To Tei TORAH Lease Pull-Ahead PORTION Leaving The Familiar IS Back! Shabbat Lech Lecha: Genesis 12:1-17:27; Isaiah 40:27-41:16. w AUDETTE 7100 Orchard Lake Road, West Bloomfield Mon. & Thurs. till 9; Tues., Wed., Fri. til 6 BREAK THROUGH 248-851-7200 www.audettecadillac.com '$2118 due CO signing on CTS. $2363 due @ signing on DTS. $2116 due @ signing on STS. Plus tax, title, license. Must qualify for S.A. B or C tier credit. 36 mos.. 10k mi per year. Must qualify for GMS. I want Mom to be happy and close to home Wherever home is, New LifeStyles Senior Housing & Care Option guides are available FREE for over 40 areas throughout the USA. New LifeStyles guides include: • All options, from Active Adult Communities to Alzheimer's care, including home care and valuable products and services • Comprehensive listings of all licensed providers •Articles and advice to help you make a decision • Easy to use, with descriptions and locations Call today! It's FREE! 1-800-820-3013 or visit us online at vvwvv.NewLifeStyles.com Callers requesting New LifeStyles may also receive information from providers in their area. 24 got to know us and experi- arrive this ence the rich diversity of week at our culture and the bless- "our" story in the ing of freedom and liberty Torah. For 11 chap- — that they-would be our ters, we've read the friends. increasingly disap- What Torah tells us is pointing story of "that Abram sets off Rabbi "humanity" — and because he believes in the Joseph Klein for 11 chapters, we've Special to the promise. He does not know watched humanity Jewish News where he is going, how long it will take to get there grow further and fur- ther away from God, until finally, or what he will find when he here in Chapter 12, we come to does get there. It wasn't what he this man Avram (Abram) who is believed that made him the chosen to save us. father of this chosen people; it And the Lord had said to was what he and they did. Nothing has changed since Abram, "Lech Lecha," "Get your- self going out from your country Abram became Abraham. We and from your family and from make our mark on the world your father's house to a land that around us because of what we I will show you." do: how we conduct ourselves in It is a rather dramatic opening the world and how we manage statement of this story that leads our relationships with other peo- ple. directly — to us! God identifies What we know is that we are a Abram by commanding him to leave kin and country to go to an caring and compassionate people; we believe that we are command- unknown land, to father a new nation. ed to conduct ourselves rightly in The traditional Midrash chal- this world. We believe that we are lenges itself by asking: 'Why was in covenant with God, the source of all creation, the fountainhead of Abram the one chosen by God?' all goodness. We know and we Torah tells us nothing of how believe that there are rules of right Abram (for his part) came to conduct and proper behavior, rules know that "God" is the true God, which define our covenant with or why (on God's. part) Abram was the proper person for God to God and through which we choose. We don't know what express that covenant with both God and our people Israel. Instead Abram believed before or after God's command; what we know of becoming anxious about not only is that Abram gathered him- knowing what to believe as the self, his wife and nephew and world changes around us, we acted — leaving the familiar for ought to look within for what the promise of a better future. As we've always known to be true. 0 Abram must have struggled to Joseph Klein is rabbi of Temple determine what is true or what Emanu-El in Oak Park. to believe, so we in our day also struggle. Conversations The world has changed for all In what ways does Abram's leav- of us, and so much of what we ing Harm parallel the emigra- believed to be true no longer is. tion of our grandparents from We believed that we were safe Eastern Europe? Whenever the from terrorism in America. We direction of our lives makes a believed that if people came to radical change, from where America (or any Western, demo- does our courage come? cratic country) and lived here, e finally November 10 2005 in?