New perspective on old times

I lern the weekly parsha every day with Rashi's commentary. Year after year I lern it over and over. Each year I try to gain some new insight that I did not have the previous year.

This year I am lerning the parsha with the perpective that the stories in the Torah are stories about my own family history, not just stories of what happened to people who lived a long, LONG time ago. We all know that Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov are the "forefathers", but we rarely think of them as our own great-great-great.... grandfathers. We refer to Avraham as "Avraham Avinu" (Avraham our father), but I would argue that the concept of "Avinu" just doesn't sink in for the majority of us.

We read the stories about Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah, but we don't think about them as we think of our own grandmothers. We all say that the patriarchs and matriachs are our ancestors, but do we really mean it?? It is so hard to connect back to people who lived in a time long before even our grandparents were born.

So, this year I am lerning Chumash with this idea in mind. Before reading about Avraham, I am going to say to myself "My great-grandfather Avraham". I will be interested to see what new perspective I gain from doing this.

Stay tuned...

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One of the greatest tragedies of intellectual human experience is that we study Torah stories when we are 55 in the same manner as we studied them when we were 5. (Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky)