God speaks to Abraham on multiple occasions in this week’s Torah portion. In all but one, the text uses the formulation vayomer adonai – and God said. The exception appears in the opening of chapter 15 when devar adaonai el Avram – the word of the Lord came to Abram. The singularity of expression is important for two reasons.
First, the message. “Fear not.”
Fear can be a politic emotion. A healthy dose of apprehension is a benefit from time to time. Fear fosters a sense of prudence. The rabbis counseled: Never court the angel of death. There are legitimate reasons to avoid unnecessary risk. Life can be dangerous enough. No need to voluntarily sign up to swim with the sharks.
Fear taken to an unnecessary level, however, can prevent a person from fulfilling his or her God-given potential. All life is risk taking to one extent or another.
A friend spoke to me of the fear she had crossing the street in Washington DC. Traffic coming at you in all directions. She said she would hold to the traffic islands at all costs, afraid to step out into the flow, waiting until the very last minute to step off the curb. Until one day she imagined herself run down right there on the traffic island with the newspaper headline the next day: Pedestrian hit. Police say, she should have j-walked.
Abraham leaves his native land, his father’s house and sets off to an unknown destination, all on the summons of a heretofore unknown and ultimately unknowable God. Now that’s risk taking. But the truth is that this is a journey we are all tasked to undertake by the same Deity the day we come into our life. Living is both leave taking and risk taking with the destination ultimately unknowable in advance. How and where we will end up is a mystery that will remain unsolved until the very last days of our being. So the message holds: Fear Not. Your life is meant to be lived fully.
And secondly, I think the formulation – and the word of the Lord came to Abram – is probably the Torah’s indication that this was something that the patriarch figured out for himself. It came to him, not at first but – just as it came to my friend in DC – in time that ultimately there is no absolute safety in life and that - very often - risk is the only option worth the effort or the price.
Fear not, otherwise you never get to the Promised Land, or even across the street for that matter.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Whiman