Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on safari in Africa. One night, Holmes wakes Watson.
“Watson,” he says, “Look up. What do you see?”
“I see a beautiful, starry night,” Watson replies.
“And what do you see, Holmes?”
Holmes sighs. “Watson, I see that someone has stolen our tent!”
This week in Lech Lecha, Abraham is deeply troubled. He and his wife, Sarai, have no child, and the future he hoped for seems impossible. This is how God responded to Abraham’s concerns.
“And He took him (Abraham) outside and said, ‘Please look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ And then God tells Abraham, ‘So shall your descendants be’” (Genesis, Chapter 15).
The midrash goes beyond the simple meaning of God taking Abraham outside to see the stars. Of course, Abraham had to leave his tent to see the night sky. But the midrash hears a deeper meaning: God took Abraham outside his ordinary expectations, beyond the limits nature and circumstance had imposed.
In effect, God was telling Abraham, “You see only what seems possible from where you are standing. I will lift you beyond that.” He took Abraham out of his own natural limitations. The Almighty was telling Abraham, “By nature, you and Sarai may be old and infertile, but I will lift you above your natural limitations, and you will father a great nation.”
My late father traced his lineage back to the great Chassidic master Rabbi Yitzchak Meir of Ger, the Chidushei HaRim, who drew a further lesson from the promise: “So shall your descendants be.” Just as Abraham was raised beyond what seemed to be his natural destiny, so too would his descendants, the Jewish people, repeatedly find themselves lifted beyond the limits of nature and the finite.
The Jewish story has always demanded that we look beyond the immediate facts. We are a small people. We have known exile and upheaval. Again and again, the sensible prediction seemed to be that we would disappear. And yet here we are—still living Jewish lifestyles, learning Torah, building families, creating communities and finding new ways to bring Jewish life to the next generation.
There is a story about a great tidal wave approaching the world, threatening to submerge everything and everyone. A global tsunami was coming in 30 days. The Catholics gathered in Rome to confess their sins. The Protestants convened to consider how they might repent before meeting their Maker. And the Jews assembled at the Western Wall. Their leaders proclaimed: “Jews, we have thirty days to learn how to live underwater!”
The stars are a call to wonder—and to imagine a future larger than his fear.
Of course, it’s a joke, but Jewish resilience is no joke. We don’t give up, even when the odds look impossible. Jewish hope is not pretending that danger is unreal. Abraham knew his circumstances. He knew the years had passed and that his wife was barren. Faith did not ask him to ignore reality. It invited him to look beyond reality’s apparent final word.
The birth of Isaac was a miracle, a child born to parents who had given up hope of having one. The Torah contrasts Isaac’s story with Ishmael’s. Ishmael was born to Hagar and Abraham quite naturally; Isaac was born to Sarai and Abraham, when the promise seemed beyond reach. Their stories remind us that Jewish life is extraordinary and that sometimes, what looks impossible becomes the beginning of a new chapter.
The same spirit runs through Jewish history. The rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in our ancestral homeland, following the devastation of the Holocaust, is one of the most remarkable chapters in modern history. A land once described as desolate has been renewed through courage, hard work, creativity and faith. Israel’s story is not free of danger or difficulty, but its very existence, and the determination of its people to build and protect it, speak to a power of renewal that completely defies the natural order.
Ben-Gurion is often credited with saying, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” We continue to defy logic and are flourishing despite the existential threats from our neighbors and other enemies way beyond our borders. The most recent miracle was, of course, the flydubai flight that was able to land safely from a seemingly impossible situation.
And the stars in Abraham’s sky teach us something personal, too. God does not merely tell Abraham that his descendants will be numerous. God asks him to look up. The stars are a call to wonder—and to imagine a future larger than his fear.
We know the stars are beyond counting, but ask your child or grandchild to look up and count them, and they will start counting, “One, two, three … .” As a people, too, we may not be able to count the stars, but we still try. That is the Jewish instinct: to reach toward what is greater than us, not because success is guaranteed, but because we know that when it comes to Jewish survival, nothing is impossible.
Each of us may face moments when the numbers don’t work, when logic says, “Don’t try,” and when our circumstances seem to define our destiny. Genesis reminds us that we are not required to accept those limitations as the whole story. We can look up. We can take the next step. We can bring light, courage and hope even into situations that seemed hopeless and impossible.
We are a people born from that promise made beneath the stars. May we have the faith to see beyond the tent, the courage to keep going when the odds seem daunting. We are founded on the miraculous. And each of us has been endowed by God with the capacity for the infinite.
Let us never be deterred by the maths, the logic or the laws of nature. Let’s keep going for broke. Let’s keep reaching for the stars. And, please God, like Abraham, we will.
