I didn’t plan it this way, but it just worked out that this
week, the week of Parashat Lech L’cha, I saw the movie, “The Walk,” about
Phillippe Petit and his high-wire walk between the two towers of the World
Trade Center. The film was breathtaking, in its beauty, and in its terror. It
was hard to watch, and at the same time, impossible to look away, as Phillippe
crossed what he calls, “the void,” between the two towers, hundreds of feet in
the air.
This week, God calls to Avram from out of the void, and asks
him to step into it. “Lech L’cha,” “Go forth, from your country, from your
birthplace, from your father’s house – to the land that I will show you. And I
will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great,
and you shall be a blessing.”
Hannah Senesh writes, in a poem printed in the Women’s Torah
commentary:
A voice called. I went.
I went, for it called.
I went, lest I fall.
At the crossroads
I blocked both ears with white frost
And cried
For what I had lost.
This week, Avram is called to depart from all he has ever
known, to forgo his past, and to head into the void. He is called to do this by
a voice that is greater than himself. And this voice promises blessing. Next week,
that same voice will use a similar pattern, calling on Avram to forgo his
future – to take his son, his only son, his precious one, Isaac – to the land
of Moriah, and to offer him up as a burnt offering.
What does it mean to live on a high wire? What does it mean
to be called to step into the void? What do we lose? What must we sacrifice? How
are we blessed? Why do we go?
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