• Table For Five

Does courage eliminate fear?

Table for Five: Lech Lecha

In partnership with the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles

Edited by Nina Litvak & Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist

After these incidents, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Fear not, Abram; I am your Shield; your reward is exceedingly great.” – Genesis 15:1

Baruch C. Cohen
Civil Trial Attorney

We usually think fear comes before the battle. Sometimes the deeper fear comes afterward. Avram had just prevailed against kings. He had demonstrated extraordinary courage. And then God appeared to him with words that seem almost surprising: “Avram – Fear not.” 

Perhaps courage does not eliminate fear. Sometimes courage merely postpones it. There are moments when we do what must be done because there is no time to calculate the consequences. We fight the battle. Make the decision. Walk into the hospital room. Stand beside someone we love. Say the words that cannot remain unsaid. And only afterward, when the noise subsides, does the heart begin asking its questions. What happens now? What did this cost me? What if I cannot do this again?

God does not tell Avram that there was nothing to fear. He tells him something far more profound: “I am your Shield.” A shield does not mean there will be no arrows. It means you will not face the arrows alone.

Perhaps that is why the reassurance comes after the battle. Faith is not always the confidence we carry into the darkness. Sometimes faith is what God whispers to us when we emerge from it trembling: You were brave when you had to be. Now let Me hold the fear you could not afford to feel.

Rabbi Amy Bernstein
Senior Rabbi, Kehillat Israel Congregation

Many commentators ask what Avram fears that the Divine here comes in a vision and tells him not to be afraid. I like that Torah is not clear about Avram’s fear because it makes this assurance one each of us who carries our own private fears can relate to. It allows each of us to imagine for ourselves what it might mean to trust that God is our shield. Studying this parsha after a diagnosis of stage 1 breast cancer and while undergoing treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, I understand the power of this imagery differently than I have before. Torah does not say that Avram will not face danger or painful life experiences (the sending away of Hagar and Ishmael and the binding of Isaac have not happened yet) but that God will be a shield to Avram whatever comes. Our ancestors found this so resonant that they wrote it into the Amidah, the central collection of blessings in our liturgy. In Siddur Sefard (Yotzerot, Parashat HaChodesh) the prayer before the blessing ending with this image of God as the Shield of Avraham includes the words “li od tignon” or “shield me again”. What a beautiful recognition that though we face real danger and painful situations, we have each known what it is to be shielded during them by the love of others, their kindness and care, and by our own miraculous ability to heal from what life brings us.

Cantor Michelle Bider Stone
Temple Beth Am, Los Angeles 

Have you ever had an uncomfortable feeling in your gut after what you thought was a positive experience? Maybe something didn’t feel right, even though everything went your way. This is the unease Abram seems to be experiencing.

Let’s put this verse in context. Abram has just won a major battle and saved his nephew Lot from captivity. God appears and tells him not to fear. Why would Abram be afraid? He defeated kings. He rescued his nephew. Everything seemed to have gone right. The Midrash teaches that Abram was afraid because he was concerned that, during battle, he may have killed innocent or righteous people.  After his hard-won victory, Abram wasn’t celebrating or worried about revenge. He feared his own moral failing. 

Abram had every reason to pat himself on the back. Instead, he stopped to wonder about who he may have hurt. Questioning ourselves in a moment of triumph is a profound form of humility.  Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks explains this a moral dilemma. He writes, “Moral dilemmas are situations in which doing the right thing is not the end of the matter.”  Sometimes, even when we believe we’ve done the right thing, we must live with the consequences. Abram’s greatness is not simply that he won the battle. It is his willingness to take moral responsibility. Moral commitment doesn’t mean never making difficult choices. It means having the courage to examine the consequences of our choices, even when we believe we are right.

Rabbi Peretz Rodman
Masorti/Conservative Rabbi, Jerusalem

“Praised are You, Adonai, Shield of Abraham.” So ends the first blessing in Judaism’s classical core liturgy. The Amidah begins with a reminder to God that we are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with whom He had forged a covenantal relationship. Why is our verse cited there? Why Abraham? Why “Shield”?

Note the verse’s context: Abraham had stuck his neck out to rescue his nephew, taken hostage in a war among Canaanite kings. Victorious and even blessed by a Canaanite king, Abraham had refused to accept pillaged property. The language of our verse reflects the background of war. The term here for “reward,” sachar, often refers to the spoils of war. In Ezekiel 29:18, for example, God says of the marauding Babylonian king, “no sachar did he and his forces get for all their efforts….”

Abraham swore off any material gain; God promises him that God Himself will provide reward of another sort: a son, continuity, the fulfillment of his destiny as progenitor of a nation that will inherit the land he had been shown and promised. As we stand before the Eternal in prayer, we begin by recalling our ancestor’s selfless dedication to his family and to fulfilling God’s plan that he model “the way of the Eternal” by “doing what is just and right” (Gen. 18:18). We recall the promise made to him and his descendants, including ourselves—if we prove to be worthy heirs.

Rabbi Amy Levin 
Hanaton, Israel, Congregational Consultant / tziburstrategies.net

By the end of Genesis chapter 13, Abram has settled peacefully and securely among the terebinths [sturdy trees] near Hevron. (a region that God had designated to him). Then local rulers engage in a regional war that would not have involved Abram at all except that they captured his nephew, Lot, his family and possessions.  Abram organizes his own forces, defeats the local rulers and retrieves his nephew and family. Local kings who had been threatened by the invaders offer Abram spoils of war.  Abram refuses: “I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours ….” 

At which point, our chapter opens with God’s address to Abram: “I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.”  Abram’s response is heartbreaking: he talks about his pain at being childless, having no heir to all that he has acquired. 

An element of our Five Books of Moses that always engages me is how human our biblical protagonists are.  We witness their stories of despair and courage, of human weakness and growing self-awareness, their humility and their capacity to live lives of integrity in the most challenging circumstances.  It is so much more powerful to read of these people week after week than saintly figures who lives do not seem accessible or open to our emulation.  How encouraging it is that our tradition offers us such truly vulnerable, fragile and ethical human beings as our role models.

Image: “Abraham’s Vision” by John Linnell, 1853

With thanks to Baruch C. Cohen, Amy Bernstein, Michelle Bider Stone, Peretz Rodman and Amy Levin.

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