Parshat Lech Lecha: Let Your Guard Down

Entering into a space means more than a casual connection to it. When a child enters into the covenant it is life’s most powerful interaction with G-d. LECHA LECHA

Three Milestones

Circumcision, or Brit Milah, of which we read in this week’s parsha, was the initiating rite for our father Abraham, the first Jewish male, and for all subsequent generations of Jews. At the tender age of eight days, a baby boy undergoes a minor surgical procedure that forms a covenant between himself and G-d.

At a circumcision ceremony, the father recites the blessing: thanking G-d for having given us the commandment to “enter him (the child) into the Covenant of Abraham our father.”

After the father recites this blessing, the assembled guests respond with:

Just as he has entered into the Covenant, so may he enter into Torah, into marriage, and into good deeds.

Commentators are somewhat puzzled by the reference to specifically these three

LECHA milestones in one’s life: “Torah, marriage and good deeds.” Furthermore, why are good deeds mentioned last? Isn’t a person expected to perform good deeds before they enter into marriage?

Surrendered and Embraced

One possible answer to this question lies in a better understanding of what it means to “enter” into the Covenant. Entering into something is more than a casual commitment to it. To enter into something is to surrender your self-hood to something that is much greater than your faculties and your very self. To enter into something is to allow yourself to be enveloped, encompassed and embraced by an entity that transcends your own identity.

Human nature is such that when an adult embarks on a path to greater commitment, he or she proceeds with caution. Our sense of vulnerability prevents us from experiencing the other aspects of life with which we are not familiar.

This coping mechanism is a healthy one when it is activated at times that we are threatened LECHA by being engulfed by negative powers. Other people, institutions and experiences threaten to overwhelm us and “swallow” us in a way that will deny our individuality and integrity.

But this coping mechanism can also be a double-edged sword that prevents us from entering into positive relationships that have the capacity to elevate us and transform us.

The Mitzvah of circumcision, performed at eight days, instills the child with the potential to enter into Jewish life in a healthy and positive way. By performing circumcision on an infant who has no intellectual or emotional resistance, the child enters into a relationship with G-d that transcends his own limited self-hood. He is completely enveloped by a reality that is infinite and provides him with unlimited spiritual potential.

Entering Into Torah

At that point we say to the father of the child, “Just as he has entered into the Covenant, so may he enter into Torah, into marriage, and into good deeds.” By saying this we are blessing the child that he should have the capacity to create the same LECHA relationship with Torah.

Torah study, the very foundation of Jewish life, can be deceptively easy. It is, after all, an intellectual exercise. One can casually master the study of Torah, without having the Torah exercise any mastery over the person.

By starting off our lives with the Mitzvah of circumcision, we are given the ability to enter into Torah as well. This means that we can approach Torah with the understanding that it is infinitely greater than our minds; there is a divinity possessed by Torah that encompasses us and embraces us even as we let our minds conquer the knowledge of Torah.

Entering Into Marriage

The next institution of life that requires our ability to “enter” into it is marriage. When we marry a person we enter into a relationship that transcends our limited appreciation for the other spouse. We accept the totality of the other person not their finite number of qualities that we can appreciate. Marriage, like Torah, possesses the potential for failure. After all, we cannot get married to a person LECHA unless we get to know the individual and appreciate their qualities and virtues. In a sense, it is comparable to Torah study whose logic we try to master. Where do we get the inspiration and capacity to truly enter into a marriage?

By drawing on the inspiration of circumcision we allow ourselves the right to make the leap from the casual reflective approach to Torah and marriage into a covenantal one. Circumcision is the empowerment to jump into Torah and marriage to the point where it encompasses us, even as we encompass it.

Entering Ito Good Deeds

But we are still not finished. After we marry and settle down to a life of accomplishment through our good deeds, we need, once more, to draw upon the inspiration of circumcision. Otherwise, our good deeds would merely be extensions of ourselves, based on our inherently finite identities. Our good deeds are a snap shot of all the influences that have shaped and molded us.

But this is not enough. Rather than allowing our good deeds to merely express our own LECHA limited self-hood, we should endeavor to enter into our good deeds, so that they define us rather than we define them.

All of this starts with circumcision at the beginning of the child’s life that introduces the Jew into a spiritual universe that is larger than life itself. We pray and hope that the spirit of circumcision would permeate into marriage and a life of good deeds.

A Taste of the Future

It is no wonder that the prophet compares the Messianic Age, which is associated with realizing the highest spiritual forms of circumcision, with being immersed in the body of G-dly knowledge. The Messianic Age is when the prophet says, “I will circumcise the foreskin of your heart.”

And the Messianic Age is also when we will be deluged with G-dly knowledge, as the prophet Isaiah states “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of G-d as the water covers the seabed.”

On the surface, these are two disparate themes. Circumcision is removal of an impediment, while immersion in the sea of LECHA knowledge is an all-encompassing experience.

In light of our above analysis, they are actually expressive of the same idea. The process of circumcision is the process of taking a plunge into the most refreshing and endless waters of G-dly knowledge and experience.

We get a good taste of that at the circumcision ceremony

LECHA

From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Lech Lecha by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.