Who’s Driving This Journey?

When Fear Takes the Wheel, and Our Fellow Travelers Pay the Price

Parshat Lech Lecha

Dedicated to the memory of our holy fallen soldiers, who gave their lives protecting Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael:

Ephraim ben Liat v’Shmuel, Yosef Malachi ben Dina v’David, Eliyahu Moshe Shlomo ben Sarah v’Shimon, Yosef Chaim ben Rachel v’Eliyahu, Netanel ben Revital v’Elad, Yakir ben Chaya v’Yehoshua, Ran ben Sara v’Kenny, Harel ben Yonat v’Shlomo, and Tomer ben Adina v’Izik.

May their memories be a blessing, may their neshamot have an aliyah, and may their families find comfort and strength.

Seriously, Avraham?

I had no idea there was an enraged feminist living somewhere inside me, but apparently all it took to bring her roaring to life was a closer reading of Avraham Avinu.

Because seriously, Avraham, what were you thinking?

This is the man who risks his life to rescue Lot from four powerful kings, pleads with God for the wicked people of Sedom, and devotes his life to kindness.

But when he approaches Egypt with his exceptionally beautiful wife, he tells her:

אִמְרִי נָא אֲחֹתִי אָתְּ לְמַעַן יִיטַב לִי בַעֲבוּרֵךְ וְחָיְתָה נַפְשִׁי בִּגְלָלֵךְ

Please say you're my sister so that things will go well for me, and my life will be spared because of you.

How can this be?

Avraham fears the Egyptians will kill him to take Sarah, so his solution is to hide behind her and conceal their marriage. He stays alive while she is exposed to the desires of powerful men.

What does he think will happen to her? Pharaoh isn't inviting her to lunch.

Sure enough, Sarah is taken into Pharaoh's household. The Torah doesn't tell us what she experiences there, but the danger of sexual violation is horrifyingly real. Meanwhile, Pharaoh rewards Avraham with sheep, cattle, servants, and camels.

His wife has been taken, and he's getting rich!

God intervenes, Sarah is returned, and we could tell ourselves that Avraham made a terrible mistake and learned his lesson.

Except that he does it again.

Years later, in Gerar, Avraham once again introduces Sarah as his sister. Once again, a king takes her. Once again, God must intervene.

Twice, Avraham?

Lot gets an armed rescue mission. The Sedomites get Avraham arguing with God on their behalf. But Sarah, his own wife, is placed in danger twice, and the Torah records no attempt by Avraham to rescue her.

Something here makes absolutely no sense.

Ramban is just as unwilling to let it go. Commenting on the Egyptian episode (Bereishit 12:10), he writes:

ודע כי אברהם אבינו חטא חטא גדול בשגגה שהביא אשתו הצדקת במכשול עון מפני פחדו פן יהרגוהו

Know that Avraham Avinu committed a great sin, albeit unintentionally, by placing his righteous wife in danger of sexual transgression because he feared they would kill him.

Ramban argues that Avraham should have trusted God to protect them. He even connects Avraham's mistakes to the future Egyptian exile.

If we're uncomfortable with Avraham's behavior, we're in good company.

For simplicity, I'll call our travelers Avraham and Sarah throughout, although at this point in the Torah they are still Avram and Sarai.

Wow, So This Was Their Plan?

In Bereishit 20, Avraham says something to Avimelech that changes the picture:

וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר הִתְעוּ אֹתִי אֱלֹהִים מִבֵּית אָבִי וָאֹמַר לָהּ זֶה חַסְדֵּךְ אֲשֶׁר תַּעֲשִׂי עִמָּדִי ... אִמְרִי לִי אָחִי הוּא

Avraham explains that when they left his father's house, he asked Sarah to do him a kindness: wherever they traveled, she would say he was her brother.

Wow, so this was their plan? It wasn't some desperate idea invented at the Egyptian border? According to Avraham, this arrangement went all the way back to the beginning of their travels.

I once went hiking near Ein Gedi with my brother and sister, when a group of Bedouins approached my brother and offered to purchase both of us for ten camels.

Ten camels! For two sisters!

I certainly hope my brother appreciates what valuable sisters he has. Fortunately, he decided not to sell us.

That experience gave me a glimpse into the kind of negotiation Avraham may have expected in these parts thousands of years ago. If Sarah was introduced as his sister, prospective husbands would approach him. He could negotiate, delay, or refuse. If she was introduced as his wife, Avraham feared they would simply kill him and take her.

Suddenly, the strategy makes sense. It may have been intended to protect them both.

But in Egypt, Pharaoh's men don't negotiate. They take Sarah, and the strategy collapses.

So why use it again in Gerar?

When Avimelech confronts him, Avraham explains:

כִּי אָמַרְתִּי רַק אֵין יִרְאַת אֱלֹהִים בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה וַהֲרָגוּנִי עַל דְּבַר אִשְׁתִּי

Because I thought there was no fear of God in this place, and they would kill me because of my wife.

Ramban, commenting on Bereishit 20:12, is not satisfied with Avraham's defense. Even if Sarah really was his sister, that technical truth did not excuse misleading others into believing she was unmarried.

Avraham understands the danger of living among people without yirat Elokim. He fears what they might do when nothing greater than their own desires guides their behavior.

But what happens when Avraham himself is frightened?

Who Is Responsible for the Future?

Avraham's fear is explicit. Before Egypt, he tells Sarah:

וְהָרְגוּ אֹתִי וְאֹתָךְ יְחַיּוּ

They will kill me, but they will keep you alive.

Yet what would his death have meant for the extraordinary mission God had entrusted to him?

God had promised to make Avraham into a great nation, bless him, and make his name great. If Avraham died, what would become of that promise?

We cannot know whether he consciously thought of his fear in those terms, but it is worth considering whether preserving his own life had become inseparable, in his mind, from preserving God's mission.

Now go back to God's very first instruction:

לֶךְ לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָ

Go from your land, your birthplace, and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

Notice what God leaves out.

The destination!

God tells Avraham to leave everything familiar, promises him an extraordinary future, and doesn't even tell him where he's going.

What kind of travel arrangements are these?

That may be the very first lesson of Lech Lecha. God gives Avraham a journey, while keeping the destination in His own hands.

Your job, Avraham, is to travel, to act with courage, to take responsibility for the people traveling with you, and to walk with yirat Elokim. Where this journey leads, and how My promises unfold, is Mine.

The Torah is filled with Avraham's movements: וַיֵּלֶךְ, וַיַּעֲבֹר, וַיִּסַּע, וַיֵּרֶד, וַיַּעַל. He went, crossed, traveled, descended, ascended. He is constantly moving, responding, and choosing.

Planning is essential. It is part of our hishtadlut. But somewhere along the way, we can confuse responsibility for our decisions with responsibility for the outcome.

We become convinced that because God has entrusted us with something precious, we must guarantee its success. The mission is too important to fail. The future is too precious to risk.

Suddenly, we are trying to take possession of the destination.

Fear can trip us up and lead us into terrible mistakes in the name of protecting God's mission.

Ramban's criticism becomes especially powerful here. Avraham's fear was real, but it did not justify the danger he imposed on Sarah.

His strategy may have begun as responsible hishtadlut, yet when it failed, Sarah was the one who paid the price.

The very woman through whom God's promise would ultimately be fulfilled.

When Fear Becomes the Boss

If we're being honest, we've probably all fallen into the fear trap in our parenting journey.

Imagine your five-year-old having an absolutely magnificent tantrum because he wants to drive the car. He's screaming, kicking, making sure the neighbors hear every word, and you're desperate for it to stop.

Would you throw him the keys?

Of course not! He's five! He can't drive!

We can survive the tantrum. The child cannot survive being handed responsibility for something he's nowhere near ready to handle.

Yet how often do we give in to our children's demands because we're afraid of their response? We tell ourselves we're keeping the peace, when really we're trying to make our discomfort disappear.

Then there's the other side of the coin. We're terrified of what the neighbors will think. What will the community say? How will I be judged? Suddenly, we're tightening every screw, demanding perfection, and coming down far too hard on a child who is still learning how to be a person.

One parent fears the child. Another fears the community. Most of us have managed to do both, sometimes before breakfast.

Either way, we've become so focused on securing a particular outcome that we've lost sight of the journey our child is actually on.

The child pays the price.

Yirat Elokim brings us back to the child standing in front of us. Sometimes that means holding a boundary through a spectacular tantrum. Sometimes it means standing beside our child while the neighbors raise their eyebrows. We still make plans and difficult decisions, but we cannot guarantee the future.

Avraham understood the danger of living among people without yirat Elokim. His own journey, however, reveals how fear can cloud the decisions of even a person who believes deeply in God.

Years after Egypt, when Sarah feels humiliated by Hagar, she turns to Avraham with the words חֲמָסִי עָלֶיךָ — the wrong done to me is upon you. Rashi understands part of her complaint as Avraham's failure to defend her when Hagar belittled her. Once again, the man who stands up for strangers struggles to protect his own wife.

Might this be what happens when fear takes over? We become so focused on what might happen tomorrow that we fail to see who is being hurt today.

At the very end of Avraham's journey, God brings him back to yirat Elokim, the very quality Avraham had identified as missing in Gerar.

The Final Journey

The Akedah begins with words we have heard before:

וַיֹּאמֶר קַח נָא אֶת בִּנְךָ אֶת יְחִידְךָ אֲשֶׁר אָהַבְתָּ אֶת יִצְחָק וְלֶךְ לְךָ אֶל אֶרֶץ הַמֹּרִיָּה

Take your son, your only one, whom you love, Yitzchak, and go to the land of Moriah.

לֶךְ לְךָ.

The words that launched Avraham's journey return at his final test.

The first time, God asked him to leave everything familiar and travel toward a destination He had not yet revealed. Now God asks him to take the son through whom the entire promised future is supposed to unfold and travel to a mountain that God will identify.

Once again, Avraham is given a journey without all the answers.

But this time the stakes are almost impossible to comprehend.

God has promised that the covenant will continue through Yitzchak. If Yitzchak dies, what happens to the nation, the descendants, the entire mission?

Avraham has spent his life trying to protect the future God promised him. Now he faces a command that appears to threaten that future completely.

Yet Avraham gets up and goes.

וַיֵּלֶךְ אֶל הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אָמַר לוֹ הָאֱלֹהִים

He went to the place God had told him.

Later, as Avraham and Yitzchak walk toward the mountain, the Torah repeats:

וַיֵּלְכוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם יַחְדָּו

The two of them walked together.

Avraham is still traveling, taking the next step without knowing how the story will end.

Earlier, he feared that his death would destroy the future God had promised, and his attempt to prevent that outcome exposed Sarah to terrible danger.

Now he faces a future he cannot possibly secure through his own planning. He follows God's explicit command, trusting Him with the fulfillment of His promise.

Then, at the decisive moment, the angel calls out:

אַל תִּשְׁלַח יָדְךָ אֶל הַנַּעַר וְאַל תַּעַשׂ לוֹ מְאוּמָה כִּי עַתָּה יָדַעְתִּי כִּי יְרֵא אֱלֹהִים אַתָּה

Do not stretch out your hand against the boy, and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God.

יִרֵא אֱלֹהִים.

There are those words again.

In Gerar, Avraham explained his actions by saying there was no yirat Elokim in that place. He feared what others might do to him.

Now, at the culmination of his journey, he is declared a man of yirat Elokim.

Ramban explains in Bereishit 22:12:

מתחילה היתה יראתו בכח לא יצא לפועל במעשה הגדול הזה ועתה נודעה במעשה

Initially, his fear of God existed in potential; it had not yet been expressed through this great deed. Now it became known through action.

Avraham had always possessed yirat Elokim. The Akedah brought it into its fullest expression.

The Akedah is, of course, a unique, explicit divine command, and God Himself stops the sacrifice. It cannot justify endangering children in pursuit of a religious mission. The final command is unmistakable: אַל תִּשְׁלַח יָדְךָ אֶל הַנַּעַר — Do not stretch out your hand against the boy.

God preserves Yitzchak, and with him, the future Avraham could never have guaranteed on his own.

The man who began his journey without knowing his destination has reached a place where he can surrender the outcome.

He still has to walk, choose, and take responsibility for his steps.

But the future belongs to God.

It always did.

The Journeys We Take Every Day

Many of us have followed Avraham and Sarah's footsteps, leaving our homes and familiar worlds to build a life in Israel, with very little idea of what awaited us. Many of us send our children into an uncertain world, watching them embark on journeys we cannot possibly navigate for them. Others have not yet embarked on the Avraham journey, but still face enormous unknowns daily, in marriage, parenting, work, and the countless challenges life places before us.

We know fear. We know how desperately we want to protect the people we love, how badly we want everything to turn out okay, and how easily that fear can take over our decisions. Sometimes, in our determination to protect their future, we end up hurting the very people traveling beside us.

Our prayer is that, like Avraham at the Akedah, we learn to acknowledge that very real fear and turn it toward yirat Elokim. May we find the courage to take the next step, remain responsible for our choices, and treat our fellow travelers with the tenderness and dignity they deserve, while trusting God with the destination.

May we walk our journeys with courage, compassion, and the deep knowledge that the steps are ours to take, but the destination has always been in God's hands.