What does it mean to be a "Hebrew"? Our tradition's answer is as much of an ethical challenge as an ethnic label. The name first appears in this week's parashah, Lech Lecha, when our ancestor is called "Avram ha-Ivri". [1]
While in modern Hebrew Ivri just means "Hebrew," the Sages saw something far more profound. In a famous midrash [2], they link the name to the word ever, which means "side" or "margin." Why was he called ha-Ivri? Because, they explain, "the whole world was on one side (ever), and he was on the other (ever)."
To be an Ivri, then, is to be an iconoclast, a spiritual contrarian. In a world steeped in polytheism, Avraham was willing to stand alone, to go against the entire world because he saw that the usual way of doing things was profoundly wrong. He challenged the status quo for the sake of truth.
And yet, this same iconoclast, this man of great faith and courage, has a profound and repeated moral failing. Almost immediately after arriving in the Promised Land, a famine drives him and Sarah to Egypt. Fearing the Egyptians will kill him to take his beautiful wife, Avraham devises a plan: "Please say that you are my sister". [3]
Let us be clear: he risks Sarah's autonomy and safety to secure his own. She is taken to Pharaoh's palace, and only a divine plague saves her, while Avraham is "treated well on her account". [4]
This is not a singular lapse in judgment. It is a disturbing pattern. Avraham and Sarah do it again, years later, with King Avimelech in Gerar. [5] The trauma is apparently so deep that their son, Itzchak, repeats the exact same behaviour with his wife, Rivka, and the same King Avimelech. [6]
These episodes are not footnotes; they are the Torah’s deliberate choice to preserve actions that place a woman at risk, even when the intention is self-protection. The text resists hagiography. It asks us to praise faith where it shines and to face harm where it occurs. This is one of the gifts of our tradition. We do not read our ancestors as flawless. We bless their courage and hospitality, and we also name their failures. That honesty is not a modern import. It belongs to a people in covenant, who tell the truth about harm in order to repair it. It trains us to examine our own habits, our own households, our own institutions, and to ask who is being protected, who is being exposed, and whose voice has not been heard.
This specific failing of our patriarchs—their willingness to endanger their wives for their own security—is not just an ancient story. It is a story about a blindness that persists today: the failure of men to truly grasp the risks that women face.
The global evidence is stark. UN Women summarises the prevalence plainly: worldwide, about one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence at least once in their lifetime, most often at the hands of an intimate partner. [7] In South Africa, this is a matter of life and death. According to the World Population Review, South Africa ranks as the fifth worst country in the world for femicide, with a rate of 9 women killed per 100,000 women in the population. [8]
These are not just numbers. We, as a community, are the victims, but we are also the perpetrators. Until we have the courage to stand for what is right, to be the contrarian and point to Avraham’s conduct as unacceptable, to stop instinctively believing men we like over the victims of their harassment, and to realise that our community is not immune to the same dynamics that harm women elsewhere, then we will continue to be part of the problem.
What, then, does it mean to be an Ivri—an heir to Avraham—today?
Lech Lecha teaches us that being a "Hebrew" is not just about our theological inheritance. It is an ethical challenge. If Avraham was a contrarian who challenges the world's idolatries; we must be contrarians who challenge its injustices.
This parashah calls us to cross over, to stand where risk is greatest and safety is not assumed. For the men in our community, this is a clear call to action: to cross the divide of gender and privilege. It means actively listening to the stories and experiences of women, believing them, and seeing the world not just from our own perspective of safety, but from their perspective of risk.
Avraham's journey began when he left his father’s house. Our moral journey continues when we confront our ancestors’ and leaders’ failings and commit, in our own lives, our own homes, and our own society, never to repeat them.
Shabbat Shalom!
[1] Gen. 14:13.
[2] B’reshit Rabbah 42:8.
[3] Gen. 12:13.
[4] Gen. 12:16.
[5] Gen. 20:1–16.
[6] Gen. 26:1–33.
[8] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/femicide-rates-by-country
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