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Lech Lecha (“Go Forth”) describes the journey of Abraham and Sarah from their homeland. The big moments: God makes a covenant with Abraham promising to make his descendants a great nation; Abraham has a son with Hagar and names him Ishmael; God promises that Sarah, too, will have a child.

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Last year, we read Lech-Lecha on October 28th, three weeks after the October 7th attack and the subsequent bombardment of Gaza. This was for me (as I know it was for others) an extraordinarily painful time. From the moment that I learned of the October 7th attack, I was overwhelmed by grief for the victims but also grief and barely contained terror for what I knew was to befall the millions residing in Gaza. At the time, I found solace and courage in a D'var offered by Rabbi Michael Adam Latz, which describes the necessity of forgoing secure moorings for the sake of preserving human dignity, our "ultimate theological concern" as Jews. One year later, I find a need to turn to his drash again - this time out of a hope to awaken from my own numbness and resignationism in the face of the utter and seemingly endless devastation of Gaza and the spread of political violence throughout the region.

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Latz unpacks Lech Lecha by way of the Midrash. There it is taught that the impetus for Abraham's departure lay in the brutal smashing of his father’s idols, which his father believed to be gods. Without this break from his own origins, Abraham would not have become the father of the Jewish people. Latz asks "how is it possible that the founder of our people got his start in the world trashing other people's religious faith?" He concludes that political disruption, discomfort, and the muscular resistance to tyranny is our "ultimate theological concern" as Jews:

...because enslaving people, discriminating against people, denying them their innate dignity is such a profound theological affront to God that business as usual just isn’t possible. We must never forget where we’ve come from and who we are: We were slaves in the land of Egypt, words that we recite every year at the Passover seder. 

Human dignity is our ultimate theological concern. And when that means interrupting business as usual to break the chains of bondage, then it is both our religious inheritance and our moral obligation to rise up against the tyranny that prevents all people from being fully human. This is not an advocacy of violence, but of creating discomfort for the sake of seeking justice and human dignity..." 

Read the full drash

I hope that each of us finds within ourselves the power to smash idols for the sake of bringing into being a world able to hold all human beings equally in dignity, respect, and freedom. I hope that our shul can be a place of comfort for all those who need it, but one of "holy discomfort" as well.