With our parasha, the Torah’s focus shifts and narrows to concentrate on what will be its subject for the rest of Genesis, the line of descent beginning with Avram, later Avraham, which would form the ethnic basis on which the nation of Israel would be founded at the foot of Mt Sinai.
As our parasha opens, G-d issues the instruction which would set that process in motion: לך לך מארצך וממולדתך ומארץ אביך אל הארץ אשר אראך (“Go for yourself from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house to the land which I shall show you”).
Consider this command for a moment and it begins to seem a bit strange. Last week, we read: תרח הוליד את אברם את נחור ואת הרן כו' וימת הרן על פני תרח אביו בארץ מולדתו באור כשדים: ויקח אברם ונחור להם נשים כו' וכו' ויצאו אתם מאור כשדים ללכת ארצה כנען ויבאו עד חרן וישבו שם: (“Terah sired Avram, Nahor, and Haran.... And Haran died before his father in the land of his birth, in Ur Kasdim. And Avram and Nahor took wives for themselves.... And they departed with them from Ur Kasdim to go to the land of Këna‘an, and they came to Haran and settled there....”; XI, 27-31).
It appears from the above that Avram, together with his father, his brother, their wives and Lot, Haran’s son, had already left “his land and his birthplace”; at least, the Torah provides us with no reason to believe that he had not been born in the same place as his brother, Haran, who so tragically died during his father’s lifetime. Since, as our parasha informs us (XII, 4), Avram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran to follow where G-d would lead, it is arguable that Haran had become his land, through some process of naturalization, but since the Torah tells us that the family Terah arrived in Haran on the way to Këna‘an and elected to stay there, it is beyond dispute that it was not his moledeth, his “birthplace.”
It therefore appears that G-d’s instruction is deeper than it appears at a casual reading. What did He mean?
B.
It is interesting to ask what this place Ur Kasdim was, and where it was located.
In the 1920’s, a team of archaeologists under the leadership of C. Leonard Woolley unearthed a site in central Iraq, which they identified as Ur. If that was indeed the name of the place, its inhabitants were singularly unimaginative, as ur, in the Sumerian language which they spoke, simply means “city”. Ur Kasdim, presumably, means “City of Kasdim”. What, then, is or are Kasdim?
Conventionally, Kasdim is interpreted as a gentilic plural (cf. Onqëlos’ rendering, Kasda’ei) meaning “Chaldaeans” (Akkadian Haldū, Greek Chaldaíoi). This is problematic not only because Akkadian h never corresponds to Hebrew kaf, and the correspondence of l to s makes no sense, but also because the Chaldaean occupation of Mesopotamia was contemporary with the divided kingdom of Israel, many centuries after Avram.
The root kaf-sin-dalet has no use in the Holy Language other than here, and as a name (cf. XXII, 21). It does, however, resemble Akkadian kaššadum, “conqueror” (Akkadian was also spoken in ancient Mesopotamia), appropriately in the genitive case. If this surmise is correct, Ur Kasdim could mean “City of the Conqueror,” in a mixture of Sumerian and Akkadian; Nahor’s son Kesed, then, was named “Conqueror.” But in the verse’s actual wording, Haran died bë-eretz moladëto bë-Ur Kasdim. “Ur Kasdim” seems to be a country, an eretz, not a city (if it were, the phrase would read bë-‘ir moladëto).
To understand what comes next, we assert some basic historical facts. As can be shown by simple calculations, the Mabbul of last week’s parasha occurred in the year 1656 after the advent of the first man. The Haflaga, the great dispersal of mankind from Shin‘ar (i.e., Mesopotamia) -- which G-d forced by creating the original seventy languages underlying all modern speech save the Holy Language, thereby engineering chaos -- occurred 340 years later, in the year 1996. Avram was born near the end of that period, in 1948. Thus, at the time of Avram’s birth, humanity had spent a considerable amount of time, perhaps as much as three centuries, writhing under the baleful tyranny of Nimrod (עיי' מה שפירש ההעמק דבר על פי"א פס' א' "דברים אחדים" ). Over time, humanity had been induced by Nimrod and his party to forget the uniquely unitary Creator of all.
As Hazal tell us, Avram rediscovered G-d’s existence. His very outspoken views on the subject, Rashi summarizes, brought him before Nimrod, who styled himself a deity, והשליכו לכבשן האש והרן יושב ואומר אם אברם נוצח אני משלו ואם נמרוד נוצח אני משלו וכשניצל אברם אמרו לו משל מי אתה אמר להם משל אברם אני השליכוהו לכבשן האש ונשרף וזהו אור כשדים וגו' (“...and [Nimrod] caused [Avram] to be thrown into a fiery furnace. Haran [was] sitting and saying, 'If Avram wins, I’m on Avram’s side, and if Nimrod wins, I’m on Nimrod’s side,' and when Avram was saved, [Nimrod’s men] asked [Haran], One whose side are you? He said, 'On Avram’s side, asnd they threw him into the fiery furnace and he was burnt up'; and this is [what is meant by] Ur Kasdim....”; לכל המובא לעיל עיי' עירובין נ"ג., מדרש הגדול פר' נח י"א וכ"ח, תנא דבי אלי' זוטא כ"ה, ובראשית רבה סוף פל"ח). Avram, the tzaddiq, was protected by the merit of his rock-solid faith in G-d; the ambivalent Haran, willing to go with whoever “won,” had no such zëchuth, and hence did not survive the same trial.
Read in this way, ur kasdim may not be a place-name at all. Ur means “fire, light” in the Holy Language. If so, the first phrase in verse 28 exhibits the locative sense of the case prefix bë- (“in the land of his birth”), and the instrumental sense (“by means of the ur kasdim”) in the second. In verse 31, then, the ablative prefix mi-/mé- can be construed to mean “because of,” as it often does, i.e., “and they left because of the ur kasdim.” The “conqueror” would be Nimrod. If it is a place-name, it signifies the furnace’s location.
C.
This line of reasoning leads us to consider two more questions. The first is posed by Ramban: Why, he asks, does the Torah first sing the praises of Noah, as we saw last week, before telling us that he was a prophet (since he merited direct communication with G-d), whilst in Avram’s case it tells us nothing of his tzidqiyuth, but launches immediately into ויאמר ד' אל אברם, “And Ha-Shem said to Avram....”?
A possible answer, based on the foregoing, suggests itself: Avram’s tzidqiyuth was already well-known and demonstrated, since he had miraculously survived Nimrod’s furnace. But such an answer is vaguely unsatisfactory, not least because the written Torah chooses to conceal the fact in allusion, leaving its explicit telling to Oral Torah sources.
The second question is raised by the Birkath Tov: If Terah et al originally set out for the Holy Land, as we read in XI, 31, why ever did they stop in Haran? Still more, why did they remain so long that Terah died there, and Avram waited for G-d’s command before continuing to their original destination?
The rebbe answers: ונראה דהנה בארץ ישראל נאמר "ארץ הכנעני והחתי והאמרי והפרזי" וגו' ומבואר בשם הבעש"ט ז"ל דהם נגד ז' מדות הקדושים דהיו הם ההפכיים דכנעני הוא בחינת חסד כו' ונאמר במרגלים "ארץ אוכלת יושבי' וכל העם אשר ראינו בתוכה אנשי מדות" כו' הכונה דמי שמתעכב שם אוכלת אותו מקלקלת אותו וזה שאמרו שהם אנשי מדות רעות כו' ובארץ ישראל אין יכולים להיות אם לא נטהרו במדות כמ"ש "ולא תקיא הארץ אתכם בטמאכם אותה כאשר קאה את הגוי אשר לפניכם" שאינה מקבלת אשר לא מטוהרים וגו' (“And it appears that concerning Eretz Yisra’él it is said, ‘Land of the Këna‘ani and the Hitti and the Emori and the Përizzi....’ [Exodus III, 17], and it is explained in the name of the Ba‘al Shém Tov that [the seven Canaaanite nations] are opposed to the seven holy middoth, their opposites [such that] Këna‘ani is [the opposite of] hesed [‘kindness’], etc. ... And it is said about the Spies, ‘a land devouring its inhabitants, and every nation which we saw in it were men of middoth’ [Numbers XIII, 32]... The intent being that anyone who tarries there, [the land] consumes him, ruins him, and what [the spies] said was that they were men of bad middoth.... One cannot exist in Eretz Yisra’él if one has not been purified in middoth, as it is written, ‘and the land should not vomit you out when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation which was before you’ [Leviticus XVIII, 28], for it will not accept those who are not purified....”).
Eretz Yisra’él was, and is, the proper abode of Shem and his descendants, allotted to them by Noah (cf. Rashi to XII, 6 and XIV, 18]; nonetheless, Terah and Nahor, presumably, did not measure up to the challenge, and even Avram, who did embody the seven virtues in pure form, hesitated until ordered by G-d to leave behind Haran, and his birthright, the household of his father – in short, to take on the burden which is required of a gér tzedeq -- and take the next step in the evolution of the goy gadol, the “great nation” which G-d promised would stem from him as a result (XII, 2).
The Maharal mi-Prag answers Ramban’s question, why does the Torah not explicitly mention Avram’s tzidquth before recording that G-d spoke to him: כי אברהם הי' ראש יחוסינו ובו הי' הבחירה אשר בחר הש"י בישראל כדכתיב "אתה האלקים אשר בחרת באברהם" וגו' ואם כתב בתחלה צדקות אברהם הי' עולה על דעת אדם בשביל צדקות אברהם בחר בו ובזרעו אחריו והי' אהבה תלוי' בדבר כו' ועכשיו שבניו אינם צדיקים בטלה האהבה, אבל עתה שלא הקדים לומר צדקות אברהם כו' שבחר באברהם ובזרעו מצד עצמם ולא בשביל דבר שהי' אפשר לומר שכאשר בטל הדבר בטלה האהבה וגו' (“...for Avraham is the beginning of our lineage, and the choice which Ha-Shem made of Israel fell upon him, as it is written: ‘You are the G-d who chose Avraham....’ [Nëhemiah IX, 7], and if He had written at the start Avraham’s tzidquth it would enter people’s minds that it was because of tzidquth that He chose him and his seed after him, and this would be love dependent on something... and now that his sons are not such tzaddiqim the love is nullified. But now that [G-d] did not talk first of Avraham’s tzidquth... for He chose Avraham and his seed for themselves, not because of anything about which it would be possible to say that when the thing is not so, the love is [likewise] nullified....”; נצח ישראל פ"ה מי"ז).
D.
This establishes a vital yësod, a foundational principle: G-d’s covenant with Israel, established, as we learn later in the parasha, even before Israel came into being (XV, 7-21) is eternal, depends neither on our merits nor on those of our ancestors, and will never be abrogated. As the Birkath Tov reminds us, this does not mean that those merits are irrelevant, especially with regard to our possession and settlement of the Holy Land, ארץ אשר ד' אלקיך דרש אתה תמיד עיני ד' אלקיך בה וגו' (“A land which Ha-Shem your G-d seeks out; the eyes of Ha-Shem your G-d are always upon it....”; Deuteronomy XI, 12).
With regard to the Holy Land’s intolerance of those with unrefined middoth, the parasha also reminds us that G-d’s timescale is not ours. Avram was told, concerning הגוי אשר לפניכם, “the nation which was before [Israel]”, ודור רביעי ישובו הנה כי לא שלם עון האמרי עד הנה, “And a fourth generation will return here [from Egyptian exile], for the iniquity of the Emori is not complete until then” (XV, 16).
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