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Shabbat starts on Friday at 7:35pm and ends on Saturday at 8:37pm. The weekly Torah portion is Lech-Lecha.
Mincha continues at 1.45pm at A-P GF/459 Collins Mon-Wed, and Thu 1.45pm at L1 Capital using the WhatsApp group to confirm numbers.
Weekly sushi & shiur continues on Wed at 1.20pm (before mincha) at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: governance of charity collectors. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.
Thought of the Week with thanks to Mandi Katz.
As is the case for many children, my formal Torah education started with this week’s Torah reading – Lech Lecha. I still recall the thrall I experienced as a young child reading and learning to recite parts of the story of Avram’s physical and spiritual journey which was not just a personal odyssey to the fuller person that he became as Avraham, but a journey that led to the creation of a people, culture and a civilization.
The physical element of the journey is palpable – it is a tale of travelling from place to place, of avoiding physical hardship, and of the blessing of material wealth.
And the spiritual dimension is ever present – the very imperative to move and to wander comes directly from God, and from the promise of blessing and multitude.
But the rabbis also understood Avram’s journey to be an intellectual one. A beautiful reading in the Midrash Hagadol brings the idea that Avram struggled intellectually with the idea of idol worship. His response was not just based on faith but on reason.
The midrash teaches that Avram’s family manufactured idols which Avram had to sell in the market but that he would destroy the idols to demonstrate their lack of substance to potential buyers who would then give up the intention of idol worship. The midrash teaches that Avram would “roam in his mind”, reflecting on the state of the natural world and that after considering the interdependence of humanity and the physical world: earth, plants, rain, the sun, the moon, the stars he understood that none of these had sovereignty over the other and became distressed by his understanding that “there are no gods”.
The midrash explains: “And he wandered in his mind, trying to find the truth of the matter. When God saw him in his distress he said to him You love righteousness to justify the world”.
Avraham’s journey was animated by physical wandering, the anguish of despair, and by philosophical questioning, all of which coalesce in the language of this midrash in his embracing the possibility of righteousness in the world.