Twice-repeated tales in the Torah always alert our interpretive, intellectual faculties. In this week's portion, Lech Lecha, famine in the Promised Land forces Abraham and Sarah to head for Egypt. Abraham suddenly understands that Sarah's beauty spells danger: "Now I know that you're a beautiful woman, and when the Egyptians will see you, they will say

Parallels between Abraham's Egyptian sojourn and the plight of the Children of Israel in Egypt.

this is his wife and they will kill me, and you they will keep alive. Please say you are my sister, that they will be good to me for your sake, and that my soul may live because of you." (Genesis 12:11-12)


Abraham's fears prove correct. Sarah is taken to the royal household, and her 'brother' receives gifts of cattle and slaves. But before she joins the harem, a plague strikes Pharaoh's court, arousing suspicion that this woman must be Abraham's wife, not his sister. Realizing how close he's come to violating another man's wife, Pharaoh sends Abraham away, flocks and all.


The uncanny similarity between the experiences of Abraham and those of his son later, in parshat Toldot (ch. 26), when Isaac and Rebecca head for Egypt because of famine, illustrates the Torah's exegetical principle that "maasei avot siman lebanim" (the occurrences of the fathers are a sign of what will happen to the sons). But similarities don't end with Abraham and Isaac.


We find as many, if not more, parallels between Abraham's Egyptian sojourn and the plight of the Children of Israel in Egypt. Nahmanides (1194-1270) understands that in leaving the land of Israel, Abraham commits a sin: "It is because of this deed that the Exile in the land of Egypt at the hand of Pharaoh was decreed for his children." (Genesis 12:10) I would suggest that an even deeper connection is to be made between Abraham and Sarah in Egypt and the Jewish enslavement by the Egyptians, with major lessons to be learned by us today.


First of all, both Abraham and Jacob leave Israel for Egypt because of a famine. With Abraham, this departure leads to Sarah's "enslavement" in Pharaoh's harem; with Jacob, this departure eventually leads into the enslavement of the Jews.


Next, Abraham fears that the Egyptians will kill him and take Sarah after he's dead. And when Jacob's descendants multiply in Egypt, Pharaoh decrees that all male Jewish babies shall be cast into the Nile, while the female babies will be allowed to live.


Third, Abraham finds a way out of danger through his 'sister' Sarah. And Moses is also saved by his sister Miriam when she hides him among the reeds and the bulrushes. Because of her prophetic vision, it is not an exaggeration to say that the redemption of the Jewish people began with a sister.


Fourth, Pharaoh takes Sarah into his household, his harem, where he intends to enslave her; similarly, Pharaoh takes the Jewish people into his home, Egypt, where he enslaves them.


Fifth, to thwart Pharaoh's plans and make sure that Sarah is not violated, G-d sends

The redemption of the Jewish people began with a sister.

plagues, (negaim gedolim, 12:17). When G-d wants to put an end to the Egyptian enslavement, He casts ten plagues upon Egypt.


Sixth, Pharaoh sends Abraham away just as Pharaoh will later send away Moses. And seventh, when Abraham is packed off, it's with gifts and material wealth; and when Pharaoh finally declares Moses persona non grata, his people don't leave empty-handed, but carry off gold and silver.


Clearly, from a literary-parallel perspective, Abraham in Egypt foreshadows the slavery of the Jews. And if we find a moral message in Abraham's Egyptian sojourn, then this message reaches our ears with a powerful reverberation since it must first pass through our collective memory as slaves. By linking Abraham with slavery in Egypt, the Torah is teaching the generations that Abraham's sins have a significance beyond their seeming innocence.


There are two sins, thus two messages, but they are connected. One: Is it really possible that so soon after entering the Promised Land, the first famine frightens Abraham? We're talking about the man who left his birthplace and his homeland. Has he no faith that G-d will bring rain? Has he not faith that he will be able to "make it" in Israel despite financial hardship? Abraham sinned and the moral lesson to be learned is: never leave Israel. If we seemingly can't make it in our own land, won't it be much more difficult to make it in a land in which we are strangers?


Two: It's one thing to save your own life by claiming that your wife is really your sister, but can you risk someone else's life in order to save your own, because there is no question but that Sarah faced a degree of risk inside the harem. But what really compounds Abraham's plan is when he adds, "they will be good to me for your sake." Apparently, Abraham anticipates that Pharaoh will be good to him because Sarah is beautiful and harem-bound. Even if the profit he reaps was not his ab initio choice; nevertheless, Sarah is still being used to further Abraham's own ends.
Moral lesson: our human, and especially familial, relationships must be devoid of any of

We must learn from Abraham's experience.

the subtle ways used in taking advantage of another, even if it's done unintentionally. Even more than this. We often tend to forget that each person is his own ultimate reality, an end unto himself, and that using someone as a means for our ends enslaves them. And this even includes one's spouse and one's children. This is why the experience of slavery has been seared into our deepest Jewish consciousness.


Hence, we must learn from Abraham's experience to live in our homeland even when it is not easy to do so. And that we must be faithful to our loved ones even when it is to our disadvantage. We must always see our friends and family members as subjects in their own right, rather than as objects of our will or even as extensions of ourselves. As Martin Buber masterfully taught, we must deal with human beings from the perspective of "I / you" rather than as "I / it". Four thousand years after Abraham, have we learned these lessons? Have we internalized them?