Parashat HaShavua - Lech Lecha
To teach the Lower School students about how elections work this year, the students voted on a quote from Rabbi Heschel that would be our division’s motto this year. After a grueling campaign schedule of 18-hour days and eating only takeout food on the road, the winner was announced: “Knowledge is achieved through curiosity.”
This week, another milestone took place in the Lower School: our 3rd grade students celebrated their Humash Ceremonies. To prepare for the ceremonies, they thought about the different qualities Avram and Sarai would need to be the “founders,” so to speak, of the Jewish people. Bravery, kindness, strength, intelligence and self-confidence were some of the traits our students chose.
Notably, one quality that is not characteristic of Avram in this week’s parasha is curiosity. God tells him to leave his home and go to an unknown land and Avram obeys, no questions asked.
The rabbis, however, could not restrain their own curiosity about this story: why did God choose Avram for this task? They imagine that Avram was chosen because of what you might call sacred curiosity:
מָשָׁל לְאֶחָד שֶׁהָיָה עוֹבֵר מִמָּקוֹם לְמָקוֹם, וְרָאָה בִּירָה אַחַת דּוֹלֶקֶת, אָמַר תֹּאמַר שֶׁהַבִּירָה הַזּוֹ בְּלֹא מַנְהִיג, הֵצִיץ עָלָיו בַּעַל הַבִּירָה, אָמַר לוֹ אֲנִי הוּא בַּעַל הַבִּירָה
To what may Avram be compared? To a person who was going from place to place and came upon a palace that was דּוֹלֶקֶת (burning OR full of light). We wondered, if this palace is burning/has all its lights on, who is responsible for it? The owner of the palace peeked out and said, “I am responsible.”
In the story, Avram is the only one who has the curiosity to ask, “who is responsible for this world?” which elicits God’s response: I am the one responsible.
But what kind of a world is Avram looking at? One that is full of majestic light? Or one that is on fire?
It’s no wonder that this midrash was one of Rabbi Heschel’s favorite teachings because to me, it epitomizes the audacity of his worldview. On the one hand, Rabbi Heschel saw all the ways that the world was burning. He taught with his words and perhaps more importantly, with his actions that “morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings.” When he saw things on fire in his world, whether it was racism or the Vietnam War or the attitude of the Catholic church to the Jewish community, he set about putting out the flames with whatever resources he had at his disposal.
But the spiritual genius of Rabbi Heschel was that at the same time, he never lost sight of all of the ways that the world is full of light. He bid us all to live our lives in radical amazement, to never forget that “sunsets are our business,” that the ability to experience awe is what makes us human and is a quality we must treasure and nourish.
The world is on fire. The world is full of light. What else can you say about a world where you can wake up in the morning to learn that Israeli soccer fans had to be evacuated out of Holland after being attacked at a game, and then go to work to witness the shining faces of 3rd grade students as they are lovingly wrapped in the Torah by their families? For all of us at the Heschel school, our daunting task is to follow Rabbi Heschel’s example, by playing whatever part we can in dousing the flames that are in front of us while simultaneously not losing sight of the fragile, breathtaking beauty that is inherent in our world.
Rabbi Anne Ebersman
EC/LS Director of Jewish Life/Director of Hesed (Community Service) and Tzedek (Social Responsibility)