Lech-Lecha

In the synagogue the Torah is read aloud in a fixed annual cycle of fifty-four weekly portions (parashiyot), one each Shabbat morning, with certain adjacent portions doubled in ordinary years so the sequence fits the calendar. Each portion is named for a distinctive word near its opening and is paired with a haftarah, a reading from the Prophets. The cycle closes and restarts on Simchat Torah. Lech-Lecha ('Go forth', Genesis 12:1-17:27) begins the story of Israel's patriarchs with God's command to Abram to leave his land for a country he will be shown. It includes the covenant between the pieces, the birth of Ishmael to Hagar, and the covenant of circumcision that renames Abram and Sarai as Abraham and Sarah.

The covenant between the pieces (Genesis 15:9-21), in which Abram falls into a deep sleep and a smoking firepot and flaming torch pass between the halved carcasses of sacrificed animals, follows an ancient Near Eastern treaty-ratification form attested outside the Bible in which the parties to an oath would walk between divided animals, invoking a similar fate on themselves should they break the agreement; here, unusually, only the divine symbols pass through, read by commentators including Ramban as signalling that the covenant's fulfilment rests on God's commitment alone rather than requiring a matching oath from Abram. The birth of Ishmael to Hagar, Sarai's Egyptian handmaid, and the angel's promise to Hagar in the wilderness that he would father a great nation (Genesis 16:10-12), establishes a figure both Jewish and later Islamic tradition trace significant lineage through, though the traditions diverge sharply over which son, Isaac or Ishmael, carries the primary covenantal promise going forward.

Lech-Lecha inaugurates the covenant history of Israel: God's threefold promise to Abraham of land, offspring and blessing frames the rest of the Torah. The covenant of circumcision (brit milah) commanded here remains a defining rite of Jewish life, performed on the eighth day. The portion is also foundational for Christianity and Islam, both of which trace their spiritual descent to Abraham's faith and journey.

The rite of circumcision commanded at ninety-nine, performed by Abraham first on himself and then extended to his household including Ishmael (Genesis 17:23-27), predates its restriction in the following generation to Isaac's line, and rabbinic law derives from the eighth-day timing given for later generations (Genesis 17:12) one of the few positive commandments observed even on Shabbat, when most other work is forbidden, reflecting the priority classical halakha assigns to the covenant it marks. The renaming of Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah (Genesis 17:5, 15), each adding or altering a Hebrew letter, is read in rabbinic tradition as more than nominal, a change in essential character accompanying the covenant. Genesis 15:6, 'he believed in the Lord, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness,' became independently significant far beyond Jewish tradition once cited by Paul in the New Testament as a foundational text for Christian theology of faith apart from ritual law, a use classical Jewish commentary reads in its own original context of covenant trust rather than as opposing law and faith.