Lekh Lekha: Avraham’s Journey and the Quest of the Upanishads

Rabbi Herzl Hefter

“East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” – Rudyard Kipling



Kipling was dead wrong. Our wandering patriarch is searching for God and finds Him right where the Brahmins who wrote the Upanishads said he would. The similarity which we find between certain Hassidic interpretations of the midrash and Indian sacred texts is an important lesson in the universal nature of the spiritual quest.

Avram is called upon by God to wander to an unknown land. His physical wanderings are symbolic of his internal spiritual search. Avram is searching for God. Where is he looking? How we choose to interpret the following Midrash will yield us the answer.

R. Yitzhak said it is like one who was wandering from place to place and saw a city which was ‘doleket’. He said to himself, ‘is it possible that this city has no master?’ Thereupon the master of the city appeared and said, ‘I am the master of the city…” (Bereishit Rabbah, Lekh lekha 39)

How should we translate the term, “birah doleket”? There are two possibilities: 1) A city which is all lit up. 2) A city which is on fire.

What does the birah doleket symbolize? According to the first possibility the birah doleket points toward the beauty and harmony of creation. Avram is looking for God in nature. James Kugel puts it nicely:

“The text specifies that the building is “all lit up” (dôleqet), and it is this light, apparently emanating from the building itself, that persuades the traveler that there must indeed be someone inside. Thus Abraham the astronomer, contemplating the lights emanating from the heavens (that is, the stars), must have come to the same conclusion.” (Traditions of the Bible, p. 260)

According to the second interpretation of the birah doleket, we must ask what is burning and how does its contemplation lead to faith? R. Mordechai Yosef of Ishbitz contends that the burning city is a metaphor for the collapsing civilization of the generation that built the Tower of Bavel. This reading has Avram searching for God in history.

Both interpretations of the birah doleket have something in common; the search is directed toward something ‘out there,’ be it the natural world or the stage of human events. God’s response to Avram, according to R. Mordechai Yosef is that he (Avram) is searching in the wrong place. RMY reads lekh lekha as meaning go to yourself. The search for God is not ‘out there’ in the natural world or in history. God is the one who stirs and dwells in Avram’s restless heart and that is where He is to be found. R. Zadok HaKohen of Lublin put it this way:

God said to him that he too is included in being the master of the house… ‘My dwelling place is in your heart ‘ and this is what the word “I [am the master of the house]” alludes to in the midrash. (Zidkat HaZadik 247)

R. Zadok has identified the “I” of God with the “I” of Avram. “I am master of the house” refers to them both.

It is a fundamental doctrine of later Hinduism (the Advaita Vedanta – non dualist school) that the True Self (Atman) and God (Brahman) are One. In the following selection from the Chandogya Upanishad (Chapter 6:13) a father instructs his son, Svetaketu on the true nature of the Self and Brahman.

‘Put this chunk of salt in a container of water and come back tomorrow.’ The son did as he was told and the father said to him: ’The chunk of salt that you put in the water last evening – bring it here.’ He groped for it but could not find it, as it had disappeared completely.

‘Now sip from this corner,’ said the father. ‘How does it taste?’

‘Salty.’

‘Take a sip from the center. – How does it taste?’

‘Salty.’

‘Take a sip from that corner. – How does it taste?’

‘Salty.’

‘Throw it out and come back later.’ He did as he was told and found that the salt was always there. The father told him: ‘You of course, did not see it there, son; yet it was always right there.

‘The finest essence here – that which constitutes the self of this world; that is the truth; that is the self (atman). And that’s how you are, Svetaketu.’

God is everywhere but we do not see him with our mundane senses. He must be intuited (tasted). He resides within us and is the ground of our identity.

Avraham is the patriarch of the Jewish People yet he is also the ‘father of many nations.’ His journey symbolizes not only the journey of every single Jew, but of all humanity. When we realize this we will come to recognize the characteristics of the journey in others. And when that happens, we will come to understand our own journey more fully.

By RabbiHefter in Torah, Written on