Tag: travel

Back There, Akara, and Belonging

This is not a particularly polished post, but more of a set of musings or food for thought.

Leaving

There is a lot of talk about leaving, voluntary and through forced exile, in Genesis

  • Exile from Eden (Gen 3:24)
  • Cain’s exile (Gen 4:16)
  • God limits the span human life (Gen 6:4)
  • Flood leavings
    • — Noah, Naamah, and all leave earth for the ark (Gen 7:2)
    • — Raven sent out (Gen 8:7)
    • — Dove sent out (Gen 8:8)
    • — Noah/Naamah and all leave ark (8:16)
  • Scattering from Babel (Gen 11:9)
  • Terah and family leave Ur (Gen 11:31)
  • Abraham is told to leave [Lekh Lekha] (Gen 12:l)

The departure of Gen 12:1 — “from your land, from your kindred, and from your father’s house” — is sometimes treated as a single, decisive leaving for the Genesis story. And it is a key element in the story. But leaving, voluntary and forced, continues throughout the Genesis story.

This is a thorough but not exhaustive list of goings:

  • Abraham and Sarah leave for, and then from, Mitzrayim (Gen 12:10, 13:1)
  • Abraham’s and Lot’s families part (Gen 13:10)
    • — Lot’s folks settle near Sodom (Gen 13:13)
    • — Abraham and Sarah move-tent to Oaks of Mamre (Gen 14:1)
  • — War-related movements (Gen 14)
  • Hagar runs away and returns (Gen 16:6)
  • Some of Lot’s family leave Sodom (Gen 19:17)
  • Abraham and Sarah sojourn in Gerar (Gen 20)
  • Hagar and Ishmael are exiled (Gen 21:15)
  • Eliezer goes “back” to get Isaac a wife (Gen 24:1)
  • Rebecca leaves her family’s home to marry Isaac (Gen 24:58-59)
  • Ishmael and Isaac have, meanwhile, both settled near Beer Lahai Roi (Gen 25)
  • Rebecca “goes to inquire” (Gen 25:22)
  • Rebecca and Isaac sojourn in Gerar (Gen 26)
  • Jacob goes “back” to Rebecca’s family to marry (Gen 28:5)

Back There

The Lekh Lekha departure of Gen 12:1 is often read as thorough and decisive. Several rituals and some covenantal language suggest a serious break with the past is intended:

  • the dramatic, one-time Covenant of the Pieces (Gen 15),
  • the name changes for Abraham and Sarah (from Abram and Sarai, Gen 17),
  • the on-going covenant of circumcision commandment (Gen 17) for those with penises and, presumably, their families.

In the portion, Chayei Sarah, however, Abraham sends to his people back home to find a wife for Isaac (Gen 24); later, Jacob spends two decades in the old country, marrying two women from his grandparents’ kindred, with most of the children born outside “the land” (Gen 29ff)…

Chayei Sarah contains a lot of “There=שם “

Abraham is old and telling the elder servant of his household to go “to my country, and to my kindred (or: the land of my birth) to get a wife for my son Isaac” (Gen 24:1-2). The servant (later identified as Eliezer) asks what to do, should he find a potential wife who doesn’t consent to return with him: Should he bring Isaac back…

אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יָצָאתָ מִשָּׁם׃ …to the land from which you came? (Gen 24:5)

פֶּן־תָּשִׁיב אֶת־בְּנִי שָׁמָּה On no account take my son back there (Gen 24:6)

וְלָקַחְתָּ אִשָּׁה לִבְנִי מִשָּׁם …get a wife for my son from there (Gen 24:7)

לֹא תָשֵׁב שָׁמָּה …do not take my son back there (Gen 24:8)

In contrast to Gertrude Stein’s “no there there,” there is a lot of “there”–שם — here.

Commentators across centuries have explored many “there” details: Did Abraham intend a specific place? Specific kin? Why not encourage marriage with neighbor families? Was the union meant to seal some kind of family reconciliation? One of the most salient answers, for present purposes, stresses basic there-ness:

Abraham was sent away from his country, kindred and father’s house, so that he should have no further contact with them and be a stranger in a foreign clime…Similarly, his son must not marry [a Canaanite]. For this reason he was called Abraham the Hebrew, “that all the world was on one side and he on the other” (ivri means in Hebrew “a person from the other side” usually taken as a reference to Abraham’s origins in Mesopotamia — on the other side of the river).
–Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Breishit,, p. 220

Belonging

Abraham is ivri, from there. As in “not from here.” A key experience that his descendants will repeat — in Mitzrayim, in the wilderness, in later exile. At this point in Genesis, Abraham and his family are becoming separate. That separateness will play an important role in the Exodus and, later, Babylonian Captivity. Meanwhile, though, after Rebecca comes “from there” to marry Isaac and raise their sons, the situation will be reversed for the next generation, with Jacob finding his wives and fathering children in the land where, according to Leibowitz and so many others, God intended there should be “no further contact.”

This portion mentions Abraham’s “seed” and how that seed is connected to a future in a “land I will show you”? In the Haftarah for the portion Lekh Lekha, two weeks back, we learned that covenant and seed are connected through God’s friendship — or “beloved” relationship — to Abraham (Isaiah 41:8). In this way, the future is being crafted through a visioning process that involves leaving, mourning, leaning still toward “back there,” and seeking to belong in a new place.

A few related questions to consider:

  • Where, if anywhere, does Abraham belong? Does belonging involve purchase? vision?
  • What does this mean for our own belonging?
  • How much of what’s “back there” is essential to our life today? How much needs to be left?
  • Additional questions: How do specific attributes of a neighborhood, current or “back there,” influence our choice of where to dwell? What is our responsibility, if any, to a neighborhood in which we no longer reside?

Akara

Sarah, Rebecca, and later Rachel are all called “akara,” a relatively rare word in the Torah. It is often translated as “barren” but also related to uprooting and, in later Hebrew, to “essential.”

Here is a presentation from a few years back on this word and what it might mean for understanding all the leaving and uprooting in Genesis: “Rachel and Joseph: Rooting, Uprooting, and the Essence of Judaism” at the Global Shavuot Teach-In 5784 Torah of Freedom for All.

The full-slide version includes graphical elements (no illustrations, just decorative and organizational graphics.)

Full-slide presentation PDF: “Akara for Shavuot SPATZ Slides“

The text-only version is also PDF but contains no visual elements and has a little formatting as possible for anyone who finds this more accessible

Text-only PDF: “Akara Shavuot Spatz text of slides“