Holden Caulfield Would’ve Hated Lech Lecha
My latest essay is now live on The Times of Israel. It explains what happens when one of fiction’s great wanderers meets one of the Torah’s boldest calls to “go forth” and step into uncertainty.
Last week I did something I don’t normally do: I read that week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha. It was also around the same time I finished my first reread of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.
I would not consider myself a strictly religious person, yet I couldn’t help but notice something extraordinary in how they each directly tied into my own life.
Lech Lecha sees God calling Abraham to leave his home and go to a land God will show him (Israel). It required Abraham to have faith and ‘go forth’: to depart from his homeland and move toward His promise. The portion highlights the faith to leave the familiar, seek out new paths, and perhaps redefine identity.
Holden Caulfield, meanwhile, wanted nothing more than for everything to stay exactly the same. He was constantly rebelling against change and repulsed by the adult world he had no choice but to grow into.
That same week, I departed from my job at CTech.
There’s a strange poetry in timing like that. One text demands motion; the other resists it…
