Torah Thoughts – Lech Lecha

In 2003, my sister and I took a trip to Germany to see places we had lived as children. My dad was a dentist in the US Army and we had been stationed for several years in Aschaffenburg, Germany. As part of the trip, we went to Berlin where we had a chance to tour the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. We rode on the same tracks wealthy Jews had been transported on November 9, 1938 on Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass,” now called just the pogrom. We walked the same path from the train station passing many of the same houses that stood a lifetime before and we witnessed the cold earth of one of the first places of mass extermination ever created by humankind. This was the place where they first experimented with how to systematically murder our people, as well as other groups considered deviant. Their souls cried out to my sister and I, an echo of the terrible suffering contained within the camp.

It’s perhaps no accident that Veterans’ Day and Kristallnacht align. Veterans’ Day celebrates in part many of the Jewish veterans of WWII, some of whom had just arrived from Europe themselves, and who, on their own volition, marched across the world to combat the Nazis and all they stood for head on. They did so willingly, proud to serve in such a just cause. This is the difference in the two marches, one the enslaved German Jews walking toward their deaths, and the other American soldiers bravely putting their life on the line willingly following the lead of their commanding officers.

In this week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, Abram walks willingly in to the unknown. God does not demand that he follow, making him a clear offer than he could either refuse or accept. It is the walking that matters most, and that he did so freely. The joy and pride we feel in all Abram and his wife Sarai accomplished is in knowing they risked their future, their lives, their family, without coercion. That is the message of all Torah, that human beings deserve freedom. Not to be free from pain and suffering, but to be free to worship how we choose, to live how we choose, to be how we choose. This Shabbat we remember the men, women and children murdered by the Nazis, and we honor the soldiers who labored and gave their lives to make them free. To all veterans of the US Armed Forces, CSS salutes the incredible contribution you made to our country, and our community.

Shabbat Shalom,