The Souls They Made

I had a migraine last Shabbat and had to skip shul. So my husband and I stayed in and had a quiet one. It was restful. I’ll take it.

The rest of the week was people. I had coffee with our shul’s executive director in her office. The rabbi asked me to substitute teach in the religious school. And I’ve been learning about an organization here in town that has been doing community development work for forty years or so, and I had coffee with its two founders.

That’s a lot of coffee for one week.

This Shabbat we read Lech Lecha. God tells Avram to go, and Avram goes. Before he leaves Haran, the Torah stops to list what he takes with him:

וַיִּקַּ֣ח אַבְרָם֩ אֶת־שָׂרַ֨י אִשְׁתּ֜וֹ וְאֶת־ל֣וֹט בֶּן־אָחִ֗יו וְאֶת־כׇּל־רְכוּשָׁם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר רָכָ֔שׁוּ וְאֶת־הַנֶּ֖פֶשׁ אֲשֶׁר־עָשׂ֣וּ בְחָרָ֑ן וַיֵּצְא֗וּ לָלֶ֙כֶת֙ אַ֣רְצָה כְּנַ֔עַן וַיָּבֹ֖אוּ אַ֥רְצָה כְּנָֽעַן׃

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. When they arrived in the land of Canaan,

— Bereshit 12:5

His wife, his nephew, their things. And then “the persons that they had acquired in Haran.”

The word JPS translates as “acquired” is asu. Its plain meaning is made. Ha-nefesh asher asu b’Charan, the souls they made in Haran.

Rashi is honest about it. He says the simple reading is the servants they’d bought, and he brings two other verses where the same verb means getting rich. But he leads with the midrash. These are the people Avram and Sarai brought in under the wings of the Shechinah. Avram converted the men and Sarai converted the women, and the Torah counts it as if they had made them.

So Sarai gets half the credit. The first two people in the Torah to bring anybody in did it together.

I have a personal stake in that reading. When you convert, you take Avraham as your father. That’s the ben Avraham at the bottom of this column. In a small way I’m one of those souls, a few thousand years down the line.

Then Avram keeps moving, and nearly every time he stops, he builds an altar:

וַיַּעְתֵּ֨ק מִשָּׁ֜ם הָהָ֗רָה מִקֶּ֛דֶם לְבֵֽית־אֵ֖ל וַיֵּ֣ט אׇהֳלֹ֑ה בֵּֽית־אֵ֤ל מִיָּם֙ וְהָעַ֣י מִקֶּ֔דֶם וַיִּֽבֶן־שָׁ֤ם מִזְבֵּ֙חַ֙ לַֽיהֹוָ֔ה וַיִּקְרָ֖א בְּשֵׁ֥ם יְהֹוָֽה׃

From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and he built there an altar to GOD and invoked GOD by name.

— Bereshit 12:8

“Invoked GOD by name.” Onkelos reads that as prayer. Ramban quotes him and then says the better reading is something else. Avram stood in front of that altar and called out God’s name in a loud voice, telling people who God is. Then he adds something. Back in Ur, Avram had tried teaching, and nobody wanted to hear it. Here, in the new place, he got used to teaching.

In Ramban’s reading, the first thing Avram does in the land, over and over, is teach.

Rambam takes it further, in the opening chapter of his laws on idolatry. He has Avraham going city to city, calling out to anyone who’d listen. When people gathered around and asked him questions, he would explain it to each one of them according to their understanding. Thousands came, and then tens of thousands. Rambam calls them the people of Avraham’s house. Avraham wrote it down and taught Yitzchak. Yitzchak taught Yaakov. Yaakov taught all his sons.

“To each one according to their understanding.” If you’ve ever been handed a room of kids at religious school, you know that’s the whole job description. Same lesson, a dozen different kids, and every one of them hears it differently. Avraham worked that out a few thousand years before anyone wrote a curriculum.

Ramban has one more thing in the same comment. Avraham calls out God’s name. So does Yitzchak, when he gets to Gerar. Yaakov never does. Ramban says Yaakov didn’t need to. He had a lot of children, all of them serving God, and a big community the Torah calls the congregation of Israel. Through them, people came to know.

Yaakov didn’t have to shout. He had a shul.

A shul runs because somebody keeps it running, and this week she had me in her office. A religious school runs because somebody shows up and explains it to each kid according to their understanding, and this week the rabbi asked whether that somebody could be me. And forty years of community development in one town is forty years of somebody showing up. I sat across from two of them.

Go back to that verse in Haran for a second. The Torah lists the wealth first and the people second. Rashi doesn’t say a word about the wealth. His whole comment is about the people.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham