One Person. People. (Lech Lecha)

One Person. People. (Lech Lecha)

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Lech Lecha is the moment when humanity’s story becomes a summons addressed to one person.

Before Abram and Sarai, Genesis considers the human condition through creation, violence, flood, and dispersal. These stories contain encounters with God. With Lech Lecha, the Torah’s attention settles upon a family whose covenant will carry responsibility across generations.

Even a letter can mark that turning. Commenting on the final nun of "Charan," the place where Abram’s father Terach dies, Rashi describes an inverted letter and connects it with the divine anger preceding Abram, limited to the previous chapters by the implied visual bracket. (It is fascinating that we no longer have that tradition in the way scribes write Torahs today.) I hear in that remembered calligraphic nuance an invitation to imagine a world turning toward a new possibility.

The Torah marks a pivotal moment. God calls one person. A People’s journey begins.

What might it mean to mark our moment, hear that call ourselves, and see our individual decisions as impacting others?

Our collective future depends upon individual acts of responsibility. Before we ask what our People will become, each of us must choose how to live into our next moments.

May our decisions carry forward the life entrusted to us through Avram and Sarai.

Let it begin with me. Let it begin with you.

The Covenant of One and All | Lech Lecha | #Broadcast1662

 

Shattering Idols | Lech Lecha | #Broadcast1661

 

A Faith Spacious Enough for Wonder (Lech Lecha)

A Faith Spacious Enough for Wonder (Lech Lecha)

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Sometimes the Torah we remember contains stories the Torah never tells. We have heard them so often that they become inseparable from the text itself.

Consider Abram smashing his father’s idols. Terah leaves his son tending the shop. Abram shatters the statues, places the weapon in the largest idol’s hand, and tells his father that the gods fought among themselves. Terah protests: these objects cannot act! Abram’s response exposes the contradiction: Why, then, worship them?

It is a magnificent story. It is also not found in the biblical text. It is midrash, the magnificent imaginative project of the rabbis of old and of today.

Parashat Lech Lecha begins with God calling Abram to leave his homeland. The Torah offers no explanation for his selection. Our rabbis enter that silence with a story about someone willing to challenge inherited assumptions. Before Abram journeys, the midrash imagines him journeying beyond the boundaries of his father’s imagination.

But what happens when the descendants of an idol smasher turn his legacy into something immovable?

In "Open Closed Open," the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai z"l reminds us:

"We are all children of Abraham
But also the grandchildren of Terah, Abraham's father.
And maybe it's high time the grandchildren
Did unto their father as he did unto his,
When he shattered his idols and images, his religion, his faith.
That too would be the beginning of a new religion."

Amichai's poetic midrash is unsettling in all the right ways.

We can become so protective of our stories that we forget what they seek to express. We can mistake a clear formulation for God's Dream. We can hold an established understanding so tightly that there is no room left for wonder, growth, or another human being.

Idols need not be carved from stone. Certainty can become an idol.

We need not seek a new religion. This one, our precious Jewish tradition, its texts, its obligations, its stubborn insistence that life can become more holy, is a treasure beyond measure. This calls us to remain curious about what our ancestors handed down and courageous about what we must carry forward.

Our rabbis received Torah and responded imaginatively to its silences. Their fidelity included the willingness to create.

Lech Lecha demands the same: to recognize when familiar forms have narrowed our sense of what is possible, and to begin moving again.

We are descendants of Abram and Sarai. Our inheritance includes the courage to leave familiar ground.

May we teach and live a Torah spacious enough for that journey with the Divine.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg's Wisdom for Life | Lech Lecha | #Broadcast1660

 

The Courage to Keep Listening: a reflection on Billy Planer's "Conversations that Matter"

The Courage to Keep Listening

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

There is a particular loneliness in being certain that no one is listening. We can fill our days with words, publish our convictions, gather affirmations, and still feel that we have reached no one beyond those who already agree. Meanwhile, the distance between us grows.

My friend Billy Planer has spent decades walking into that distance. His book, "Conversations That Matter," invites us to join him.

Drawing on his work leading Etgar 36 journeys through American history and contemporary life, Billy introduces us to people whose stories complicate the categories we carry. His educational method asks participants to encounter human beings, listen to how their convictions developed, and notice what happens within themselves when someone refuses to fit a familiar outline.

That matters so very much. We often imagine listening as something we offer another person. Billy reminds us how much it requires of the listener. Can I recognize the moment when curiosity gives way to preparing my rebuttal? Can I ask a question whose answer I have not already decided? Can I tolerate the discomfort of discovering that someone I disagree with has something to teach me?

These are deeply spiritual questions. They concern the habits through which we become human together.

As a rabbi, I hear in Billy’s work an echo of the Jewish insistence that every person bears God's Image. That teaching becomes demanding precisely when someone’s words anger us. Recognizing another person’s humanity can require tremendous discipline when the stakes of a disagreement are real and our own wounds are close to the surface.

I also appreciate that Billy makes room for boundaries. Conversation requires willingness. Safety matters. Sometimes stepping away is wise. The invitation to listen carries weight because it leaves room for judgment about when an encounter is possible.

His practical guidance gives that invitation substance: speak from your own experience, ask sincere questions, pay attention to your posture and tone, allow mistakes, and release the need to win. Anyone who has attempted these things during a painful disagreement knows how much practice they require. Even taking a breath before answering can become an act of moral courage.

I found myself especially moved by the role of story in his approach. An argument can become abstract very quickly. A story asks us to picture a life. It gives a belief a history, a geography, a family, a wound. We may remain unconvinced. Yet we have encountered someone whose existence exceeds the position we oppose.

For those of us committed to public leadership, this is a necessary challenge. Our words shape the rooms others must inhabit. We bear responsibility for what we defend, how we speak, and whether people leave our presence more capable of encountering one another. Passion and humility belong together. So do conviction and curiosity.

Billy’s book leaves me thinking about the world we build through ordinary exchanges: the question asked without a trap inside it, the moment of restraint, the unexpected admission, the willingness to remain present. These gestures can prepare people for the sustained work that change demands.

On December 6, I will have the pleasure of joining Billy for a public conversation in Westchester about Conversations That Matter. I am grateful to call him my friend and eager to explore these questions together. You can find event information at https://billyplaner.com/events/. You can purchase your own copy of the book here: https://a.co/d/0cLbC37Z

I hope you will join us. Billy has given us a generous invitation to practice something our communities urgently need: the courage to listen closely enough that another person becomes more fully visible. We can begin with the next conversation, carrying our convictions, making room for surprise, and remembering that the person before us has a story.

We Are Children of Avram the Transcender | Lech Lecha | #Broadcast1659