"Go
on, get going! Get out of here! Leave your parent's home! Forge
your own path! Make sense of the world as you see it!" That is what our Torah is trying
to teach us this week. Avraham Avinu, Abraham our Father, is considered a
Jewish hero because he rejected the wisdom of his parents' generation. And so
it is that Judaism itself does not want us to uncritically adopt our parents'
way of relating to God. Not at all. Everywhere in the Jewish world people talk
about the need for one generation to continue the work of the previous
generation. That is not always how it works. Sometimes we should not continue
the work of our parents, but rather we should do our own work.
This idea
is challenging, radical, exciting, and difficult. Experience teaches us this
too. At times we realize that our perspective, our commitments, even our values
will not be identical to those of our parents, grandparents, and ancestors. And
so the story of Abraham gives us permission to choose our own paths. For while
our tradition teaches us that every human being inherits much from the world he
or she grew up in, each of us must eventually struggle with creating our own
religious identities. In figuring out who we are (who we are called to be) in
this world, we should start with ourselves. (Maybe not end there, but start
there.)
The message of the Torah
this week is simple: go forth! Go with courage and care and good sense. Don't
forget the lessons of your parents, your teachers, your rabbis, and our
ancestors, and don't stop listening to them or caring about them. But as you
sometimes find yourself thinking differently, and making different choices than
they made, realize that this, too, is the way that it is supposed to be.
For Abraham went forth, and in the end was indeed a blessing.
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