Rabbi Daniel Siegel – Head of Jewish Life

Shorashim

Recently, our Year 7 students were excitedly lining up outside the Jewish Life staffroom to pick up their שורשים/Shorashim projects.

This week’s parashah, לך לך/lekh lekha speaks to the significance of שושרשים/Shorashim. Commenting on the name of this parashah, the Hasidic tradition teaches us:  כל יהודי צריך ללך אל עצמו אל שרשו – “Every Jew must journey to himself, to his root being (שורשו/shorasho)”.

לך לך/lekh lekha here is an emphatic expression serving as a command to Avraham to journey forth from his father’s house. Since, the command could have been simply לך/go, the words לך לך/lekh lekha meaning, literally, “go to yourself”, is being understood as a journey to self.

In Judaism to honour your roots means to create your own body of work and to branch off onto your own path of life. This is expressed by the Rabbis by means of a midrash in which Avraham fulfills the divine command לך לך מבית אביך/lekh lekha mi-beit avikha – “Go forth from your father’s home”, by smashing the idols of his father.

The “binding of Isaac”, in next week’s parashah is seen, by some, as Avraham’s forgetting the need of the child to achieve his own individuation, as he had with his father and, instead, binding his son, Isaac, on the altar of his own beliefs. Like Terach who, in the midrash, turned his son Avraham over to Nimrod, for defying the idolatrous conventions of his time and to coerce his conformity, Avraham, now the father, wishes to deprive his son of his own journey to his root being.

After the “binding of Isaac”, Avraham never again sees his son. While שורש/shoresh means “root”, לשרש/le-sharesh means to remove the roots. Our children can only flourish in our family garden when we allow and promote them to root themselves. להשתרש/le-hishtaresh is a reflexive verb, meaning take root. It is a process coming from and leading to one’s root being.

Father and Son – Cat Stevens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdMPuMeTxzY

It’s not time to make a change
Just relax, take it easy
You’re still young, that’s your fault
There’s so much you have to know
Find a girl, settle down
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy

I was once like you are now, and I know that it’s not easy
To be calm when you’ve found something going on
But take your time, think a lot
Why, think of everything you’ve got
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not

How can I try to explain? ‘Cause when I do he turns away again
It’s always been the same, same old story
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go

It’s not time to make a change
Just sit down, take it slowly
You’re still young, that’s your fault
There’s so much you have to go through
Find a girl, settle down
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy

All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside
It’s hard, but it’s harder to ignore it
If they were right, I’d agree, but it’s them they know not me
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go