He reaches Shechem, and God appears to him: “To your offspring I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7). It is the first promise in the Torah, and the parasha never lets go of it. It is repeated at Beth-El, “all the land that you see, to you I will give it, and to your offspring forever” (13:15); on the night of the stars, “I brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess” (15:7); in the covenant “between the pieces,” “to your offspring I have given this land” (15:18); and in the covenant of circumcision, “all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession” (17:8). Five times in six chapters. Before Moses, before Sinai, before the Ten Commandments, there is the land.
And that land has names. Abram pitches his tent at Shechem, then between Beth-El and Ai, then in the plains of Mamre, “which are in Hebron” (13:18), and he builds altars there. Three names written in the Torah some 3,700 years ago, and which today’s news wires call “occupied territories.”
In chapter 14, when fugitives come to tell him that his nephew Lot has been captured, the Torah calls him for the first time “Abram the Hebrew” (14:13). Ha-Ivri. The Midrash explains the word by its root, ever, the other side: “the whole world on one side, and he on the other” (Bereshit Rabbah 42:8). It is the oldest definition of what we are. Not a race, not a territory: the ability to stand alone on one’s side when the whole world is on the other. Three years after October 7, in assemblies where Israel stands alone against all, the word has not aged a day.
Returning from that war, Abram is blessed by Malki-Tzedek, king of Shalem, who brings him bread and wine (14:18). Shalem is Jerusalem: Targum Onkelos translates “king of Jerusalem,” and the psalm says of God that “His tent is in Shalem” (Psalms 76:3). The first time the city enters the Torah, it is not through a war. It is through a blessing, bread and wine.
Then comes the night. Abram still has no child. God takes him outside: “Look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” And the next verse is one of the shortest and greatest in the Torah: “And he believed in the Lord” (15:5-6). A man of seventy-five, with no land and no son, looks at the sky and believes. Three thousand seven hundred years later, from Tel Aviv to Paris, from Jerusalem to New York, we are the answer to that night.
God takes him outside: “Look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you can count them.
Rashi pauses on the two words of the title. Lekh lekha, word for word: go, for yourself. “For your own benefit and for your own good” (Rashi on Genesis 12:1). Leaving is neither a punishment nor an exile. It is the first promise ever made to a Jew: what you leave behind is worth less than what you are going toward.
The Jewish people has received many first words since. But the very first one, the one with which our story begins, is not “stay.” It is “go.” Shabbat shalom.
*Sources: [Sefaria, Genesis 12](https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.12.1); [Genesis 13:14-18](https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.13.14); [Genesis 14:13](https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.14.13); [Genesis 14:18](https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.14.18); [Genesis 15:5-7](https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.15.5); [Genesis 17:8](https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.17.8); [Rashi on Genesis 12:1](https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Genesis.12.1.1); [Bereshit Rabbah 42:8](https://www.sefaria.org/Bereshit_Rabbah.42.8); [Targum Onkelos on Genesis 14:18](https://www.sefaria.org/Onkelos_Genesis.14.18); [Psalms 76:3](https://www.sefaria.org/Psalms.76.3).*
