Parashat Lech L'cha 5769 -- The Land must support us all

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Lech L’cha, begins with God’s famous call to Abram, “Go forth from your land” (Genesis 12:1). God promises Abram that his name will be great and that he will father a great nation. With these promise-filled words, Abram sets off toward Canaan with his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot.

Let us imagine this ancient entourage, making its way through the desert toward their newly defined destiny. Let us listen in on their conversations, tinged with excitement, anxiety, and fear. Let us smell their animals, clobbering along, and envision their amassed possessions, folded smartly into canvases. This is the image of our people’s beginnings!

And yet, what is hard to imagine, or maybe not that hard to imagine, is the speed with which our pastoral image cracks. There is a famine in the land. There is a scarcity of resources. Our ancestors fear for their safety. They encounter strangers with new customs. There is strife between uncle and nephew. The Torah teaches, “Now Lot, who had gone with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support them both” (Genesis 13:5-6).

This is a story as ancient as any. The land could not support them both. And so, Lot takes off in one direction and Abram in another. And God tries again. “And Adonai said to Abram, after Lot had parted from him, ‘Raise your eyes and look out from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west, for I give all the land that you see to you and your offspring forever” (Genesis 13:14-15).

Our Torah is trying to teach us something, here. Conflicts are not solved by mere separation, by simply turning our backs to the problem, by simply sending it away. As hard as God tries, as hard as Abram tries, sending the problem away does not make it disappear. The land could not support them both. These are dangerous words; the Torah seems to warn us. Lot and Abram separate, but the story won’t end.

Just one chapter later, Lot and his family are taken prisoner and Abram rescues them. And in next week’s Torah portion, Lot and his family find themselves embroiled in a dangerous, terrible moral drama. Abram is once again face to face with his nephew.

No! Our Torah seems to cry. The land must support us all. We cannot solve the difficult, especially the most fundamental of differences, by ignoring them, turning our backs on them, or banishing them. Today’s Torah portion reminds us that healing is needed in the face of conflict. Healing comes when we seek to understand, when we seek to solve.

On this Shabbat, each of is called upon to consider the ways in which we simply turn our backs on that which feels too much for us to confront. Torah tells us, we are all made from dust of the same earth and we are all destined to live upon it together. The land must support us all. And, we must learn to live on it.