The Knight of Faith
Parshat Lech L’cha winnows down the early Torah chapters from a mythic overview of early humanity to the specific story of the Jewish people. At the extremely advanced age of 75, God asks Abraham to embark on a journey that would have been exceedingly risky for a man half his age. It was a tremendous leap into the unknown: To leave everything and everyone that gave him a sense of comfort and rootedness—a kind of separation that was tantamount to a death sentence in the ancient world—and to take on an odyssey of mind, body, and spirit to a vaguely indicated land. That Abraham was willing to risk it all out of an intuitive faith and trust in God’s power and promise renders him, as Kierkegaard coined it, a “Knight of Faith”—so bound and invested was he in his duty and obligation to something greater than himself.