5787 – Lech Lecha

Parashat Lech Lecha 5787

A man told to go without being told where, who goes down into Egypt and comes up again, refuses a thread from the king of Sodom, and is made whole by a covenant.

Genesis 12:1 to 17:27 · Haftarah: Isaiah 40:27 to 41:16 · Shabbat 13 Cheshvan 5787 / 24 October 2026 · Israel schedule

Last week ended with ten generations from Shem, the death of Terach in Charan, and a name: Avram. This week God speaks to him with two words, lech lecha, and the story of the Jewish people begins. He goes, the land is in famine, he goes down to Egypt and comes back richer, he separates from Lot, fights a war of kings to bring one captive home, refuses the spoils, is shown the stars, is told that his children will be strangers in a land not theirs, and at ninety-nine receives a new name and the covenant of circumcision.

It is read this year in the week Israel marks the Yom HaAliyah school observance and Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Day, three days before Israel votes. A portion about leaving home, going down, coming back, and refusing what is not yours sits beside all of that below.

Parasha at a Glance

Calendar, leyning and haftarah verified against the Hebcal Israel calendar with the diaspora setting off. This week Israel and the diaspora read the same portion and the same haftarah.

Torah Overview

Go, Go Down, Come Up, Be Whole

The portion opens without introduction: Go for yourself from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you. No reason is given for choosing Avram, and no destination is named. The promise follows: a great nation, a blessing, a great name, and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Avram is seventy-five. He takes Sarai, his nephew Lot, their possessions, and the souls they had made in Charan, and comes to Canaan. At Shechem God appears and says to your seed I will give this land, and Avram builds an altar, and another between Beit El and Ai, where he calls on the name of God.

Then a famine, and Avram goes down to Egypt. Afraid that the Egyptians will kill him for Sarai, he asks her to say she is his sister. She is taken to Pharaoh's house, Avram is given flocks and servants, God strikes Pharaoh's house with plagues, and Pharaoh sends them away. The Talmud reads one line here, and he dealt well with Avram for her sake, as a teaching that blessing is found in a home only on account of the wife (Bava Metzia 59a). Avram goes up from Egypt rich in cattle, silver and gold.

His shepherds and Lot's begin to quarrel. Avram says: Let there be no strife between me and you, for we are brothers. If you go left, I will go right. Lot chooses the well-watered plain of the Jordan and pitches his tent toward Sodom, whose people were wicked and sinners before God, exceedingly. After they part, God tells Avram to lift his eyes in every direction and walk the length and breadth of the land.

Chapter 14 is the first war in the Torah. Four kings from the east defeat five kings of the plain, sack Sodom and take Lot captive. Avram arms his three hundred and eighteen trained men, pursues them to Dan, routs them at night, and brings back Lot, the people and the property. Malki-Tzedek, king of Shalem and priest of God Most High, comes out with bread and wine and blesses him, and Avram gives him a tenth. The king of Sodom offers Avram the goods if he will return the people. Avram answers: I will not take from a thread to a shoe strap, nor anything that is yours, lest you say, I made Avram rich.

In chapter 15 God says Do not fear, Avram, I am your shield. He takes him outside and tells him to count the stars: so shall your seed be. Avram believes, and it is counted to him as righteousness. Then the Covenant Between the Pieces: animals split, a deep sleep, a great darkness, and the word that his children will be strangers and slaves for four hundred years and then come out with great wealth. A smoking furnace and a torch of fire pass between the pieces. The land is promised from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates.

Sarai, childless, gives Avram her maid Hagar. Hagar conceives and looks down on her mistress, Sarai deals harshly with her, and she flees. An angel finds her at a spring, sends her back, and names her son Yishmael, God hears. Thirteen years later God appears to Avram at ninety-nine: I am El Shaddai; walk before Me and be whole. Avram becomes Avraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, a son Yitzchak is promised by name, and the portion ends on the day Avraham, Yishmael and every male of his house are circumcised.

The haftarah answers the portion's fear with the prophet's comfort: But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, seed of Abraham My friend. Earlier in the same chapter is a line the Talmud reads about Avraham and the stars, in Section D below.

Talmudic Depth

A. The first to call Him Master: Berakhot 7b

Berakhot 7b brings Rabbi Yochanan in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: From the day that the Holy One, Blessed be He, created the world there was no person who called Him Lord until Abraham came and called Him Lord, as it is stated, My Lord, God, by what shall I know that I will inherit it? (Genesis 15:8). The word is Adon, master, owner. Others before him had spoken of a Creator. Avram was the first to say that the Creator is also the owner, the one to whom he answers.

The same Gemara adds, in Rav's name, that even Daniel's prayers were answered only on account of Avraham. The first person to call God Master became the merit on which later prayers stand. The Midrash says the same thing in a parable, in Section E of the Kabbalah below: a man sees a building alight and asks whether it has an owner.

B. Three hundred and eighteen, and the price of a war: Nedarim 32a

Nedarim 32a reads the three hundred and eighteen men two ways. Rabbi Ami bar Abba says Eliezer alone was equal to all of them, and some say only Eliezer is meant, since the numerical value of his name is 318. Rav and Shmuel read vayarek, he led forth, as horikan: he emptied into them, either Torah or gold.

Then the same daf asks a hard question. Why were Avraham's children enslaved in Egypt for 210 years? Rabbi Elazar says: because he drafted Torah scholars into war. Shmuel says: because he questioned God too far, whereby shall I know? Rabbi Yochanan says: because he kept people from entering under the wings of the Divine Presence, when he let the king of Sodom have back the captives he had rescued. Had he kept them with him, the Gemara says, he would have brought them close to God.

The Talmud does not let even Avraham's victory pass without asking what it cost and what it missed. A rescue can be right and still be measured. Section 4 of The World This Week comes back to this.

C. Not a thread, not a shoe strap: Sotah 17a

On Avram's oath to the king of Sodom, Sotah 17a brings Rava: As reward for that which our Patriarch Abraham said to the king of Sodom, "That I will not take a thread nor a shoe strap nor anything that is yours," his children merited two mitzvot: the thread of sky-blue wool worn on ritual fringes and the strap of phylacteries.

The reward is measured exactly to the refusal. The thread he would not take from Sodom becomes the thread of techelet, and the strap he would not take becomes the strap of tefillin. What a person refuses to be bought with becomes the material of his covenant. Section 5 below comes back to this.

D. There is no constellation for Israel: Shabbat 156a to 156b

Shabbat 156a records a dispute. Rabbi Chanina says a constellation makes one wise and wealthy, and there is a constellation for Israel. Rabbi Yochanan says there is none. Rav agrees with Rabbi Yochanan and brings our verse: And He brought him outside. Avraham said: Master of the Universe, I looked at my astrological map, and according to the configuration of my constellations I am not fit to have a son. God said: Emerge from your astrology, for there is no constellation for Israel. The same exchange is brought on Nedarim 32a.

On 156b the Gemara reads a verse from this week's haftarah, Who has raised up one from the east, he will call tzedek to his steps (Isaiah 41:2), as God moving the planet Tzedek, Jupiter, from the west to the east on Avraham's behalf. Then come the stories of Shmuel and of Rabbi Akiva's daughter, each saved from a fate the stars had read, by charity. The point is not that the stars are empty. It is that a covenant stands above them.

E. Whole only through the covenant: Nedarim 32a

The Mishnah at the end of the third chapter of Nedarim says great is circumcision, and the Gemara on 32a explains: There is no one who was engaged in mitzvot like Abraham our Patriarch, and yet he was called wholehearted only due to the mitzva of circumcision, as it is stated, Walk before Me and be whole, and I will make My covenant between Me and you.

The Gemara adds that when God said be whole, Avraham trembled, afraid that some sin of his made him incomplete, and his mind was set at ease only when the next verse named the covenant. Rabbi Yitzchak closes the passage: Anyone who conducts himself with wholeheartedness, the Holy One, Blessed be He, treats him with wholeheartedness. Avraham's wholeness was not the sum of his good deeds. It was a covenant given on top of them.

Kabbalistic Depth

A. Zohar: Go to know yourself

The Zohar's first reading of lech lecha is Rabbi Elazar's: for thine own advantage, to prepare thyself, to perfect thy degree (Zohar, Lech Lecha 5:21). Then it tells what came before the call. Avram had a gift for reading the world. He weighed every region and found the power above each one, through the stars and constellations, and succeeded everywhere until he reached the centre of the inhabited world. There his method failed. He weighed again and again and could not grasp the power behind it, and stopped in Charan, baffled.

Only then, when God perceived his efforts and his desire, did He reveal Himself: Get thee forth, so as to know thyself. From thy land, from the side of the world he had been attached to. From thy kindred, from that wisdom wherewith thou didst cast thy horoscope. To the land I will show thee, that which thou wast not able to discover (5:28 to 5:31). The call came at the edge of Avram's own wisdom. It is the Zohar's version of the Talmud's emerge from your astrology in Section D above.

B. Zohar: The descent into Egypt and the return

Why Egypt? The Zohar gives two answers that pull against each other. Rabbi Judah says Avram went down without first obtaining God's consent, and therefore his descendants were enslaved there (12:109), which is close to the Talmud's search for a reason in Nedarim 32a. The same passage notes in passing that famine comes only when mercy ceases to temper justice (12:107).

Rabbi Shimon reads the same journey as a test passed. Avram went down to the lower grades of Egypt, probed them to the bottom, but clave not to them and returned unto his Master. He was not like Adam, who descended and was enticed by the serpent, nor like Noach, who descended and drank. If Abram had not gone down to Egypt and been tested there, his portion would not have been in the Lord, and the same is true of his children (15:141 to 15:144). The descent is not the failure. Staying down would have been.

C. Zohar: Malki-Tzedek, king of Shalem

On Malki-Tzedek king of Shalem brought out bread and wine, Rabbi Shimon opens with In Shalem also is His tabernacle (Psalms 76:3). The name reads as king of righteousness, king of completeness, and the Zohar reads it as the moment the lower world and the upper world are joined, two worlds like one, with the priest standing between them to bless (24:237 to 24:241). The bread and the wine are both in it. When is the King fully king? On the Day of Atonement, when all faces are illumined.

The plain text puts the meeting between two kings: the king of Sodom, who wants the people and offers the goods, and the king of Shalem, who brings bread and asks for nothing. Rav Michael Hattin, at Yeshivat Har Etzion, reads the whole of chapters 12 to 14 as Avram's encounters with rulers, with Sodom and Jerusalem set against each other at the centre.

D. Zohar: From vision to covenant, and the letter Hei

The word of the Lord came to Avram in a vision. Rabbi Shimon says that until Avram was circumcised, only one grade spoke with him, the grade called Vision. Before a man is circumcised he is not attached to the name of God, and Avram was attached before then only through God's extreme love for him. After the covenant, all the higher grades joined this lower grade to speak with him (26:271 to 26:276).

The name changes at the same moment. When he was circumcised he became associated with the letter Hei, and the Shekhinah rested on him (34:382). And El Shaddai is named here for the first time because, before the covenant, the body bears only the Shin and the Dalet. The Yod of the covenant completes the name: Hitherto thou hast been defective, being stamped only with Shin Daleth: therefore circumcise thyself and become complete through the sign of Yod (35:441 to 35:443). It is the same teaching as Nedarim 32a, written in letters.

E. Chassidut: A person is called a goer

The Midrash opens the portion with a parable. A man passing from place to place saw a building alight and said: Is it possible that this building has no one in charge of it? The owner looked out and said: I am the owner of the building. So Avraham asked whether the world was without someone in charge, and God looked out and said: I am the owner of the world (Bereshit Rabbah 39:1). It is Berakhot 7b's Adon told as a story.

The Sefat Emet, the Gerrer Rebbe, reads that parable and the call together. Avraham's greatness is that he heard a call which comes out from God to all people at all time, and was the only one listening (Sefat Emet, Lech Lecha 1). And a person is called a goer: even a level reached in the service of God becomes second nature, so one must keep going from level to level, and Avraham was made a new creation in each of his ten tests (Lech Lecha 24). The Lubavitcher Rebbe, in a talk adapted at Chabad.org from Likkutei Sichot vol. V, reads the descent to Egypt as not an interruption but an integral part of the command of Lech Lecha. A further Zohar-based reading of go in order to know yourself is translated by Moshe Miller at Chabad.org.

A note on sources: the Arizal's teachings on the souls Avram made in Charan, and the Alter Rebbe's Torah Or on this portion, could not be pinned to a text I could verify this week, so neither is quoted here.

The World This Week

Seven structural parallels between the portion and the news of 11 to 18 October 2026. A parallel is a shape, not a verdict. No one below is being compared morally to Avraham, to Malki-Tzedek, or to the kings of Sodom or of the east, and each section says what the parallel does not mean. Figures in dispute are given with whoever asserted them, and are not averaged.

1. Go from your land

Ahead of the Yom HaAliyah school observance, the Aliyah and Integration Ministry reported just over 20,000 immigrants in 5786 from more than 100 countries, led by Russia, France and the United States. Jewish Agency chairman Doron Almog said Israel could absorb a million new immigrants; Bezalel Smotrich said hundreds of thousands could come (Jerusalem Post, 12 October). In the other direction, AFP reported that Israelis living abroad are flying home to vote; the Aid Coalition said it expects more than 50,000. Likud petitioned the Central Elections Committee calling the "Fly and Vote" programme electoral bribery, which the group's president said has no foundation whatsoever (AFP via Times of Israel, 14 October).

The shape is the portion's first verse: a call to leave a land, a birthplace and a father's house for a land promised but not yet seen. The correction is that the call to Avram came from God by name, and no number on a ministry report fulfils it or fails it. Nor does living abroad make anyone Terach, who stopped in Charan. The Zohar's point is about the inside of the journey, to know yourself, and that is something no one can measure for someone else. Whether "Fly and Vote" is lawful is for the Elections Committee, not for this page.

2. There was a famine in the land

Sudan Tribune reported an IPC famine alert for two camps in Jebel Marra, with acute malnutrition at 38 percent and 30.8 percent, above the 30 percent famine threshold, and 8.58 million people displaced nationally (Sudan Tribune, 13 October). UNHCR counted 324,631 people crossing from South Sudan into Sudan since April 2025, 223,600 of them Sudanese returnees (Sudan Tribune, 15 October). The UN demanded an end to drone attacks; it put drone deaths above 1,100 in the first half of 2026, and the US deputy ambassador said more than 30 displaced people were killed in a shelter in Blue Nile, reportedly by the RSF (The National, 16 October).

Avram arrives in the promised land and finds famine, and goes down to another country to live. The Zohar says famine comes when mercy no longer tempers justice. That is a statement about heaven's attributes, not an accusation against the hungry, and nothing here reads the people of Darfur as under judgment. The correction runs the other way. The Torah's first famine sends a family across a border, and the text then judges the host by how it treats the stranger: Pharaoh takes Sarai and his house is struck. The obligation the text leaves is on those who have bread, and on every country that receives the hungry.

3. Four kings against five

The National reported a surge in Iranian attacks on US- and Gulf-protected shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. For 28 September to 5 October, Reuters, citing maritime security sources, counted more than twelve tankers attacked, while the IMO recorded nine incidents. The IRGC said the strait is closed and under Iran's control; Secretary of State Rubio said flows had nearly recovered (The National, 13 October). CENTCOM's Admiral Brad Cooper said the blockade had stopped $25 billion in Iranian crude exports. The Saudi-led coalition said Houthi attacks this month on Riyadh's airport had killed 17 and injured 333; Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of encouraging them, and Iran denies it (RFE/RL, 17 October). These counts are each given as their source gives them.

Chapter 14 is a war of alliances: four kings from the east against five of the plain, fought over a valley of wealth. Avram enters it late, with a small force, and only for one reason, to bring a captive home. The structural parallel is the coalition war. The correction is that no state in the Gulf is Avram and no coalition is the four kings. Avram fought to free, not to hold a passage or a people hostage, and he took nothing for himself. That is the measure the text sets for any war, including the righteous ones.

4. He brought back his brother

Ukraine's Southern Defence Forces spokesman Maksym Kravchuk said intercepted radio traffic showed Russian troops ordered to kill wounded Ukrainian prisoners on the Huliaipole front, and Ukrainian officials believe two unarmed POWs were killed. He attributed the order to Russia's 38th Brigade. Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets has said at least 345 surrendering Ukrainians have been executed since 2022. There was no Russian response, and the claim has not been independently verified (Kyiv Independent, 17 October). In Yemen, the Houthis freed 159 pro-government fighters under an amnesty; the ICRC described it as a unilateral release (CBS News, 17 October).

Avram goes to war for one captive, and Nedarim 32a still asks what he could have done for the others. The parallel is the weight the Torah gives to a prisoner. The correction is that there is no symmetry here. A captive killed after surrender is a crime against the law that binds every child of Noach, and a release of prisoners, whatever its motive, is the opposite act. Neither makes its author Avram, and the Houthi release does not answer for the attacks on Riyadh in Section 3.

5. Not a thread, not a shoe strap

The Jerusalem Post reported new details in the Qatargate investigation: Prime Minister Netanyahu's aide Jonatan Urich is suspected of bribery, contact with a foreign agent and money laundering over alleged Qatari-linked payments, and the paper reported that he asked ChatGPT to help improve Qatar's image in Israel. Urich denies acting for Qatar. Naftali Bennett called it the most serious treason scandal; Gadi Eisenkot called it an influence operation (Jerusalem Post, 13 October). In Washington, President Trump announced US purchases of Russian diesel; six senators of both parties said it gives Putin a financial lifeline (CBS News, 11 October), and on 16 October he issued a broad waiver under the new Russia sanctions law (Kyiv Independent, 17 October).

Avram had every right to the spoils of a war he won. He refused them because of who was offering, lest you say, I made Avram rich. Sotah 17a says that refusal became the thread of tzitzit and the strap of tefillin. The parallel is the question of what a person or a state will accept, and from whom. The correction: Urich is a suspect, not a convict, and his denial stands until a court rules. No one here is the king of Sodom, and no one is Avram. The text simply sets the standard at a thread.

6. Malki-Tzedek, king of Shalem

Colombia opened an embassy in Jerusalem this week, the tenth country to do so, under President Abelardo de la Espriella, and a free trade agreement cancelled by his predecessor was reinstated. Foreign Minister Sa'ar said Israel had reversed most of the negative consequences of the break (Reuters via Jerusalem Post, 14 October). The Muslim World League condemned the move as a breach of international law (Asharq Al-Awsat, 15 October). Separately, President Trump said Saudi Arabia may accept Israeli help against the Houthis and that the Abraham Accords matter perhaps now more than ever; the article carries no Saudi or Israeli government response (Jerusalem Post, 16 October).

A king of Shalem comes out to Avram with bread and wine, and blesses him by God Most High. The structural parallel is a foreign ruler choosing to stand with Avram's line in Jerusalem. The correction is that an embassy is a diplomatic act, not a priesthood, and no president is Malki-Tzedek. The land in this portion is given by covenant between the pieces, not by recognition, and it would be no less Israel's if no embassy stood there. The objection of the Muslim World League is reported as theirs. A name that means completeness is a prayer for the city, not a description of its politics.

7. Let there be no strife between me and you

Israel votes on 27 October, and three polls taken on 14 and 15 October gave three pictures. Maariv's Lazar poll put the coalition at 51 and the opposition at 51, with Yashar on 21 and Likud on 18, and found a majority preferring a unity government to another election (Jerusalem Post, 16 October). A Tatika poll for Zman Yisrael put the Jewish-led opposition at 54, the pro-Netanyahu bloc at 49, Arab parties at 13 and the Reservists at 4 (Times of Israel, 15 October). Channel 13 put the Netanyahu bloc at 51, down four, the opposition at 50, and unaligned parties at 19 (Times of Israel, 15 October). No bloc reaches 61 in any of them. They are given here as three, not blended into one.

When the shepherds quarrel, Avram does not ask who is right. He says we are brothers, offers Lot the first choice, and they part without war. The structural parallel is a country whose camps are almost evenly divided, choosing between separation and a shared tent. The correction: no candidate is Avram and none is Lot, and nothing here endorses or opposes anyone. Lot's choice of the well-watered plain toward Sodom is the Torah's warning about choosing by what looks richest. Rabin Memorial Day this Thursday is a reminder of what strife between brothers can cost. More on how Torah frames leadership in Israel is in The Leadership of Israel.

Summary

Closing

May all who are called home hear it and come in peace. May those who go down in famine find a host who takes them in, and come up again. May every captive be brought back, and may no one take a thread that is not theirs. May Israel choose on Tuesday as brothers, without strife. And may the covenant that made Avraham whole stand over his children, above every star.

Shabbat Shalom.