special.

Geoffrey Stern (29:25.158)

Yeah, I think it’s what they call a paradigm shift. He like turns it on his head. So, I read a book, it’s called The Experience of God by David Bentley. And it’s really a book that is a lot of it that’s much too philosophical in the old sense, proofs of God existence, things like that.

But the most interesting thing that he says is he defines God and the spirit as (an answer to) radical contingency. In other words, if you are struck by this world and you can give a scientific reason for everything, but at the end of the day, all of these different contingencies, that house being on the plain the fire burning in it, the ability to put out fires, the trees, the grass,

the morning wind, the fact that I left Haran in the morning all of these contingencies, he says ultimately when mankind is faced with these contingencies, he needs meaning, he needs something to put it together. And what he says is that this search of meaning is the basis of the desire for a God, the concept of God, the idea that we need somehow to believe that

things are not just random, but they’re somehow connected. And I think what Shai adds to it is that not only are things connected, but we are connected. And I wanna finish up because I did start saying that we both woke up this morning and we were kind of thrown for a loop. I read an amazing article in the New York Times by Ross Duthart.

and he’s a Catholic thinker. But he said, one of the things that he said is the whole atheistic arguments that were so popular about 10, 15 years ago, where religion was superstitious, where people who believe in religion believe in anything, the craziest ideas. He says, nowadays it doesn’t fly because when we look at the conspiracy theories out there.

Geoffrey Stern (31:44.454)

When we look people on both the right and the left that are going after anything that brings them together, that gives them meaning, we actually say that atheism itself is not the answer. What I think is missing is this sense of needing to be connected, that this sense of what Abraham did when he took those wonderful converts and he started a movement.

was to say that ultimately what we need is we need each other. The other interesting thing that I’ll bring to the floor is that there have been studies that the so-called evangelical support of Trump, and now we’re talking on the Right, many of them don’t go to church. Their evangelicalism is basically a long thread of social media where they feel very much together. And I think the lesson

of this morning for me that Abraham is giving is that we all have to look outside of our house or outside of our apartment. And we have to see that other person, that neighbor, that someone else. And we have to rediscover community. And at the end of the day, I think that’s what Abraham did when he left Haran he created for the first time in history, a community that was connected, not by language necessarily, not by place.

but by mission of caring for each other. And I think if we have a chance in the next four years or as a country going forward, it’s because we all have to rediscover what we have in common and what we share and maybe religion and studying texts like this, where you never know who’s gonna be sitting in the pew next to you. The physical ability to meet people that might have different ideas.

Right now, it’s only sports. That’s the only thing that brings people together. Maybe we need more things in real life that we can meet people that have other opinions.

Adam Mintz (33:41.693)

Yeah

Adam Mintz (33:46.825)

And I think that idea that the building is burning, the building’s burning outside, the building’s burning inside each of us. And the question is how we’re going to react to it. Thank you so much. This is perfect for this week. And it really brings a whole new perspective to Abraham and to what lech l’cha means, what he left and ultimately what he found. Thank you so much.

Geoffrey Stern (34:11.45)

the beginning of the journey and it’s nice to be on it with you Rabbi.