Terah's Journey

Parshah Noach

This weeks Parshah is called Noach, and as expected it is the story of Noach and the flood. There is so many parallels in these chapters of B’Reisheet to our world today, that as I was reading and studying for this I had trouble focusing on just one and I struggled to find what HaShem wanted me to learn and share an experience about. Then I got to the end of the Parshah and my heart broke a little and I realized what it was.

We read in B’reisheet/Genesis 11:31 “Terah took Abram his son and Lot, Haran’s son, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and he took them out of Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.”

The next chapter details the command from HaShem for Abram to go to Canaan, but here we read that it was Terah, Abram’s father that started the actual process of leaving. We learn that Terah listened to his son when HaShem told Abram to go to Canaan. Though Terah was the Patriarch of the family, it was now time for Abram to rise. We have all sorts of midrash about who Terah was, but to his credit at the end of the day he raised a son who listened to HaShem above all other voices, even his own. A man through whom every person is blessed.

My parents have been very influential in my life spiritually, probably more than they know. My mother prayed with us at the table every morning before school. My father set a example of how to live as a good and godly man without even using words.

For as long as I can remember my mother taught my brother and I to listen to the voice of G-d above all other voices including hers and my father’s. My mother was the first person that taught me who and what a jew was.

I remember I was 5 years old and had heard the word Nazi. I asked her what a Nazi was. She said they kill Jews. I asked her who the Jews where and she said “Jesus is a Jew and if they where alive with him they would have killed him too.” My reply was then we are Jews. My mother started my study in to Judaism with that conversation.

Later after Devon and I had decided we where going to live as Jews keeping the Torah as much as we could and as best we could that my father came to me and told me that we where actually Jews and it just was not shared with me.

Yet just as Terah could not follow Abram in to Canaan neither could my parents follow me in to Judaism. The sages tell us Terah settled in Haran because it was close as he could be to Abram the son he loved and yet not leave the land he knew. So it is with my parents and perhaps others. Maybe they can only be so close but cannot bring themselves to where HaShem has lead us to go.

I have no anger, disappointment and definitely no judgment of my parents. They have done well in preparing me for my service to HaShem. Even when that service they where preparing me for is not what they where expecting. Sometimes HaShem leads us in different directions from those we love and we must part ways to continue in obedience to him. We must continue and walk away from those we love when they will not go any further. For just as the whole world was blessed through Abram obeying HaShem even beyond his father, so to will others be blessed through our obedience to HaShem.