We might well worry about our origins. Our tradition makes a strong point that we are a People that believes in God and that that relationship with God goes back to our ancestor Abraham. So what we think of Abraham and his son Isaac and his son Jacob and so on, is very important to how we see ourselves.

The Rabbis in the Midrash understood this as well and tried to portray Abraham as essentially, a perfect human being who passed all the tests (there were ten of them) that God set for him and therefore, was worthy of being the father of our People.

When we ask God to show mercy upon us, we often invoke the name of Abraham, God’s loyal servant, as if to say, we might not be worthy ourselves, but be kind to us, Lord, because You admired our ancestors: particularly, Abraham.

It is important, to us, therefore, needless to say, that Abraham be a noble figure. The problem is, with all due respect to the Rabbis, he’s not so noble….at least not always.

Let’s start with how he treats his father, Terach. This doesn’t get much attention from us, virtually no attention from the Midrash, but it was Terach, not Abraham, who started the family trek to the Holy Land. Here it is just before our parasha this morning in chapter 11: :Now these are the chronicles of Terach. Terach begot Avram, Nahor and Haran….Terach took his son Avram and Lot, the son of Haran….and Sarai…and … departed with them from Ur Kasdim to go to the land of Canaan.” It was actually Terach who began the trek to the Promised Land.

Not so bad…..we will come back to this in a moment.

But how does his son treat him? Abraham apparently abhorred his father’s understanding of the world. According to the Midrash, Abraham, one day, started smashing his father’s idols. The Midrash sees this as a meritorious act on the part of Abraham, but I wonder. Smashing up your father’s idols? This is the same Abraham who defends the lives of those in Sodom and Gemorrah whose acts of sexual depravity and violence were far worse than making some stick figures from stone and wood. And the Rabbis who created this legend were well aware of the 5th commandment: Honor your father and mother. Abraham did not. Most everyone then worshipped idols; Abraham could have distinguished himself from idol worshippers in a way a bit less dramatic and no doubt hurtful to his father.

We wonder about Abraham, especially in the parasha today in which Abraham seems willing to give his wife up to the Pharaoh to save his own life. The Rabbis avoid this story, as well, as it cast aspersions upon Abraham’s character.

And of course, Abraham kicks Ishmael and Hagar out of his household because his second wife, Sarah, objects to their being there. And then God tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac up on the alter and Abraham is willing to do it; he goes so far as to lift the knife to slaughter the child, before God stops him.

From the text itself, it is hard to conclude the Abraham was a completely righteous man in his dealings with his father and with his sons.

In the personal family relationships, that we see in the Torah, there is always some degree of dysfunction. Always something going awry. It starts with Abraham and his father and sons. But it doesn’t end there –really, it never ends at all in Biblical history. Beginning with Cain killing Abel, to Abraham with wives and sons, to Isaac with his wife Rebecca and his sons, Jacob and Esav; Joseph and his brother: Joseph sold into slavery. And don’t even ask about the kings of Israel with their families especially David with the wife of another man and his other wives and rebellious sons. It isn’t pretty. In most cases, the dysfunction leads to heartache as best, tragedy at worst.

The Bible does not shy away from any of this. Biblical characters are portrayed with all of their character flaws. They, like us, are an amalgam of good intentions and wayward behavior. And their family relationships are marked with love and pride and concern, but also, pettiness, jealousy, and hatred.

Not a few modern scholars, Aviva Zornberg among them, study the dysfunction of the Biblical families to learn something deeper about us. That is the brilliance of the Biblical narrative. The characters are all too human –just like us.

But just like us, there is still a nobility in them that seems to drive them to better things. Let’s go back to Terach for a moment. Here is an idolater: ancient, morally primitive; he doesn’t yet see the truth of the One God that his son will soon see. But he is on his way to the Promised Land none the less (not even yet promised) to make things better. He is already on the move to improve the spiritual condition of his family. So much so, that his son Abraham (perhaps learning from him?) was able to see something that no one else in the world could see, that is God calling out to him to become the father of a great nation that would go on to change the world.

Terach is already moving; taking concrete steps to improve the world. And Abraham, for all his flaws, is doing so as well. Going from Charan to Canaan. Raising a son and providing a wife for Isaac; buying land in the Israel Holy for his wife’s grave to cement a connection between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel for all time. And Jacob and his sons? Doing what was necessary to survive as a family so that one day they could become a great nation. And Moses leading a broken people through the desert, first to Sinai and then to the Promised Land. Always moving forward: always moving the People of Israel and perhaps even the people in the world, a bit closer to God and His Ways.

There isn’t a story in the Bible in which the flaws of the characters are hidden and the dysfunction in the families apparent. But the families move; they bring themselves and the Jewish People forward to a better life to a life of holiness that brings holiness to the world.

The brilliance of the Bible is that the characters it portrays are just like us. Flawed, wounded and broken. But these characters don’t give up. They progress in their lives like we hope to. Terach should be seen by us as a hero. In a world full of spiritual darkness, he picks up his family and moves them just a little closer to what will become a nation, intended to be one day, a light unto the nations. He didn’t have God’s call to guide him or inspire him. The progress he made had to come from him alone. And he did what was necessary to “beget” a son who would grow up one day to hear God’s call and change the world forever.

The characters in the Bible do not save the world. Their job, like our job, is to move the world a little closer to being saved. Small steps, moving in the right direction. That is all we should hope to do. And according to the Bible, that is what we were created to do.