faith (believing in something enough to take a leap);
the idea of one God vs believing in idols
(can lead to a discussion of materialism - iphones, games, clothes etc)
Read the following verse and discuss each phrase and idea contained within it. Ask students for their ideas on the difference of these 3 places that Avram is told to leave before you offer your ideas.
NOTE: the translation of verse 1 is a bit different than the translation/interpretation in The Explorer's Bible chapter 6. You can use the text in the book for everything else.
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃
Genesis 12:1
The LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's housef, to the land that I will show you.
~Look at the wording:
1) From your land (ie your state VA or town Warrenton)
2) from your birthplace (where were you born?)
3) from your father's house (imagine leaving your parents home - to go to camp or stay with a relative. Now imagine you are to leave forever because a voice (or God) told you to)
~Where are you going? You/Abraham had no idea where he was going. He was told to travel til he arrived "there" and then would be "shown."
1) How do you think Abraham felt about that?
2) Why do you think he chose to go?
Now read the following verses 12:2-3, 5 below. Ask the question: ~ How did Avram convince Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew to go with him. Not only did they follow him, but everyone who worked for him did as well!
What do they think it means that Avram shall be a blessing?
(if you want: Look at the Torah text in your text book. God makes 5 promises to Avram (Gen 12:1-3, 12:7, 13:14-17, 15:1-6 &13-16, and 17:1-22). Are these all blessings?
(2) I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing. (3) I will bless those who bless you And curse him that curses you; And all the families of the earth Shall bless themselves by you.”... Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the wealth that they had amassed, and the persons that they had acquired in Haran; and they set out for the land of Canaan. ...
In the Torah portion Lech Lecha, God promises Avram three things. First, to make a great nation come from him; Second, to make his name a blessing -meaning that people who bless him will be blessed and people who curse him will be cursed, and Third, Avram was promised a land that God would show him.
The rabbis say that God had 3 plans for the world. God’s 1st plan started with HaAdam, the first human, and the goal of this plan was to fill the world with good people createdבצלם אלוקים– in God’s image. On each day of creation we read that God saw that what he made was Tov, or good. The way for people to be good was to follow the rules – which at that time were simple: “do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” (B’resheit 2:17). And we all know what happened after that.
The second plan involved Noach’s generation. God saw just how bad the people had become and, in response, decided to flood the world, just keeping Noach, his family, and some animals alive, and basically starting over. Afterwards, God promised never to destroy the world again and gave us the rainbow as a symbol of that promise. So God decided to wait a little while to see how Noach’s descendants would turn out. After Noach, it took God 10 generations before He discovered Avram, who would become the founder of a new nation.
After that, God decided to try one more time for goodness in the world, hoping that the third time would be the charm. But this time, God had learned from his past mistakes (yes God does make mistakes) and decided to try things on a smaller scale. God’s goal in his third plan was to create a great nation that would over time, teach other nations to be good as well and, as a result, filling the world with good people. This plan is still going on today.
Source: Alex Berger
What follows is an origin midrash about why God chose Avram. Explain that a Midrash is a story created by the rabbis to fill in the blanks in the Torah and to help us better understand the Torah. There are several different versions of Midrash that explain why God chose Avram. Here is one of them:
Avram’s father, Terach, owned an idol store and left Avram (maybe a teenage Avram) in charge of the store for the day. Someone would come in and ask to buy an idol and Avram would say, "How old are you?" The person would reply, "Fifty," or whatever age they were. Avram would ask, "Why would you, a fifty year old, want to bow down to an idol that is only one-day-old?" The man would feel embarrassed and leave. Then another person would come in, a woman, and ask to buy an idol to replace her idol which had been stolen. Avram would then ask how that person could expect an idol to save her if it couldn’t save itself from thieves.
Then a woman comes in to offer flour or bread to the idols. Avram then takes a stick, smash all the idols, and then put the stick into the hand of the biggest idol of them all. [Maybe this pushed Avram over the edge]
When his father returns and sees the broken idols, he asks "how did this happen?" and Avram tells him, “the idols fought over the offering of bread or flour and the biggest one won.” To which Terach replies “Why do you mock me, you know as well as I do that idols cannot move!” Avram would answer this with: "Then why do you worship them if you know that they have no power?”
What does this Midrash tell us? Why do you think God chose Avram? Maybe because he already knew, even before he "met" or "heard" from God, even though everyone else around him believed that they were gods, it seems like Avram grew up knowing that idols were not actually. He knew they were just lumps of clay or stone that were not alive in any way and had no power.
--What would you have done in Avram's place?
If time, listen to Lech Lecha video on Bim Bam https://www.bimbam.com/torah-texts/