Dvar Torah on Parshat Lech-Lecha

This week's parsha, Lech Lecha, begins with God, seemingly out of nowhere, telling Abraham to leave his home and family and go to the land that he will show him, which, of course, turns out to be Israel. There, He will make him a great nation, and a blessing to all of mankind. The Torah has, up until this point, told us almost nothing about Abraham beyond his genealogy and a bit of the family history. It is the Rabbis who fill us in on Abraham's past; in the Biblical narrative God just seems to pick him at random to start the Jewish people, for no obvious reason. The Rabbis, to fill in this gap, embellish the little that the Torah does tell us about Abraham, and reveal to us a wonderful character - an iconoclastic monotheist, who rebelled against the prevailing beliefs of his place and time - radical paganism - and proclaimed the existence of the one, all- powerful, creator of the universe. Through a careful and creative reading of the end of last week's portion, Noach, which is where Abraham and his family are first introduced to us, Rav Chiyya the son of Rav Ada of Yaffo (Jaffa), in the collection of Rabbinic exegesis called the Midrash Rabba, comes up with the following narrative: Abraham's father, Terach, was an idol salesman. One day, while his father was out to lunch, Abraham destroyed all of the idols in the shop but one. He left the largest one unharmed, and placed a big club in its hands. When Terach returned to the showroom and saw the destruction, he confronted Abraham. "He did it", Abraham said, pointing to the largest statue. "A girl brought a grain offering to the shop, and there was a fight among the gods over who would eat it first, and he destroyed all of the smaller gods." Terach scoffed at this; we all know that statues can't eat, or move, or pick up a club. Abraham than said to him: "Let your ears hear what your mouth has said."Terach, however, was not convinced by Abraham's logic and, instead of rejecting idolatry and embracing monotheism, turned his son in to the pagan police. He brought Abraham to the king, Nimrod, on charges of idol-smashing and general heresy. For this crime against the state-sanctioned religion, Nimrod sentenced Abraham to be placed in a fiery furnace, fire being the force worshipped by Nimrod's people. Miraculously, Abraham entered the furnace, and then emerged from the ordeal unscathed. At this point, the story takes a tragic turn. The Torah, at the end of the parsha of Noach, tells us that Abraham had a brother, Haran, and laconically informs us that "Haran died in the presence of his father Terach, in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans." In the continuation of his midrash, Rav Chiyya the son of Rav Ada from Yaffo integrates this fact into his narrative, and explains this verse to mean the following: When Abraham's brother, Haran, saw what was happening to Abraham, he knew that Nimrod and the idolaters would not be satisfied with prosecuting only Abraham, but would go after him as well. He decided that if Abraham survived the furnace, he would side with Abraham. If not, he would renounce him and side with Nimrod. Sure enough, after Abraham emerged from the furnace, King Nimrod, looking for someone to burn, turned to Haran and asked him where his allegiances lie. "With Abraham", he answered. Sure enough, Nimrod then threw him into the fiery furnace, where he was horribly burned. Nimrod then staggers out, and dies, in front of his father, which is what the verse means when it says he "died in the presence of Terach." According to this interpretation, Ur of the Chaldeans, the place mentioned in our verse as the site of Haran's death, is not a city, but is, rather, the fire of the Chaldeans, as the word "Ur" means fire.One wonders why, in this midrash, Abraham was deserving of a miracle, and survived the fiery furnace, while his brother Haran was not. After all, what is wrong with Haran making his decision based on the empirical evidence of Abraham being saved by his God? Is this not the same kind of logic Abraham used to discredit the cult of idol worship - 'they can't eat, they can't move, they are just statues! They have no power, why do you worship them?' Similarly, the power of Abraham's God, the power of Abraham's faith, illustrated by Abraham's survival in the furnace, which represents the defeat of the god of fire by Abraham's God of the Universe, should be a legitimate reason for Haran to decide that "I am with Abraham." Why then, when thrown into the furnace, does he die?To answer this question, and explain what happened to Haran, one can look in a number of directions. It may be that Haran's trip to the furnace, unlike Abraham's, was not so much an act of faith, but more of a sure thing - his decision to be "with Abraham" may well have been prompted by self-interest. Because Abraham survived, Haran probably felt that his best chances for survival lay in being on Abraham's side. His faith was not something for which he was willing to take risks, as Abraham had done, but, on the contrary, was a kind of insurance policy, in the sense that "if it worked for Abraham, it should work for me." As such, it was unimpressive, and certainly not deserving of divine assistance. I would like to offer another explanation. It is important, I think, to note that Haran's choice is presented in the Midrash as being either "for Abraham" or "for Nimrod". For someone to be "for Nimrod" would certainly have meant to worship him as a god, as was common in the ancient world. Therefore, to be "for Abraham" would mean the same thing - to have faith not so much in the Creator of the Universe, but, rather, in a powerful being here on earth, who seems to be able to defeat fire. This sort of faith is really just another form of idol worship. The cult of personality, the worshipping of the powerful, popular, charismatic and successful, as kings were once worshipped (and, today, as celebrities are worshipped), is just another form of idol worship, even if, as in the case of Haran and Abraham, the person worshipped is himself a good monotheist. Haran is guilty of worshipping in the temple of personality, of celebrity, and has not really come to a faith in monotheism. There is no power on earth, therefore, that can save him from the fire. I would add that God's reluctance, at the beginning of our parsha, Lech Lecha, to name Israel as Abraham's destination ("Go you forth...to the land that I will show you"), may stem from this dynamic. It may be that God does not want to run the risk, at this early stage of his relationship with Abraham, of having him focus on the Land of Israel, as, perhaps, an object to be deified or revered. The relationship is with God, and His commandments. The land to which God is sending him is a means to further that relationship, not an end, and has no intrinsic importance. Not naming it, at the outset, would underscore that message.Shabbat Shalom,Shimon Felix