Lech Lecha — Responding to the Next True Step

We all know Lech Lecha as the portion in which God tells Abram to leave his father’s land and go to a land God will show him. His name hasn’t been changed to Abraham yet, so we’re calling him Abram for now.

This wasn’t his first major move. At the end of Noach, his father Terach had already taken the family out of Ur, intending to reach Canaan. They stopped in Haran. This time, at seventy-five, Abram is the one responding to the call. He is leading the move instead of following his father’s decision.

And seventy-five wasn’t exactly the beginning of Abram’s intellectual life. Flavius Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, credits him with bringing knowledge of arithmetic and astronomy to Egypt. The ancient Book of Jubilees tells another remarkable story: Abram teaches craftsmen to make a device attached to a plow that places seeds into the soil, protecting them from birds. An engineer of ancient times! I love that image of someone who studies how nature works and then applies what he understands.

It brings to mind a saying sometimes attributed to the physicist Werner Heisenberg: a little science may distance us from God, while deep study of nature may draw us back. The attribution is disputed, so I’m taking the idea rather than claiming those are Heisenberg’s proven words. I wonder whether Abram, through observing the world, reached a similar sense that something greater stood behind the mechanisms he studied. That is my imagination; the Torah doesn’t tell us what his investigations taught him.

And here is another question that has always fascinated me: how did God speak to Abram? Was there an apparition or an audible voice? If God Himself appeared and told me to move, I imagine I would be inclined to listen. But Genesis 12:1 does not spell out the manner of this communication. What if the call was experienced as an intuition, a certainty that he needed to leave, without a complete map of what would happen? I can’t claim that’s what occurred. It simply makes me think about how much uncertainty most of us face when deciding our next move.

When the Right Move Leads to Trouble

Abram arrives in Canaan, gets himself settled, and boom: famine. I picture him looking at his household, workers, livestock, and everyone who depends on him and realizing that the plan has to change. Egypt has food. So he goes.

Then, approaching Egypt, Abram becomes afraid that Sarai’s beauty will place them in danger. He worries the Egyptians will kill him and take her, and he asks her to say that she is his sister. Pharaoh subsequently takes her into his household. Suddenly the practical decision has produced a much bigger predicament.

This is where the commentators arrive, all with something to say about what Abram should or shouldn’t have done.

Rashi reads the famine as a test: after God directed Abram to this land, would he complain when the land became impossible to live in? Radak discusses Egypt as a practical refuge where food could be found, a temporary destination for someone supporting a substantial household and livestock. Abarbanel offers an explanation for Abram’s sudden alarm about Sarai: he had not anticipated how she would be perceived in Egypt. Abarbanel frames that explanation through his own assumptions about the appearance of different populations, assumptions I have no reason to adopt as objective descriptions.

Then Ramban comes along and says Abram made a serious mistake. He argues that leaving the promised land because of famine and endangering Sarai through the sister strategy reflected a failure of trust. God could have preserved him there.

Now, I love Ramban, but I am going to give myself permission to disagree with him. Trusting God doesn’t mean abandoning the ability God gave us to observe reality, make decisions, and adapt. I see a man responsible for feeding a whole household who learns there is food in Egypt. To me, that is a reasonable response to the situation in front of him.

Mei HaShiloach gives me a different way to examine the experience. In his commentary on Lech Lecha, he interprets Abram’s first test as poverty and constriction, a test of whether scarcity will turn a person toward resentment or away from God. He also says one may pray not to be brought into the kind of distress that overwhelms one’s spiritual balance. That is what the text actually says. When I imagine the journey to Egypt as additional pressure refining Abram like a diamond in the rough, I am extending that teaching through my own image. I am not claiming Rabbi Leiner explicitly calls every choice in Egypt perfect.

Everybody Knows What We Should Have Done

Isn’t it interesting how everyone has an opinion after the fact? The famous should-have, could-have, would-have. We do it to ourselves, and we do it to other people constantly. Psychology even has a related phenomenon called Solomon’s paradox: people can reason more wisely about another person’s problems than about similarly difficult situations in their own lives. King Solomon lends his name to the paradox because of the contrast between his reputation for wisdom and his personal decisions.

And here we are, thousands of years later, explaining what Abram should have done. How do we know what he was thinking? We can examine the text and take the commentators seriously while recognizing that we are looking backward from the comfortable distance of knowing how the story ends.

Rabbi Akiva gives me a line to hold beside all these opinions: “Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted” (Pirkei Avot 3:15). What if the larger sequence of events was known to God, while Abram still had to decide how to act inside each moment? The famine was not under his control. His response to it was a choice. The danger he saw in Egypt called for another choice. He tried the sister strategy, and then Pharaoh took Sarai anyway.

Now what? I imagine Abram reaching a point where his attempts to manage the problem had run out of road. That picture is mine; the Torah does not describe a prayer in which he says, “God, I tried everything, now it’s Your turn.” But I can imagine the feeling.

Genesis tells us that God struck Pharaoh and his house with plagues because of Sarai. Rashi, citing Midrash Tanchuma, adds a remarkable detail: Sarai commanded an angel to strike, and the angel struck. Now we’re talking!

Remember the idea I explored in Bereshit about the spiritual worlds possibly operating at once? Kabbalistic tradition describes Asiyah as the world of action and Yetzirah as a realm associated with angels. The Torah reports God’s intervention; the Midrash introduces Sarai and the angel. My mind starts wondering what divine assistance might look like when we can see only the physical side of an experience. That is my own speculation, and I want to keep it labeled as such.

How do we know when we have done what we reasonably can, and when our attempts to control everything are becoming another problem?

The Consequences We Cannot See

Ramban sees more than a private crisis in Abram’s descent to Egypt. He describes it as foreshadowing the later exile: famine, descent to Egypt, the taking of women, plagues, and departure with wealth. He goes further and says Abram’s error led to the Egyptian exile being decreed for his descendants. That is Ramban’s assessment, and I disagree with part of his judgment while taking the consequences he identifies seriously.

My mind then travels to Lurianic teachings about gilgul neshamot, the reincarnation and correction of souls. Texts in that tradition connect the generation of the Tower of Babel with souls who later endured slavery in Egypt. I find the detail of brickmaking particularly striking: at Babel people used bricks and mortar in a project of rebellion, while in Egypt the Israelites were compelled to labor with bricks and mortar under oppression. Within that mystical interpretation, the later experience participates in a process of tikkun.

That is a theological teaching within Kabbalah, not a historical claim we can prove. And it does not demonstrate that every decision Abram made was predetermined or correct. It does make me think about how little of another person’s story we see, and how difficult it is to judge an event when we cannot see what comes before or afterward.

Here is the beautiful irony: I may disagree with Ramban, yet without Ramban, Rashi, Radak, Abarbanel, and Mei HaShiloach raising these different possibilities, I wouldn’t have been pushed to examine my own assumptions. Perhaps the disagreement itself is part of what makes study so useful.

Abram Was Heavy With Wealth

After the Egyptian adventure, Abram returns with extraordinary wealth. Genesis 13:2 says he was kaved me’od, very heavy, with livestock, silver, and gold. And whenever I read about rich people feeling overwhelmed by their wealth, I have a reaction. Easy for you to complain when you don’t have bill collectors chasing you while you try to manufacture the money to pay them! Kohelet can question the value of everything he amassed. Personally, I think a few million dollars in the bank would be lovely. Money may not buy happiness, but it certainly helps with the bills.

Of course, “heavy” in the verse tells us how considerable Abram’s wealth was. It does not by itself tell us how he felt about it. This is where two sages make the same word much more interesting.

In Kedushat Levi’s commentary on Lech Lecha, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev explains that a tzaddik remains attached to ayin, a negation of the independent importance of the physical yesh. Through that attachment to the divine source, blessing can be drawn into the material world. He points to Abram’s great wealth as an illustration of that spiritual principle. His emphasis is on connection to the source through devekut.

And Mei HaShiloach, in the passage we read in Living Waters, interprets Abram’s heaviness in a very particular way. Having been tested by scarcity, Abram now fears what riches might do to his spiritual life. Rabbi Leiner connects this to Solomon’s prayer in Proverbs 30:8, asking for neither poverty nor riches. He contrasts Abram with Lot, whose possessions are described without the same language of heaviness and whom he reads as rejoicing in what he had without Abram’s apprehension.

That correction matters to me. I had briefly imagined Abram feeling burdened by having to elevate his wealth back toward God. But why should someone attached to God find that joyful act burdensome? It would be like imagining a righteous person resenting the opportunity to bless God over something new. Mei HaShiloach is saying something subtler: Abram is concerned about the spiritual dangers wealth might create, not exhausted by the chance to recognize its source.

Now my mind starts traveling again. Kedushat Levi’s ayin and yesh bring me to a picture of the water cycle. Water rises as vapor, cools, condenses, and returns to earth as rain. I imagine blessing coming from a source beyond what we can hold and taking the recognizable form of material abundance. Then I imagine what happens when we use that abundance for generosity, hospitality, responsibility, and service: in my picture, the water begins its return journey.

This water-cycle comparison is my own analogy. I am not claiming that Kedushat Levi teaches evaporation, condensation, or a literal return of wealth to the upper worlds. What he gives us is the relationship between spiritual attachment and material blessing. I’m using the water image to think about how I might live that relationship.

Lot and the Question of Attachment

Abram and Lot both accumulate so much livestock and property that the land can no longer sustain them together. Their shepherds quarrel, Abram proposes separation, and Lot looks toward the fertile Jordan plain. He chooses the land that seems to offer the greatest material advantage.

Mei HaShiloach’s contrast makes me wonder whether Lot’s relationship with wealth was different from Abram’s. Perhaps Lot experienced his possessions more as an extension of himself. That last possibility is my reading of the story; the Torah doesn’t supply Lot’s private philosophy of money.

But the question lands rather close to home. If I believe everything I possess is entirely a result of my own intelligence, work, strength, and ability to manufacture outcomes, then losing it can feel like losing part of myself. The more afraid I am of that loss, the harder I hold on. Could fear of losing wealth actually increase my attachment to it?

I know how it feels to think that every dollar depends on me. I know how easily financial pressure consumes attention I would rather give to my children, Torah study, training, surfing, writing, and an ordinary day lived well. And I know how quickly concern for the future can swallow the life happening right now.

So I find myself sitting between the two sages. Kedushat Levi asks me to consider my relationship to the divine source of material blessing. Mei HaShiloach asks what happens to that relationship when either scarcity or abundance occupies my mind. Both questions are worth asking when the bills are due, and both are worth asking when there is more than enough.

I’m not suggesting we stop working, saving, or making practical decisions. Abram himself managed a substantial household. What I want to examine is how much of my consciousness becomes attached to the outcome, and whether that attachment leaves room for gratitude, discernment, and presence.

I can explain ayin and yesh. I can imagine vapor becoming water and water becoming vapor again. I can appreciate the mystical beauty of devekut. Yet when the bills arrive, I can still feel every ounce of that heaviness. That is the part I need to sit with, long and deep.

Lech Lecha began with an instruction to move without being given the whole map. Abram encounters scarcity, makes a decision, faces unexpected consequences, and eventually confronts abundance. I see in those events a continuing question about the relationship between action, trust, and awareness. I can take the next step with the understanding I have now, while leaving room for reality to teach me something I cannot yet see.

And I want to leave myself with one question: How do I relate to what I possess? Do I experience it as something flowing through my life, or as something I alone must create, control, and protect?

I don’t have a complete answer yet, and I think that is where I need to continue my study.

My day is my path.

Sources and References

Genesis 11:31–12:20; 13:2–13. Torah narrative and wording of “kaved me’od.” https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.12

Rashi on Genesis 12:10 (famine as test); 12:17 (Sarai directing the angel, citing Midrash Tanchuma). https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Genesis.12.17

Radak on Genesis 12:10 (Egypt as a temporary destination during famine); Abarbanel on Genesis 12:11 (Abram’s apprehension on nearing Egypt).

Ramban on Genesis 12:10 (criticism of Abram’s choices, foreshadowing and causation of Egyptian exile). https://www.sefaria.org/Ramban_on_Genesis.12.10.1

Mei HaShiloach, vol. I, Lech Lecha §§4–5; English in Living Waters: The Mei HaShiloach, pp. 38–39 (photographed text). §5 covers constriction, Abram’s fear of riches, and Lot. https://www.sefaria.org/Mei_HaShiloach%2C_Volume_I%2C_Genesis%2C_Lech_Lecha.5

Kedushat Levi, Genesis, Lech Lecha §10, on Genesis 12:8 and 13:2 (ayin, yesh, and drawing blessing through spiritual attachment). https://www.sefaria.org/Kedushat_Levi%2C_Genesis%2C_Lech_Lecha.10

Pirkei Avot 3:15 (Rabbi Akiva: foreknowledge and free choice). https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.3.15

Lurianic reincarnation tradition: Pri Etz Chaim, Sha’ar Chag HaMatzot, ch. 1; Chesed LeAvraham, Ma’ayan 2, Nahar 56. The specific edition and text of these passages have not been independently collated and remain pending verification; the Tower–Egypt connection is presented as a traditional mystical interpretation, not as established history.

Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, chapter 8 (Abraham and learning in Egypt); Book of Jubilees 11:23–24 (seed-plow story). https://www.sefaria.org/Book_of_Jubilees.11

Solomon’s paradox: Grossmann and Kross, psychological research on reasoning about one’s own versus others’ conflicts. The Heisenberg-associated science statement remains pending verification as an authentic verbatim quotation, so it is paraphrased and flagged in the chapter.

Editorial distinction: the diamond comparison, imagined dialogue, water cycle, angels/worlds conjecture, and applications to personal financial life are the author’s reflections, not quotations from the commentators.