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.