“Go!”
Believe it or not, this is the first item on the agenda in this week’s Torah reading, Lech Lecha. Abraham has just appeared on the biblical scene. God told Abraham that for his own benefit, he should “go from your land, from your birthplace and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
According to Maimonides, this would be the first of the famous 10 tests of faith that Abraham would face in his lifetime. Leaving his comfort zone and traveling a long distance to unknown, uncharted territory wasn’t easy. Of course, Abraham, the founding father of our people, obeyed God without question.
And, according to all opinions, the 10th and final test would be in next week’s reading, the binding of Isaac, the Akedah. Would Abraham be prepared to sacrifice his beloved son, the one he had waited 100 years to be born?
Interestingly, the first test of faith took Abraham around the world, where he would spread monotheism—the belief in one God—to the predominantly pagan people of the time. It was a feat of unimaginable magnitude. Abraham basically took on the entire world; virtually singlehandedly, he transformed much of the world into believers. Instead of worshipping the sun, moon and stars—or the idols they built with their own hands—the world began believing in a Supreme Being and following his basic moral code.
As I have written elsewhere, this made Abraham the most influential person in all of human history. The many billions of believers of all faiths throughout the millennia owe that faith to Abraham.
In the Torah itself, however, there is very little explicit mention of this transformational, world-changing achievement. A phrase or two is all we can find. But when it comes to the Akedah, the final test of faith, the Torah devotes an entire chapter (Genesis 22) to the story and describes it graphically and in detail. Furthermore, throughout the ages, the test of sacrificing his son has always been considered Abraham’s most crucial and difficult test of faith. We refer to it regularly in all our prayers.
Surely, the private drama on a mountaintop between father and son pales in insignificance when compared to making a global impact on the minds and hearts of billions? Wouldn’t we expect that this first test of faith should have much more biblical space devoted to it than to the private tale of the Akedah?
One powerful answer is that the binding of Isaac represented Abraham’s personal mission to God. Whereas Lech Lecha, to go out and spread the word far and wide, represented his universal mission to humankind.
And before you can change the world, you have to know who you are.
If you don’t know yourself, if you don’t recognize your own personal, spiritual mission, then how can you possibly hope to influence the wider world?
That is why, while the 10th test is last chronologically, it may well be the very first in importance.
In recent times, we have been exposed to a lot of noise coming from too many of our fellow Jews who have joined forces with our enemies in attacking Israel, claiming that it is guilty of genocide or deliberately starving Gazans. Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and, here in South Africa, the South African Jews for a Free Palestine, are but a few. Some are larger, some are rather fringe. And then there are the many Jewish celebrities with millions of “followers” who have openly condemned Israel on the international stage.
May I be so bold as to suggest that the vast majority of these Jews are, tragically, completely ignorant of Jewish history, including the history of the founding of Israel over the last 100 years? And in their pathetic illiteracy, they have swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the prevailing misconceptions so forcefully publicized by the well-funded Islamist PR machines and disseminated globally by unapologetic sponsors of terror.
We are not colonizers. Israel has been the Jewish homeland for millennia, long before the birth of Islam or the more recent artificial concoction of a Palestinian nation.
These Jews play into the hands of enemies as clichéd useful idiots. If Jews themselves agree, then surely it must be so, goes the shallow argument.
The fundamental cause of the Middle Eastern conflict has centered on the Jewish “occupation” of so-called Arab lands. But before June 1967 and the start of the Six-Day War, Israel occupied no Arab territory. In more contemporary arguments, every Israeli civilian and soldier left Gaza in the summer of 2005; Israel did not “occupy” the Strip at the time of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led invasion and attacks in southern Israel.
And why, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered more than 90% of the “disputed” territories to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000, did Arafat flatly refuse it without even making a counteroffer? If you don’t believe me, ask former President Bill Clinton, who presided over those peace meetings and has stated, publicly and angrily, that Arafat lied and was never negotiating in good faith. Why? Because the Palestinians don’t want their state, they want our state. They cannot accept Jews in the region and want us out completely. We have no partner for peace, no matter how much we may compromise.
Other than Israel, is there any nation on earth that would tolerate thousands of rockets and missiles being fired from a neighboring country without retaliating mightily? Israel has actually been remarkably restrained in its response.
As for justice, we Jews have nothing to apologize for. We invented justice. Our Torah is the ultimate source of true justice. “An eye for an eye,” in our view, means the monetary value of an eye, not to gouge out the perpetrator’s eye, or chop off hands as is done in many Arab countries to this day.
Is Israel perfect? Of course not. But any objective person or organization knows full well that no deliberate genocide is going on. Israel remains the only democracy in the entire Middle East, and its laws are fair and equitable to all—Jew and Arab alike.
So Jews, get educated! Discover the facts, and stop undermining your own homeland and its courageous people. If you want to change the world, first look at yourself in the mirror. When you understand the truth, you will no doubt stand together with your brothers and sisters and defend them from the terror, hate and diabolical schemes to destroy Israel completely.
Like Abraham, if you want to change the world, then you must first know who you are. Without having a personal mission of your own spiritual identity, you will never be able to successfully take on a universal mission. It will fail and backfire with serious damage.
