Ancestral Super-Powers
Dear friends,
My pre-election angst was ripped apart the other night when I learned about the killing of Walter Wallace Jr. by the Philadelphia police. This week’s Parasha helped me cope with the fact of the ongoing injustices, which will continue regardless of the outcome of the election.
In it we are introduced to our first ancestor, Abraham, and to his one super-power, the ability to believe, the driving force behind his actions in the world. We read about his covenant with God; a covenant sealed in blood on Abraham’s part, and fire on God’s, known as the Covenant of Parts. I'll try and relay the story.
Abraham, here still called Abram, is now an old man, childless and living in a strange new land. When God appears to him with promises of great rewards, he is confused:
What can you possibly give me? I’m here walking alone and useless with no one to inherit what I have.
The one who will inherit you will come from your guts, God says. Flesh of your flesh.
Before Abram can say a word God takes him outside.
Look up at the sky, he is told, and count the stars. Can you do it? Your seed will be that numerous.
Imagine being told at age 90, after a lifetime of attempts at conceiving, that you will have a child. Imagine being told today that all 545 children who were separated at the border from their parents, and the government has no idea where these parents are, will all be reunited with their families. Imagine hearing a voice saying “One day the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.” (That’s MLK’s voice in the March on Washington)
And now imagine believing that voice.
And Abram believed God.
I am the God who brought you here, God continues, so that your seed will be at home in this land.
It is at this point that Abram asks a simple question, which produces this covenant of fire and blood:
How can I know that is true?
Imagine that when you answered that way to the voice promising you miracles, it said this:
Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
Or in our language this may be more like: Skip work for three days. Instead go to Philadelphia and protest the injustice. And then take another three days and fly to Guatemala and try and locate the parents of one of these children. And then take another three days and spend them at the soup kitchen around the block from your apartment.
How can you know that the promise will come true? God’s answer: Take action. Make a sacrifice.
Abram does it. He slaughters and skins the animals.
He brought them to God and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other;
For a while nothing happens. Abram falls asleep and has a terrible nightmare. He sees people suffering, destruction, a great darkness. The road to the fulfillment of the promise will be long, he is told. 400 years of slavery. But it will end.
When he wakes up it is nighttime, and it is smokey. A torch of fire is moving between the split pieces of the sacrifices. And Abram knows that the covenant is sealed.
May we have the strength to believe in the promise of a place that feels like home for all of us, and the motivation to work to make it so.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha