ספר בראשית

The belief that the thoughts that cross the minds of parents ‎engaged in marital intercourse influence the spiritual focus of a ‎child conceived as the result of their union, is universally ‎accepted in the writings of our sages, and especially so in ‎Nachmanides’ essay ‎האמונה והבטחון‎, chapter 15, page 395 in ‎כתבי ‏רמב'ן‎, published by Mossad Harav Kook. [The authorship of this ‎volume has not been determined with accuracy even nowadays. ‎Rabbi Chayim David Chavell, whose edition I am using, devotes 11 ‎pages to his introduction when he explains that there is some ‎genetic spiritual input by both the father and the mother into ‎the soul of the child they produce. If I understand the ‎message in these words, it is that this input is transmitted only at ‎the time when the parents conceive the child, and it outweighs ‎what the parents try to teach the youngster after he or she has ‎been born. It follows that if the parents are interested in ‎transmitting their own and their ancestors’ good characteristics ‎to their own children, they must not only live according to these ‎principles, but even conduct themselves according to these ‎principles in the privacy of their bedrooms. Perhaps this sheds ‎some light on the lament of many parents who have one or more ‎children who do not follow in their footsteps and who fail to ‎understand this. Ed.] Pessachim 50 urging us to be ‎careful to perpetuate the good practices of our forefathers ‎meticulously, the Talmud quotes Proverbs 1,8 ‎שמע בני מוסר אביך ‏ואל תטוש תורת אמך‎, “my son, hear the moral instruction of your ‎father, and do not forsake the teachings of your mother.” It is ‎clear from the Torah’s description of Terach before he had sired ‎children (assuming he became a monotheist later) that the ‎thoughts we have described did not occur to him when he and his ‎wife conceived Avram. In fact, if Terach had been a believer in the ‎one and only G’d, much of the credit Avraham accumulated ‎would have been due to his father.Avraham was the first ‎human being, who, by absorbing some of the “sparks” of the ‎‎Shechinah which we discussed on pages 21-22 was able to ‎transmit such spiritual values by means of his semen. He himself ‎had absorbed only the kind of material input from his father and ‎mother as is capable of being defined through DNA in our days. In ‎the parlance of our sages this input of physical matter by the ‎mother is known as ‎אודם‎, primarily cells which produce blood, ‎whereas the input by her male partner consists primarily of ‎לובן‎, ‎albumen.Terach and his wife contributed only elements of ‎the material terrestrial part of the universe to the fetus of ‎Avraham, whereas G’d, anxious to see an eventual Jewish people ‎emerge from that embryo, contributed characteristics that ‎stemmed from the spiritual spheres of the universe. This is the ‎meaning of Avram’s question “how do I know that I will inherit?” ‎The word ‎דעת‎ or ‎ידע‎ always describes a close attachment to the ‎subject or object it describes. Avram wanted to know which ‎spiritual characteristic links him to his existence in the terrestrial ‎world, a link described in Proverbs 1,8 as ‎אבי‎ in the verse ‎שמע בני ‏מוסר אביך‎, in which Solomon cautions his listeners to carefully ‎perpetuate the moral lessons absorbed from ‎אביך‎, your father, i.e. ‎your roots. His question was prompted by his realization that he ‎could certainly not be expected to perpetuate the moral lessons ‎that he had been taught in the house of his father Terach. If he ‎were to do this, how could he possibly bequeath to his offspring ‎the qualities needed to become G’d’s people? He knew ‎instinctively that this could happen only if he had in his genes ‎spiritual input from a higher world. The characteristic that ‎represented this spiritual input is know as ‎אב‎, part of the name ‎אברהם‎. The word ‎ירושה‎, inheritance, is always used in connection ‎with inheritance from one’s father; hence seeing that the word ‎אב‎, father, was part of his name this was the link that enabled him ‎to become the first patriarch of the Jewish people. Avram ‎understood that the origin of the Jewish people, a concept in ‎G’d’s mind and the contribution He had made as the third partner ‎in any human being to Avram’s genes, were of the same kind, so ‎that the Jewish people could truly be described as having its ‎terrestrial root in Avraham, as he would be called shortly before ‎Yitzchok was born.When G’d told him that he should realize ‎that his offspring would begin their collective life as “strangers,” ‎i.e. as a new nation in the families of nations, it was this strain ‎that he shared his spiritual origin with. He would henceforth ‎have to concentrate on his role as the spiritual root of that nation ‎as and when it would become such. G’d reminded him already in ‎verse 7 that this was the purpose for which He had saved him ‎from the fiery furnace in Ur Kasdim continuing this theme in ‎verse 18 when He entered into a sacred covenant with Avram. He ‎had given him a preview that the development of this nation of ‎which he would become the founding father, would undergo a ‎difficult “adolescence” and that these difficulties once endured ‎and overcome with His help would qualify them for their historic ‎mission as trailblazers of monotheism. Although Terach is ‎credited with having sired Avram, (Genesis 11,26) this was merely ‎a biological phenomenon; he was in no way an ancestor of Avram ‎in the sense that Avram as the son would continue a tradition ‎sacred to his father.To the question of how we are to understand ‎Genesis 15,15 ‎ואתה תבוא אל אבותיך בשלום תקבר בשיבה טובה‎, “as for ‎you, you will join your “fathers’ in peace and will be buried in a ‎ripe old age,” the word ‎אבותיך‎ does not refer to Terach; but is an ‎assurance that Avram would die without sharing the servitude his ‎descendants would experience.The Zohar I 78 ‎commenting on Genesis 12,5 ‎ואת הנפש אשר עשו בחרן‎, writes that ‎Terach became a penitent, but that this does not mean that ‎Avraham would be reunited with his father in the life after death, ‎but since our sages had difficulty in how to understand the ‎words: ‎ואתה תבוא אל אבותיך בשלום‎, they understood this as Terach ‎sanctifying the name of Avraham’s G’d while still alive. The name ‎of “G’d” in that verse therefore is ‎אב‎, the spiritual genes that we ‎described above as having been injected by G’d into the ovum ‎that eventually developed into Avram.[We may understand ‎this as Terach establishing a horizontal spiritual bond with his ‎son through his penitence instead of the vertical bond created ‎when a father passes on his spiritual values to his son. Ed.]If ‎you find it difficult to accept the argument that Terach is not to ‎be regarded as Avram’s “father” in verse 15, consider the ‎following statement in Yevamot 22. ‎גר שנתגייר כקטן שנולד דמי‎, ‎‎“a convert after conversion is comparable to that of a newly born ‎baby.” He has no residue of the spiritual input normally ‎transmitted by the respective genes of his father and mother. The ‎only spiritual force active within him is that of the soul which has ‎been given to him by his Creator. He is no longer called after his ‎father, when called up to the Torah, the name of his father, the ‎gentile, is not even alluded to. The reason is that he no longer ‎contains the spiritual input his father had transmitted to him at ‎birth. The separation of such a convert from his biological father ‎is so absolute, that according to Biblical Jewish law the convert is ‎free to marry his biological mother, or sister, (assuming either of ‎them has converted). [If the Rabbis forbade this, it is because it ‎raises suspicions that the conversion had ulterior motives. Ed.]. ‎Avram/Avraham both because he was a convert, and because his ‎name was changed by G’d before he sired Yitzchok, was no longer ‎connected to Terach at all. When the Torah writes in Genesis ‎‎25,19 ‎ואלה תולדות יצחק בן אברהם, אברהם הוליד את יצחק‎, “and these ‎are the generations of Yitzchok; son of Avraham; Avraham had ‎sired Yitzchok,” the Torah makes a point of describing Yitzchok ‎as descendant of Avraham, whereas it never described Avraham as ‎a descendant of Terach. The term “father,” is mentioned in the ‎Torah only in connection with the characteristic ‎אב‎ which G’d ‎had supplied to Avram, and which helped him to sanctify G’d’s ‎Holy name to large groups of people as we explained previously.