What is the nature of beginnings? Seneca said, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” The start of something new means that something else ends, but does it also mean that eventually the very thing you are starting will eventually end with something else’s beginning? I was thinking about this when reading the start of Lech Lecha, this week’s Torah portion. There we read:
The Lord said to Avram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. And curse him that curses you; And all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.” ( Genesis 12:1-3)
This is the start of the Jewish project, but what is the end of that project? While many people throughout history have tried to answer that question for us, for now I rather keep in a lighter note. When talking with my friend Shalom Orzach recently he connected this charge to Avram to go out with Shel Silverstein’s poem Where the Sidewalk Ends. There we read:
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Said to Myself 