Lech Lecha (Gen. 12:1-17:27) Framing the Journey, and the Journeying Community

Our story starts with a call to Abraham, impelling our forefather on an unprecedented journey. Well, that’s how it reads if the story begins where our rabbinic ancestors demarcate the start of this week’s Torah-reading. If we look back to the verses at the end of last week’s narrative, we find that Abraham’s father, Terach, had already set out on the voyage: “And Terach took Avram his son, and Lot, the son of Haran his son’s son, and Saray his daughter in law, and they went out from Ur-Kasdim to go to the land of Canaan.” So really Abraham is not being commanded to do something entirely new, breaking wholly with the trajectory of his father’s house. Abraham is being urged to complete a journey his father Terach began. It’s not how we’re accustomed to reading the story. Moving the frame of a reading up and down by several verses does not change the content of the Bible; but it can change the way we read that content. Similarly, the ways in which we articulate the boundaries of our community may not change who we see around us; but it may change who we see as sibling and as fellow-traveler.