Lekh L’kha Go forth! Parashat Lekh Lekha is a parashah of migrations. From beginning to end, its characters leave behind their past and set out for the unknown. They are driven to do so by the same causes that lead people today to become immigrants: religion, culture, economic opportunity, famine, war, and persecution.
The story actually begins at the end of last week’s parashah, when we first encounter Avram. (He has not yet had his name changed to Avraham). His family hails from a place called Ur Kasdim. We are not exactly sure where it is. It is either the major city of Ur which is located in Southern Iraq on the coast of the Persian Gulf, or it is a smaller town in Upper Mesopotamia.
Avram’s father, Terach, moves the entire household – including Avram, his two brothers, and their respective households – intending to eventually settle in the Land of Canaan. For some reason, they stop in a place called Haran.
Haran was a major station along the caravan route between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean Sea. It is located about ten miles North of the present border between Syria and Turkey. The Torah does not tell us what prompted Terach to move the family from Ur Kasdim, nor do we know why they interrupt their migration in Haran. We do know that the rest of Avram’s family remains in Haran. Only he completes the journey that his father had begun.
This morning’s parashah begins with God’s revelation to seventy five year old Avram. Lekh L’kha – “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” God has big plans for Avram.
Avram responds with alacrity, setting out with his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all of their possessions, and a rather large but unnamed retinue of followers that they managed to acquire while in Haran. It is not a short journey, and Avram does not stop when he reaches the border. Rather, he continues his migration until he arrives in Shechem (known today as Nablus). This is the physical center of the land that God has promised his descendants as an inheritance.
Soon after arriving in Shechem and building an altar to God, Avram continues moving south for another 20 miles, pitching his tent in the hill country east of Beit El, where he builds another altar. He then continues south by stages until he reaches the Negev, probably near Beer-Sheva. By now, Avram has traversed the entire length of the Promised Land, from North to South.
How might we describe this migration? What is Avram abandoning, and what is he hoping to find when he reaches his destination? The Torah’s emphasis on leaving behind his native land and his father’s house suggests that there is something culturally or morally unsavory about his birthplace. Although we know nothing about Avram’s first seventy five years of life in Haran, many midrashim fill in the gaps. Legends abound describing Terach’s idolatry, the deviousness of the local King Nimrod, and the rampant idolatry of Babylonian culture.
Remaining in Haran will subject Avram and his progeny to bad influences which will prevent the realization of God’s blessing that his descendants will become a great nation. To fulfill his destiny, Avram needs to make a clean break with his culture of origin.
We might describe this move as a religious migration. But perhaps it also might be akin to moving to a better neighborhood, where Avram’s family will have access to higher quality schools, less crime, and a more cohesive communal environment.
It does not take long for a new situation to arise which will force Avram to pack up his tent and move his household once again. The land is struck by a famine. Israel is dependent on seasonal rains. Several years of poor rainfall, therefore, are disastrous and result in famine. In contrast, Egypt receives its water from the annual flooding of the Nile River, which is a much more reliable source. While the text only mentions Avram, it is safe to assume that his household is just one of a deluge of refugees fleeing south to Egypt for food.
The typical experience of refugees is not a pleasant one. They usually find discrimination in their host countries. If refugees end up settling permanently in their new countries, it often takes several generations before full assimilation and acceptance is reached.
Avram somehow defies the usual pattern and acquires great wealth during his time in Egypt. In 1848, a Potato Famine prompted the massive immigration of nearly one million Irish to the United States. In the mid 1980’s a massive famine and war in Ethiopia caused the deaths of over one million people. Six hundred thousand fled Ethiopia for Sudan, where they remained in refugee camps for several years before finally returning home.
One of the factors in the current Syrian refugee crisis is a famine that has been exacerbated, or even perhaps caused by war.
When the famine ends, Avram returns with his family to his former home east of Beit El. There, his situation seems to stabilize for a short time. At this point, Avram has huge flocks. His nephew Lot has also managed to become wealthy. Both of them send their herds out into the surrounding fields each day. Soon, their respective shepherds are quarreling with one another over access to grazing land.
Avram recognizes that the status quo cannot continue, so he offers his nephew a choice. “This is a fertile land, with plenty of room for both of us. We just can’t stay here in the same place. Pick where you want to go,” he says. “If you go right, I’ll go left. If you go left, I’ll go right.” Lot chooses to settle in Sodom, where he has access to the lush Jordan River plain. Avram stays put.
This migration is not the result of a crisis. Quite the opposite. Avram and Lot have become too wealthy, and they need to expand their markets. Lot moves so that he can have access to better economic opportunities.
God appears once again to Avram, reiterating the blessing. Afterwards, Avram moves his tent to the terebinths of Mamre, near Hebron. Again, the Torah does not give us a specific reason for Avram’s move, but like his original journey into the Land of Canaan, it seems to be a religious migration.
Lot, meanwhile, gets caught up in a war when the cities of the Jordan Valley, including Sodom, rebel against their vassal overlords to the east. The rebel cities are defeated and the conquering armies plunder them and take their residents as spoils of war. When Avram hears that Lot has been taken captive, he assembles a small army and launches a rescue mission. His risky venture takes him all the way to Dan, which is located at the far northern point of the Land of Israel, on the slopes of Mount Hermon. He then goes on a night raid to a location north of Damascus.
The mission is successful, and Avram manages to defeat the enemy armies and rescue his nephew, along with all of the other prisoners who have been forcibly removed from their homes.
We see in this story another kind of migration – one prompted by war. In this case, residents are taken and enslaved by their conquerors. As we are seeing vividly right now with the millions of Syrian refugees, people tend to flee from war-torn areas.
The final migration occurs towards the end of the parashah. Sarai is unable to get pregnant, and so she gives her handmaiden Hagar to Avram to bear a child in her name. When Hagar gets pregnant, tensions rise in the household, and Sarai begins to treat Hagar harshly. We don’t know how bad the mistreatment was, but it was enough to cause Hagar to flee. She heads south, embarking on the Road to Shur, which leads eventually to Egypt. Along the way, an angel of God appears to Hagar and reassures her that God will bless her son. In the meantime, she should go back to Sarai and “submit to her harsh treatment.”
This is not an optimistic text, but it illustrates another cause of migration: persecution. How many millions of Americans came to this country fleeing religious persecution?! It is what brought the original Pilgrims. The rise of modern Zionism came about when Theodore Herzl and the other early leaders realized that the persecution of the Jewish people in the Diaspora was not going to go away. The Jewish people needed a homeland where Jews could immigrate. Sadly, Herzl’s prediction that the reestablishment of Jewish autonomy in the land of Israel would eliminate antisemitism in the Diaspora has proved to be incorrect, and Jews continue to immigrate to Israel because of persecution.
The reasons that compel a person to leave his or her home and move to a strange new place have not changed in four thousand years. We immigrate because we want better lives for ourselves and our families. We want to provide our children with safer environments in which to learn and play. We move to find better economic opportunities. Sometimes, we flee dangerous situations like war and famine. And we leave places in which we face discrimination in favor of communities that will accept us as we are.
All of these factors lead the characters in Parashat Lekh L’kha to become immigrants, just as they lead people in our world today to seek better lives in new lands.
While the reasons to immigrate may be the same, in our world, some of the barriers have changed.
Globalization and technology have made it much easier to travel from one place to another. A journey that once might have taken an entire year can be accomplished in less than a day. Images of drowned children vividly demonstrate how dangerous the world can be for someone who is fleeing their homeland in desperation.
While antagonism towards immigrants is certainly still with us, multicultural attitudes in many countries in the world allow for an easier welcome and integration than in earlier centuries.
And yet, legal bureaucracies and quotas place significant obstacles before immigrants. I doubt Avram was asked to produce his passport and visa when he crossed the border into the Land of Canaan.
Let us each think about our own family history. How did we get to this country? On my father’s side, my family immigrated to the United States after surviving World War Two and the Holocaust. My mother’s ancestors arrived a generation or two earlier with millions of other Jews from Eastern Europe who were fleeing persecution. My parents migrated from Southern California to the Bay Area, to Atlanta, and finally to Seattle as they sought better economic opportunities and a healthy environment to raise my brother and I.
Illegal immigration is a serious challenge in our world. There are currently over eleven million undocumented people in the United States. European countries are facing hundred of thousands of Syrians crossing their borders. Millions of Syrians have been displaced and are living in refugee camps in Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Lebanon. Huge influxes of immigrants has the potential to be destabilizing for a country, especially when that country does not do a good job of assimilating the newcomers. I don’t have answers to these challenges, but as a people whose founders are immigrants, we ought to approach the issue with compassion and understanding.
Rebyehoshua 