It has been a long time since I have posted….a long time. I have no good explanations – just excuses.
It is nice to be back, and a belated Shanah Tovah to one and all!
My fellow American citizens will read this either in the midst of or just following the U.S. presidential elections. As I write this, the polls have only just opened and neither we have no idea as to who will be the next leader of the free-world.
All I know is that even a quick look at this week’s parasha – Parashat Lech Lecha – makes it very clear that if our forefather Abraham were running for office, he would never get elected!
Let’s begin with his age – after all, the first time we really meet him – on his way to Canaan on orders from his “commanding office” he is already 75 years old! According to the polls, that is way too old…and if he were elected and then died in office, would his nephew Lot be next in line…sure, he has good yichus, but his mere association with Sodom and Amora makes him highly suspect…..
And what about his foreign policy position? Well, when there is a famine in his own land, he abandons home and goes down to Egypt, where he puts his wife and himself in serious danger. When a regional war breaks out between the four kings and the five kings, Abraham stays out of it, until his own nephew is captured. He then takes a small army of several hundred to do battle with armies of thousands! True, he pulls it off, but at what risk!
And one more seeming weakness – in the area of decsion making. When Sara tells him to take Hagar ad have a child with her, he does so, wihtout discussion or hesitation. When it backfires, and Sara insists that he choose between Hagar and herself, he avoids making the decsion and pushes it back to her – “Yor maid is in your hands – deal with her as you think right!”
With all of this “dirt” Avraham would had never been elected…..I guess that is why it was good that he wasn’t being elected as father of our nation by we – his people- but rather by the Lord, whose insights into the makings of leadership are far more than skin-deep, far mre than based on specific circumstances – specific bills he voted on or specific decsions that appear on the surface to be somewhat “sketchy.”
Perhaps Abraham’s election to enter into the covenant with God (end of the parasha) was based not on his past track record alone, but based on what God “knew” Abraham was capable of doing in the future….Abraham was chosen to me more than a president – he was chosen to found a nation… fortunately God had inside information, and seems to have voted for the right guy.
Whoever wins the election….may God too choose that leader to bring about a better and safer world.
Morey
Tuesdays with Morey 
So good to find your post today, Morey! I’ve just returned from my polling place, and I cannot describe the pride and excitement I felt in participating in this historic day. I based my presidential vote not so much on past positions and past statements, but on my assessment of each candidate’s skills and characteristics for navigating a future that may be largely unfamiliar territory to us. May God bless him, and us all.
It is good to hear from you again. Look forward to more.
Brilliant as always!
Welcome back. (:)
We don’t usually discuss Abraham when we are looking for role models for leadership. We usually hold Moses up for that. Abraham was an inspirational figure, a visionary, but it took feet on the ground to build the organization. Anybody who’s been involved with a non-profit founded upon the new ideas of a single person will recognize the difference in roles.
I write after the results are in and will add that we have chosen for President here a man who has both the vision and the administrative abilities to make manifest that vision. May G!d give him and his advisers the strength to move us all forward and toward peace.