Make Love, Not War
War, famine, politics, conflict, crisis, catastrophe. That's this week's parashah. It is also the picture of world events in the media. What does not appear nearly so much in the papers and television is the day-to-day agenda of life: love, food, health, housing, employment, children, old people, animals. In the Bible, we get both the big and the little concerns.


For the time being, the focus is on the family life of Abraham, though that will change soon and move on to Isaac, Jacob and their progeny. If anyone asks what was happening in Abraham's time, they will find macrocosms and microcosms, big events and

The clash of the cymbals is not the only element in making music.

 little events, tension between human groups - and small, almost insignificant episodes of human love and helpfulness.


Wouldn't it be interesting if the modern media reported not only about provocative politicians, but also about the simple lives of ordinary people; not just the weapons of destruction that antagonistic nations direct at each other, but also the quiet devotion of parents and children to one another, shepherds to their sheep, teachers to their pupils, doctors to their patients, lovers to their beloved?


The clash of the cymbals is not the only element in making music. There is also the poignancy of the violin strings. If we thought more about the violins, then we might have a more peaceful civilisation. If we thought more about books and less about bombs, then we might have a happier world.


God in the Diaspora
Migration has two aspects - movement from, and movement to. We find this in Lech Lecha. God says to Abram, "Leave your land." He also says, "Go to the land I shall show you." (Genesis 12:1, etc.) He adds, "To your descendants will I give the land." (Genesis 12:7)


The rabbis, utilising a verse in Vayikra ("To give you the land of Canaan, to be your God" ), explain (Ketubot 110b) that this means, "There alone will I be your God," with the deduction that one who lives in Israel has a God and one who lives outside Israel has no God. The Talmud immediately protests, "Does a person, then, who does not live in the Land have no God?"


We echo the protest and make two questions out of it. Not only, "Is it really true that anyone who lives outside Israel has no God?" But also, "Is it true that everyone who lives in Israel is a believer?" The sociological facts of our generation surely recognise that some, however few or many, Israelis are secular and atheistic, and many, whatever the full figures, of the Jewish people in the Diaspora are committed religious believers who lead a life of observance of the commandments.


We have to find a solution to the conundrum or else we will constantly wonder what motivated the sages to make an apparently preposterous assertion. Can it be that what we are being told is that life in Israel has a flavour that, at least sporadically, turns every

Israel has a flavour that, at least sporadically, turns every Israeli into a believer.

Israeli into a believer, and that there is always going to be a missing dimension in the spirituality of the Diaspora?


Leaving Home
Is there a deeper meaning to the sequence of words used at the beginning of the sidra, where our patriarch is told, "Leave your country, your kindred and your father's house" (Genesis 12:1)?


There is a theory, said to derive from the Zohar, that the word molad't'cha, which many versions translate as "kindred," actually denotes "your mother's home," from the root y-l-d, which means to bear a child. If this is correct, then Abram is being told to leave his country and the home of both his mother and father.


Parting with one parent is hard, parting with both is unbearable. But what choice does a visionary have? If the Divine call draws him forward into a new destiny, then he has no choice but to comply. When a child has to leave home, parents are tempted to hold him or her back. The wise parent, however, knows that a child has to be allowed to grow up, even if it means leaving home. The parent has to do some parallel growing up, too.


Parents who yearn for their child to remain six for ever and ever, as in A. A. Milne's poem "Now I am Six," stunt their child's growth and deprive the world of what the grown-up child might be able to contribute to civilisation. Parents have to be able to let their child grow, and go.