Lech Lecha

Faith or Reason?

Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan

At age 75, Torah says, our ancestor Avraham suddenly hears a voice telling him to leave his past behind and move towards an unknown future. Avraham seems to know intuitively that this is the voice of God. With great faith and courage, he and his wife Sarah embrace the challenge, and leave their past behind.

Some of our earliest biblical scholars were uncomfortable looking up to a role model who embraces God after a single powerful personal experience. They preferred to see the founder of their religion as a passionate investigator into the metaphysics of reality, who concludes -- after many years of study -- that a higher power animates the world.

They imagined the early life of Avraham the thinker. As a child, he works in the shop where his father sells wooden idols. But he quickly discovers that they don't move or think, so he smashes them. As a teenager, he studies astrology, so he can learn to predict and influence fate. But he soon discovers that the sun, moon, and stars only move in fixed patterns. After many years of thoughtful study, he concludes that the whole world is animated and sustained by a single power, the Creator of heaven and earth.

Which Avraham is your role model, the "knight of faith" described in Torah or the "knight of reason" described in Midrash (interpretation)? Both models flourish in Jewish tradition, and both types of religious knowing are honoured.

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