Reclaiming Grandpa Terah

The Two Lekh Lekha Journeys

Note: There’s something audacious and hopeful about learning Torah when politics around us feel so fraught. I wrote this before knowing the election results. No matter what happens, I pray we find grace, wisdom, and courage to fight for a United States of America that lives up to its promised values and to strengthen the bonds between us.

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Sometimes we realize we’re at a crossroads. One of those moments came for me at 22, during what my parents called my “late-blooming teenage rebellion.” For the first time, I was in liberal spaces, asking questions I’d never considered. Questions like, does God exist?

Ironically, this shook me most for what it revealed about myself. I’d always thought of my religious identity as sophisticated. Why had it taken me so long, then, to ask such a fundamental question? I remember feeling a strange envy toward my father, a rabbi who carved an intellectual path from secularism to faith in his teens. And then nervousness crept in. After all, the answer to this question could upend so many of my foundations.

There’s more to my story (and to that question). But what stands out to me today is how common this experience is. After years of learning and teaching Torah, I’ve seen it echoed by so many. If you’re reading Committed, you’re likely on your own Jewish journey, whether by birth or by choice. Some of us walk familiar paths to our parents, hoping to pass them on. Others forge a new way. And many find ourselves in an ongoing negotiation, choosing what to inherit, what to question, and what to make newly our own.

Yet we don’t often stop to ask what makes for a meaningful spiritual quest. Is there in fact a “formula” for a self-actualized spiritual growth? This week’s Torah portion, Lekh Lekha, introduces us to Abraham—the first to embark on a religious journey.[1] What insights can we draw from his path?

Our understanding turns out to depend on which approach to Abraham’s journey we choose to take.

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Commonly, we see Abraham’s journey as that of a man who breaks with his father in pursuit of God. God calls him to leave everything behind—his country, his homeland, and his father’s house (Genesis 12:1). In what is in the running for the most-popular-midrash-of-all time, Abraham smashes his father’s statues and mocks the beliefs that his idol-merchant father profits from.[2]  He is quite literally the first iconoclast: bold, rebellious, even anti-establishment.

Our American culture idealizes this nonconformism—one that’s clear as day in the classic Disney films I’ve been recently (re)watching with my kids. Whether it’s The Little Mermaid, Mulan, or Moana, we’re told, over and over, to shatter old idols, challenge our parents, and follow our hearts. This is portrayed as noble and courageous—the stuff of authentic and heroic journeys.

But as I sit with my children watching these stories of rebellion and self-discovery, I find myself uneasy about their frame for spiritual growth. I wonder about the impact of presenting Abraham in a similar light. Simply put: teaching that Abraham’s greatness lies in rejecting his father’s beliefs risks encouraging children to view their parents’ views – all of them, whether pagan or monotheistic - as intrinsically suspect.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the words of the late Yehuda Amichai, one of Israel’s most remarkable poets.  In his last book of poetry, Amichai writes:

“We are all children of Abraham
But also the grandchildren of Terah, Abraham’s father
And maybe it’s high time the grandchildren
Did unto their father as he did unto his,
When he shattered his idols and images, his religion, his faith.
That too would be the beginning of a new religion.”[3]

Amichai idealizes Abraham as an idol-shatterer, urging us to confront inherited traditions (in his case, his family’s Orthodox Judaism).

But the beauty of Torah lies in its layers of meaning, which allow us to read Abraham’s path in a second way.  

As it turns out, when we read Genesis without the famous midrash, we realize it never mentions that Terah worshipped idols(!) Instead, Terah appears very briefly, in passing, as a traveler beginning his own journey of displacement toward Canaan: “Terah took [his family] and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan…” (Genesis 11:31). For some mysterious reason, Terah paused mid-journey and stayed in Haran.

This suggests that Abraham wasn’t rebelling when he continued from Haran to Canaan. Rather, he was heeding God’s call of Lekh Lekha while completing the journey his father had begun.

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I’m struck not only by these competing portrayals of Abraham’s journey but also by how they resonate today. In Israel, I’ve noticed a movement to reclaim Abraham as someone who follows his father’s path, rather than emphasizing the classic midrash in which he shatters his father’s idols as the normative interpretation. For instance, on the Hebrew Bible study site 929, more commentators on the chapter where the command Lekh Lekha is found describe Abraham following his father rather than breaking his idols. ^[4]

To me, this shift parallels an evolving Jewish identity in Israel—particularly through the rise of Mizrahi traditionalism, a spiritual movement gaining size and influence. ^[5] Mizrahi traditionalism resists the binary between strict Orthodox observance and secular rejection. It honors the past not by copying it, but by revering it. It doesn’t ask us to mimic our parents but invites us to treasure the contours of their Judaism.

This vision of continuity - whether seen in Abraham’s journey as faithful son or in Mizrahi traditionalism - offers a unique response to what cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai describes as modernity’s pull: the ability to imagine lives distinct from those of our parents—a world where we can move away, pursue new paths, even change our names.^[6]

In a world before modern imagination became widespread, Abraham’s rejection of his father’s paganism was bold: a fitting origin for the founder of Judaism. Today, however, we’re so steeped in modernity’s logic of self-invention that we hardly question the assumption that not only we can, but we should break away.

Reclaiming Terah’s legacy, then, reveals a new path for spiritual growth: in a world that assumes departure, greatness might mean continuity—even and especially when our link looks different. This isn’t only for Israelis; Lekh Lekha invites us all to consider how spiritual growth might lie in preserving the chain rather than breaking it.

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Scroll to Soul:[7] Mizrahi traditionalist influence is perhaps most powerfully seen in Israeli music—a genre that resonates across the spectrum of Israeli society. To see this in action, and in the spirit of reclaiming Terah, I invite you to check out the music video Chanania by Hanan Ben Ari, a tribute to his Afghani grandfather. I’ve been at concerts with thousands of Israelis—religious and secular alike—cheering for Saba (Grandpa) Chanania, embracing en masse a song that’s all about love and respect for our grandparents' traditions. Hanan Ben Ari exemplifies Mizrahi Masortiyut (traditionalism), carving his unique but deeply rooted path.

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[1] At this stage in Genesis, our forefather is still called Abram; his name changes to Abraham later. I use 'Abraham' here for clarity.

[2] Bereshit Rabbah 38. Here’s a working definition for Midrash (in this context, and at the risk of simplifying): rabbinic literary narrative that interprets and expands on the biblical text.

[3] Yehuda Amichai, Open Closed Open: Poems, 2000

[4] Of course, this is also due to the revival of studying biblical peshat (the plain meaning of the text) in Israel.

^[5] See: Meir Buzaglo, Safa Leneemanim; On the rise of traditionalism for all Israelis, not just Mizrahim, see: Micah Goodman, Hazara Lelo Teshuva.

^[6] Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at large, 1996

[7]  In this segment I share some practical, real-world ways to bring the Parasha to life.