Lekh Lekho and prophetic imagination / לך־לך

This is a weekly series

of parsha dvarim (Tōrah commentaries) written by an orthodox atheist transsexual anarchist, with guest posts from comrades. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance, and it's crucial that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. We aim to offer comment which is true to the pshat (i.e. engages with the plain meaning of the text) especially when it's difficult, and uses Tōrah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

This dvar was researched and written entirely without using AI. Some other Jews agree: Tōrah study requires human toil.

Read more leftist commentary on parshas Lekh-lekho.

Lekh Lekho and Unfair trials / לך־לך און אומיושרדיקע נסיונות

We are morally obligated to do more than just "be kind".

Misha HollebMisha Holleb

Content note

Mental illness; details of animal sacrifice

"Fear not"

Hashem comes to Avrom (soon to be Avrohom) in a prophetic vision. He anticipates Avrom's fear and reassures him. The experience of receiving prophecy must be frightful and disorienting.

Spinoza points out that the Jews were not the only people with prophets, citing Bilom. Hashem is not accessible only to Jews or only to the pious: anyone can access the Supreme Creator of the universe. Avrom and Bilom were not priests or kings. Anyone can daven and anyone can dream.

Spinoza goes further to say:

It appears that prophets were not gifted with any peculiar superiority of understanding, but only with a certain more lively faculty of imagination, than the rest of mankind.

I have never had a prophetic vision. There are cobwebs on my imagination: the voices in my head which I could interpret as G-d are muzzled by my dedication to rationality. My personal proximity to religious psychosis has made me more than skeptical of anyone claiming to commune with angels or spirits or G-d. In fact, it worries me. The lines between religion, superstition, and mental illness are blurry at best. Friday afternoons in my house before I went OTD were a spectacle of pre-Shabos OCD rituals.