Leave – leave everything behind that you’ve been familiar with your entire life: your family, neighbors, language, and land.

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃

With God’s command to Avraham, lekh lekha, the Jewish people’s story and its connection to a specific land begins. The text gives no introduction about why God commands this person to begin that journey. What is it about Avraham that qualifies him to be the vehicle to revolutionize the world with his belief in one God?

We can reconstruct why God chose Moshe to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt. A younger Moshe frequently exhibits a willingness to act on his keen moral outrage. He takes justice into his own hands when he sees an Egyptian beating an Israelite slave. For this act of insurrection against Pharaoh, Moshe must flee to Midian. When he arrived, he rescued some young women (one of them is future wife, Tzipporah) from lawless shepherds who were likely trying to steal their water. His compassion for Yitro’s flocks foreshadows the compassion that he will have for the flock of people that he will lead from Egypt to the promised land. Over time, we watch as Moshe’s small acts of justice morph into righteous audacity.

The evidence for Avraham is murkier. His willingness to undertake a risky journey with only two other family members, Sarah, his wife, and Lot, his nephew, is admirable. But when he obeys God’s command to sacrifice his son, Isaac, do we acclaim or assail his action? He wages war to redeem his nephew, Lot, from captivity but pleads with Sarah to pose as his sister when encountering local leaders. Her consent makes Avraham less vulnerable to attack but leaves her unprotected. In contrast to Moshe, it takes more detective work to infer why Avraham’s biography was well suited to the task. But – we’re given one enticing clue in our parasha.

In lekh lekha, Avraham laments to God that he has no biological heir and that his lead servant will be the heir by default. But God reassures him and says, “That one shall not be your heir…Look toward heaven and count the stars if you can count them.” And God added, “So shall your offspring be.” And now for the clue: “And Avraham believed in God, and God accounted it to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6).”

וְהֶאֱמִ֖ן בַּֽיהוָ֑ה וַיַּחְשְׁבֶ֥הָ לּ֖וֹ צְדָקָֽה׃

The first time in the Tanakh that the root word for faith, אמן, appears is in this verse. Avraham introduced the world to the concept of having faith in a future that he would never live to see. That was his greatness, having a depth of faith that his biological line would flourish despite how precarious his line’s continuity was now.

We’re not expected to be another Avraham or Sarah – that isn’t realistic. But we can lean into that kind of faith to sustain us as we get ready for a very long winter. Leaning in means that if we find our faith gauge a little low, we can refill it by reflecting on the lives of our Avot and Emahot and other figures in Jewish history who probably wondered how they would endure their trials. Leaning in means that we’re willing to enter into the conversation with God that our ancestors started and to stay in that conversation when confronting demanding realities that we don’t understand. Leaning in means staying as connected as we can to the people who matter the most to us.

We are in an existential lekh lekha moment. We’re not going to leave everything behind when it’s safe to re-enter into a landscape that will be different. But now is the time to assess what is essential for us to take into the future and what we would do better off leaving behind when we re-enter the world. By doing so, our choices will be more intentionally significant.

The post Faith in the Future: Leaning in on Avraham Aveinu appeared first on Hayim Herring.