Parshat Lech L'cha has a very different kind of gap - a 13 year gap. And it's going to teach us something important.
Notice the two consecutive p'sukim (16:16 and 17:1) which mention Avra(ha)m's being 86 and then 99. In the tiny space between these two p'sukim (the space of a single letter in a Sefer Torah), 13 years pass. This 13-year gap is not per se important, but the lesson we can learn from it is. What happened during those 13 years?
NOTHING! Well not really nothing. But nothing of any significance for us. Avra(ha)m and Sara(i) lived their lives as individuals - not as the father and mother of the future Jewish Nation.
The Torah is not a full history nor a diary of the lives of the Avot, Imahot, Sh'vatim, Moshe and Aharon, etc.
We are not told about those 13 years (and all the other gaps throughout the Torah) because we have nothing to learn from whatever happened.
By inference - and this is the important message of the gap - we must know that everything that the Torah DOES tell us IS important to us. Much of what the Torah tells us involves the Mitzvot that HaShem commands us to follow.
Some of what the Torah tells us is meant to teach us what to do and what not to do as people and as Jews.
Case in point: LECH L'CHA. Avraham grew up in an idolatrous pagan society. He rediscovered the One G-d on his own. He shared that fact and belief with many others - at great risk to himself. Very praise-worthy and meritorious behavior, yet it is specifically when G-d tells him to go the Eretz Yisrael that Avraham is to be a B'RACHA for all.
Avraham Avinu is not the only person that G-d tells to leave his homeland... and go to Eretz Yisrael. With the words LECH L'CHA, G-d is commanding each and every Jew to follow in Avraham's footsteps.
A Jew can follow many of the Torah's mitzvot wherever he lives in the world. He can spread belief in G-d and observance of Torah and Mitzvot to his fellow Jews wherever he lives.
But the Jew is meant to live his Torah life in Eretz Yisrael. This is not just the lesson of Lech L'cha, but B'chukotai says it and many other places in the Torah echo the same point.
Hundreds of years before telling Moshe Rabeinu that He is taking the people out of Egypt to bring them to the Promised Land, he told the same thing about Eretz Yisrael to our fore-fathers and mothers. And through the Torah, G-d continues to tell generation after generation of Jews - Lech L'cha. It is a mitzva, it facilitates other mitzvot... and it is R'TZON HASHEM, for us.
Click here to download the podcast