Parsha for Kids: Lech Lecha 2022
Below is the transcript for this week’s episode of Parsha for Kids, Lech Lecha 2022.
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Hello! My name is Chana, and this is Parsha for Kids. The Parsha of the week is Lech Lecha. The words “Lech Lecha” mean “Go for yourself.”
But who is going? Where? And why?
The answer is: a man called Avram. Avram is told by God in Bereshit Chapter 12 verse 1
לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵֽאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ:
Go for yourself from your land, and from your birthplace and from the house of your father, to the land that I will show you.
Think about the place you were born. Is it also the place you are growing up? If it is, and if you have friends and family nearby, and have been at your school for a while, do you think it would be easy or hard to leave that place?
My guess is that most of you said it would be hard. And that makes sense! Imagine having an entire lifetime of experiences in the place where you were born and grew up. And you are told by God to leave it all behind. To just follow after Him to a place that He will show you. He doesn’t even tell you the name of the place, why you need to follow Him, or why it’s so important!
But what God does do is tell Avram some of the things that will happen if Avram does follow Him to the unknown land that He wants to show him. God tells Avram that He will make him into a great nation, bless him and make his name great. Avram himself will be a blessing. God also says that God will bless those that bless Avram and curse those that curse Avram, and that all the families of the earth will be blessed in Avram.
So there are many reasons that Avram might want to follow God.
Avram was 75 years old when God appeared to him and asked him to do this.
TRANSITION SOUND
What kind of person do you think Avram had to be to be willing to listen to God’s request?
He would have to have trust. Trust in God. He would have to trust that God would lead him to a place where he could live and thrive. He would have to trust God to keep the promises that God made to him and fulfill the blessings He said he would give him. He would have to have enough trust in God that he would be willing to leave behind everything he knew and had experienced in the past to start something new.
This kind of trust is also referred to as faith or Emunah. Emunah means faithfulness. It can also refer to being trustworthy. Someone who has emunah in God believes that God is a being they can trust and rely on.
Something important that comes up frequently in Judaism is that people need to choose to be chosen. God could have told Avram to follow Him to a land that He would show him. And then Avram could have said no. He could have chosen not to come.
And if that had been the case, he would not have received the blessings God offered him. Instead, they would have been given to someone else. And the Jewish people would have come from someone else.
The moment that Avram decided that he was willing to show his trust in God and follow him away from everything he had ever known to a new land, He showed God that he was worrthy. This was a man who deserved the blessings God was going to give him- a man who had the ability to choose to be chosen. Avram had decided to trust in God, and in turn, God would reward him.
Our Sages had a saying. Maaseh Avos Siman L’Banim. When translated simply, this means: The actions of the fathers are a sign for the children. But what does this really mean?
TRANSITION
You see, there are three forefathers, whom we refer to in Judaism as the Avos, or Avot. The first one of these three was Avram, whose name would later be changed to Avraham. The journey that Avram took following God to an unknown location was similar to the later journey Bnei Yisrael, the Children of Israel, would take when they left Egypt and followed God to the Promised Land. There are many parallels between stories in Sefer Bereshit, the Book of Genesis, and later experiences that happen to the nation of Israel as a whole. That’s what it means when it says the actions of the fathers are a sign for the children. In fact, they are still a sign for us today, as we too are descendants of Avram.
I think one of the reasons for these parallels was to give us hope. If we as Jews are able to look back at the story of Avram and see how it turned out, we can be inspired by him.
You see, after Avram followed God all the way to the unknown land, which turned out to be Eretz Canaan, later on to be called Eretz Yisrael, he got an unpleasant surprise. There was a famine in the land! That meant there was no food!
Our commentaries disagree on what Avram should have done at that point. Some say that Avram should have had faith and trust in God and remained in Eretz Canaan. Surely if God wanted Avram to live he would provide him with food! But others suggest that actually, we are not supposed to rely on miracles. We are supposed to put in our own effort to get what we need, including food. In the end, Avram went down to Egypt in order to get food.
But there was a problem. Have any of you ever watched ‘The King and I?’ It’s a movie that tells the story of the King of Siam. Anna is a British schooolteacher who is asked to teach his children. The king has many wives, but Anna interests him because she is so different from the other women he knows.
Avram had a wife as well. Her name was Sarai. He knew that his wife was beautiful, and also different from the women in Egypt. Avram was worried that the men in Egypt, who did not fear God, would kill him so that they could marry his wife. He therefore asked Sarai to pretend to be his sister. He figured that if anyone asked to marry her, he could simply demand such a high bride price for her that no one would be able to pay it.
However, the Egyptians took Sarai to Pharoah’s house.
If you were Avram at this point, how would you react? You might also feel confused. Why did God send me to a land that has no food? Or: you might get angry at God. You might say, “God, I did everything you wanted! I went to the land you said you would show me, but you made a famine. And then I went to get food, and you arranged for the Egyptians to steal my wife! I am very upset with You.” It would be very understandable if this was how you felt.
Avram could have said that but he didn’t. Remember that he had extreme trust in God! He continued to have trust even in these difficult situations. God made sure that Pharoah was not able to marry Sarai after all. In fact, Pharaoh realized Sarai was Avram’s wife and returned her to him. Not only that, but he gave Avram many gifts and presents, so that Avram was quite rich.
When we go through difficult experiences in life, we may also wonder why they are happening to us. After all, we may also be doing everything we are supposed to do, just like Avram was. Remembering the story of Avram can give us hope. There may be a reason we don’t see as to why these things are happening to us. In the end, Avram and Sarai were able to go home from Egypt with lots of wealth- an unforeseen outcome. Sometimes, there might be positive unforeseen outcomes in our situations, too.
TRANSITION SOUND
Avram had a nephew named Lot. Lot moved away to live in a different place called Sodom. He ended up being taken captive and Avram had to rescue him- which he did, gladly. So, on top of everything else, Avram also fought in a war- and won!
Remember I mentioned how Avram had a lot of emunah, faith and trust in God? There was a moment where he was worried. God told him that he would receive a great reward. Avram asked what God would give him because he still did not have any children. Avram had a lot of wealth but it would all end up being given to his servant because he had no children to give it to when he died.
God reassured him that he would indeed have a child and that this child would be the one to inherit all of his wealth. He told Avram to go outside and look at the stars. God said, “Count the stars, if you are able to count them! Your children will be as many as the stars.”
Avram believed in God, having emunah, even though his child had still not been born and he was already an old man.
It is amazing to think that when we go outside and look at the stars, those are the same stars that Avram saw and that God showed to him. We, the Jewish people, are like the stars.
Mark Twain, an author of many books, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, also compared us to the stars. However, he focused on what happens when there are very few Jews in the world.
He wrote: “the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.”
In simpler words, what this means is that even when there are not so many Jews in the world, and when it might seem we are only star dust lost amidst the vastness of the Milky Way, this is not the case. Jews have survived since the time of Avram and they have been heard of across the centuries. It seems that when God told Avram he would make his name great, it was not just Avram’s name that would become great- but also the name of one of the nations that would be formed from him, the Jewish people. These people would contribute great things to the world. And that is exactly what we have done- and something that you, too, as a young Jewish Torah learner, thinker, inventor, creator, dreamer, writer, engineer or scientist- will participate in.
TRANSITION SOUND
God made a special Brit with Avram. It was called the Brit Bein HaBesarim, or Covenant Between the Pieces. A Brit is a two way promise, also called a covenant or a treaty. The reason it’s a two way promise is because God promises to do something for a person, in this case Avram, and Avram promises to do something for God. Each individual involved in the Brit is responsible to keep their word and do what they have said they will.
God promised Avram that one day he would inherit the land of Canaan, what we now call the land of Israel. Avram asked how he would know this would happen. God told Avram to line up three calves, three goats and three rams, plus two birds and cut them all in the middle except for the birds. Birds of prey came to try to eat the dead animals but Avram made them go away.
The sun set and Avram fell into a deep sleep. God told him then that many dark and difficult things would happen to his children. Their path in life would not be an easy one. But it would be worth it in the end because in the end, they would inherit the land.
This is exactly what happened to Bnei Yisrael, the Children of Israel. They went through many trials and tribulations but in the end God did take them to the Promised Land and they did inherit it.
TRANSITION SOUND
Avram ended up having a son with a woman named Hagar, whom he married because Sarai his wife asked him to. That son was called Yishamel.
At the end of this week’s parsha, God changes Avram’s name to Avraham. He then gives Avraham a special mitzvah. That mitzvah is called Brit Milah or circumcision. It is a way of making a sign on a male’s body that shows that he is part of the Jewish people.
Brit Milah is an extremely special and important mitzvah. It is what we do when baby boys get their name after they turn eight days old. Even nowadays we keep this mitzvah, and in keeping it we join on to the Brit that God made with Avraham.
You may wonder why girls do not get a Brit Milah. The answer is that according to our Sages, a girl is considered as if she is already circumcised, or as if she already has this sign on her body.
TRANSITION SOUND
So here’s what we learned today!
Avram was very brave to go away from the place he had lived his whole life in order to follow God to a new, unknown land. We can learn from his bravery and his trust, or Emunah, in God, and try to be like him.
When we look at the stars, we can remember God’s promise to Avram that his children would be as many as the stars. We can also remember the writer Mark Twain’s remark that even when there are not so many Jews, we can do great things and help the world to advance and progress.
God made a special Brit, or two way promise, with Avram. He warned Avram that difficult and hard things would happen to Bnei Yisrael but that in the end, they would inherit the Land of Israel.
God gave Avraham a special mitzvah, Brit Milah, which we keep until this day. When a baby boy is born, on the eighth day, assuming the baby boy is healthy and well, he receives his name and also receives the sign on his body that shows he is a member of the Jewish people! Girls do not receive a Brit because they are considered like they are already circumcised.
If you have any questions or comments on this week’s episode, please email me at parsha4kids (at) gmail.com. That’s parsha the number 4 kids at gmail.com. Good Shabbos!