Pogledati ajet 3:65
Abraham's beginnings are very simply chronicled at the conclusion of this week's torah portion, seemingly without giving us a clue as to why he is subsequently elected by G-d to leave his father's house, make his way to Israel, and serve as a blessing to all the families of the earth. All we are told is: "And Terah was seventy years old, and he bore Abram, Nahor and Haran...... and Haran died in the lifetime of Terah his father in the land of his birth Ur Kasdim.... and Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran his grand- son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law the wife of Abram his son, and he went with them from Ur Kasdim to set out for the land of Canaan, and he came until Haran and they dwelt there.... And Terah died in Haran (Gen 11:27- 32)." How does this qualify Abraham as the founder of ethical monotheism?
The mystery may begin to unravel if we attempt to understand in depth where Abram was born. Interestingly enough, the answer to this question is a dispute between Rashi and the Ramban. Rashi finds the divine command to Abram in the beginning of next week's Torah portion "get thee forth from thy birthplace" (Gen 12:1) problematic, because Abraham has already left his birthplace much before G-d's admonition. In the words of Rashi: " But had he not already departed from there (his birthplace Ur Kasdim) together with his father and reached as far as Haran"? (Rashi, Gen 12:1). Rashi is simply reminding us that Terah had already moved the family from the birthplace Ur Kasdim to Haran several years earlier! (Gen 11:31) Hence Rashi suggests that the meaning of the verse is: Get even further away from your birthplace, leave your father's house and come to the Land of Canaan. But Rashi's clear conclusion is that Abram was born in Ur Kasdim.
Nahmanides also grapples with this seeming confusion regarding Abraham's birthplace. Nahmanides concludes however, that Abraham's original place of birth was not Ur Kasdim but was rather Haran; Terah took the family from Haran to Ur Kasdim where his youngest son Haran (named, apparently, after the familial birth-place) was born and later died prematurely. But Abram was indeed born in Haran! In the words of Nahmanides: "Haran is his birthplace, having always been his father's country, and from there Abraham was commanded to leave" (Nahmanides, Gen: 12:1). Ur Kasdim was merely a temporary location and nothing more.
What we ought now ask ourselves is whether the debate between these major commentators centers on establishing historic accuracy, or if something else of greater significance may be suggested here. I would like to suggest that the implications behind this debate allows us to consider our patriarch from two different perspectives -one that we're more familiar with and one that provides us with a fresh perspective. Rashi maintains that Abram and his father Terah came from Ur Kasdim, the land of Nimrod who was a despotic ruler and a believer in idolatry. Terah identified with Nimrod all of his life. According to the famous midrash, Terah was an idol maker by trade. He once left young Abram in charge of his wares. The youth smashed the idols, later explaining to his father that they had a fight. When Terah angrily rejected his son's explanation with the argument that idols are mute objects of stone and wood, this merely intensified Abram's insistence that idolatry was false and we must believe in one G-d. Abram was therefore the first and most illustrious ba'al - teshuvah, the iconoclast who was worthy of being elected by G-d.
According to Nahmanides, however, Terah, Abram's father, was a seeker after truth. Abraham was born in Haran and since the verse explicitly tells us that Terah, along with Abraham, Sarah and Lot, left Ur Kasdim (11:31), we have to consider why Terah moved to this city of the Chaldeans Ur Kasdim? Here we turn to the Midrash which links Ur with fire, and Ur Kasdim as the headquarters of Nimrod, ruler of the region and master of idolatry. Terah had apparently sought him out, become a follower of the Nimrodian tradition a veritable minister in his cabinet. Rewarded with a license to mint idols, Terah envisioned a similar career for his son in fast-carved idolatry. The Midrash describes how Nimrod had Abraham thrown into a fiery furnace, which Abraham miraculously survived. Haran foolishly believed that he too would survive - although he lacked Abram's faith - but when entered the furnace, he was burnt to death (Rashi on Gen 11:28). Might it not be that Terah then realized that Nimrod and his idolatry was false. He then uproots his family once again and sets out for the land of Canaan. Canaan is the home of Malkitzedek, high priest of the One True G-d, a tradition which he has carried down intact from Shem, and before Shem, from Adam himself. In contrast to the land of Nimrod where chaos and idolatry reign, in Jerusalem, the home of Malkitzedek, another tradition prevails, the tradition of ethical monotheism. Terah never quite made it to Canaan - he only succeeded in leaving Ur Kasdim. His son Abram continues the journey at G-d's behest - a command which he had been prepared to accept as a result of his fathers' searches and travels.
