This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on October 31, 2025.
At the beginning of every year, we don’t just restart the Torah, we re-enter it. We step back into a narrative already in motion, one that invites us to ask not only what happened then, but what are we meant to learn now?
And this year, as our country feels increasingly fragile, politically divided, democracy strained, and trust frayed, the opening chapters of Torah offer a mirror for our civic and spiritual reality, and a call to moral courage.
In Bereshit, creation begins with separation, light from darkness, water from sky, chaos from order. God models that healthy distinctions are not the same as division. Boundaries create the possibility of life. Creation is not undone by disagreement; it is undone when violence replaces relationship. When Cain refuses responsibility for Abel and asks, “Hashomer achi anochi?“ “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9), the Torah answers with a thunderous yes. Democracy depends on that same answer, on recognizing that we are accountable for the well-being of those beyond ourselves.
Then comes Noach. The world narrows, humanity collapses inward. Everyone becomes so self-interested that “the earth was filled with hamas, corruption, and moral violence.” The flood isn’t only a punishment, it is a consequence: when no one feels responsible for the commons, the commons collapses. A society cannot endure when empathy is eroded and truth becomes irrelevant. The rainbow that follows is not a sign of uniformity, but of shared human dignity, a covenant conditional on remembering one another’s humanity.
And in Lech Lecha, the narrative shifts from the universal to the particular, from the creation of the world to the creation of a people. God calls Avram:
“Lech lecha mei’artzecha… Go forth from your land, your birthplace, the house of your father, to the land that I will show you.” (Gen. 12:1)
It is the most uncharted of instructions. God does not say, “Here is the destination.” Instead: “I will show you.” The blessing comes after the walking, not before. Faith here is not certainty; it’s the courage to begin without a map.
Avram doesn’t know where he’s going. All he knows is that the life he is meant to build cannot be built from the pieces he already has. So he chooses movement. Not out of impatience, but out of conviction that something sacred awaits if he’s willing to step beyond the edges of what he has known. The Torah reminds us that our lives, and our societies, are not shaped by what we believe in theory, but by what we are willing to walk toward.
Avram’s story becomes a blueprint for democracy itself. Every step, from uncertainty to hope to moral courage, is part of covenantal life. Later, when offered the spoils of war, Avram refuses, saying: “I lift my hand to the Eternal . . . I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap.” (Gen. 14:22–23)
He teaches that righteousness is not won through victory, but through integrity. Faith is not passive belief; it is ethical courage. It is not enough to walk toward blessing; we must also refuse the shortcuts that undermine it.
The first three parshiyot, Bereshit, Noach, and Lech Lecha, together form a Torah of citizenship. They remind us that democracy is not a system that runs on autopilot; it is a covenant, sustained by relationship, accountability, and moral presence. We do not maintain it by silence or by watching from the sidelines. We sustain it by choosing, again and again, to be each other’s keepers, by naming corruption when we see it, by standing for truth even when it’s uncomfortable, by insisting that dignity belongs to all.
There is a moment in every life, and in every nation, when the question is no longer “Where am I?” but “Who will I become if I take this next step?”
Our task in this moment is not simply to hope for a better world; it is to build one together. To move, like Avram, toward justice even when we cannot see the ending. To resist the floodwaters of cynicism and cruelty by remembering that every voice matters. And to answer the Torah’s first great moral question, “Ayeka? Where are you?” by showing up for each other, for this country, and for the fragile promise of shared life.
May we, like Avraham, walk forward in faith, not because we know the way, but because we believe that our walking can still bring blessing into a world that desperately needs it.
Rabbi Eve Posen 