This week, Israel celebrates Yom HaAliyah, Aliyah Day, a national holiday honoring the millions of Jews who came home to the Land of Israel from every corner of the earth. The timing is no accident. Yom HaAliyah falls in the same week that Jews around the world read Genesis 12, when God tells Abram: “Go from your land, from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).
My kids love this week. They were born in America, and in their Israeli schools the immigrant kids get their moment in the spotlight. This is the week they feel very deeply that they are Abraham’s children, the kids who left the land of their birth and walked in his footsteps.
For a Jew, there is no bigger decision than whether to move to Israel. You leave the country where you were born, your language, your career, the graves of your grandparents. You come home to Israel, and it changes everything: where your children grow up, what language your grandchildren speak, what your family’s story will be for generations. It is the moment that changes your destiny, and the destiny of your entire family.
In the Bible, when God transforms a person’s life, He often gives that person a new name. After Jacob wrestles with the angel through the night, he becomes Israel
Abram, the man God called to leave his homeland, eventually becomes Abraham.
So you would expect God to give Abram his new name the moment he left home. Abram obeyed God’s command and walked away from everything he knew. What step could possibly be bigger than that one?
But it doesn’t happen. Abram arrives in the land and remains Abram. He stays Abram through famine, through war, through year after year of waiting for a son. Only twenty-four years later, at the age of ninety-nine, does God finally tell him: “No longer will your name be Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5).
Why did God make him wait? Why wasn’t the journey itself enough to earn him a new name?
To understand why God waited, we first need to understand what the two names mean.
In Hebrew, Abram is Avram, which can be read as Av-Ram, “father of Aram.” Aram was Abram’s homeland, the region of Mesopotamia where he grew up.
His name tied him to the land of his birth. He was a son of Aram, a leader among his own people.
Abraham is Avraham, and God Himself explains the new name: av hamon goyim, “the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5). Abram belonged to one nation. Abraham belongs to the whole world. The Sages sum it up in one sentence: “At first he was the father of Aram, and in the end he became the father of the entire world.”
The new name is not a reward. It describes a new identity – and identity does not change overnight. Abram left Aram in a single day. But getting Aram out of Abram took twenty-four years.
How did Abram’s identity change? Through tests. The Sages teach: “With ten trials was Abraham our father tested, and he withstood them all, to make known how great was the love of Abraham our father.”
But why test Abram at all? God already knew what was in his heart. Nachmanides explains that God tested Abraham “to bring the matter from potential into reality.” The “father of nations” was always hidden inside Abram. The tests did not create his greatness. They brought it out, one test at a time.
Leaving his homeland was only the first test. Soon after Abram arrived, a famine drove him down to Egypt (Genesis 12:10). Then came war against four mighty kings to rescue his nephew Lot (Genesis 14). And for decades, he waited for the son God promised him (Genesis 15:2-3). Each test asked Abram the same question: who are you now? Test by test, the man from Aram fell away, and a new man took his place. Only then did God give him the name that matched the man he became.
But Abraham’s story is not only about Abraham himself. Nachmanides teaches a famous principle: “Everything that happened to the fathers is a sign for the children.” Most people take this to mean that events repeat themselves. Abraham went down to Egypt during a famine, and so did his grandchildren. That is true. But Rabbi Yehuda Léon Ashkenazi saw something deeper:
“The Jew who ascends to the Land of Israel is, in effect, stepping into Abram’s shoes when he left Ur of the Chaldeans. He too is on a journey, and every journey consists of many steps. It takes courage to take each one. The goal is to return to our identity as Hebrews.”
We, the Jewish people coming home to Israel, are not only reliving Abraham’s journey. We are reliving his inner transformation, from Abram, the son of Aram, into Abraham, the Hebrew who stands with God even when the whole world stands against him. Jews arrive from America, Britain, France and Ethiopia as hyphenated Jews: American-Jews, British-Jews, Ethiopian-Jews. Like Abram, we come home still carrying the identities of the lands we left behind. Coming home is only the first step. The transformation of our identity, or more accurately, the return to our true identity, happens over time, through our struggle to build a holy nation in God’s land.
Abraham’s tests are being replayed in our generation, one by one.
The first test comes before the journey even begins. The Bible tells us almost nothing about Abram’s life before God called him. But it does include one strange detail: Abram’s brother Haran “died in the lifetime of his father Terah, in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans” (Genesis 11:28). Why did Haran die so young? And why does the Bible bother to tell us where? In Hebrew, ur means fire. Later, God tells Abram: “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans” (Genesis 15:7). The Sages read those words literally. God brought Abram out of the fire.
The Sages tell the backstory behind these verses in a midrash, an ancient Jewish teaching that fills in the gaps in the biblical narrative. Abram grew up in a city of idol worshippers. His own father, Terah, sold idols in a shop. Abram became convinced that the idols were worthless and that one God created the world, so he smashed the idols in his father’s shop. Terah handed his son over to Nimrod, the king. When Abram refused to bow to the king’s gods, Nimrod ordered him thrown into a fiery furnace.
Abram’s brother Haran stood in the crowd and made a calculation. If Abram survives, I’ll say I’m with Abram. If Nimrod wins, I’ll say I’m with Nimrod. God miraculously saved Abram from the flames of the furnace, and he walked out unscathed. Then everyone turned to Haran: whose side are you on? Seeing that Abram survived, Haran answered, “I’m with Abram.” They then threw Haran into the furnace, and he burned to death. That, the Sages teach, is how Haran died in Ur.
Abram and Haran stood before the same fire, but they asked different questions. Abram asked: what is true? Haran asked: who is going to win? Abram searched for the truth, found it, and was willing to die for it. Haran never cared about the truth at all. He only wanted to end up on the winning side.
Notice when this test comes. Abram faced the furnace in Ur, long before God told him to go to the Promised Land. Before he could take a single step of the journey, he first needed to decide what he believed, and whether he would pay the price for it.
The same test comes first for us as well. Long before any Jew packs his bags for Israel, he faces a “furnace of fire” in the land where he lives. Will he stand up for the truth that the Jewish people are a nation with a God-given mission, and that the Land of Israel belongs to us, even when that truth costs him friends, invitations and promotions? Christians who love Israel face the same fire. On college campuses, at the office and around the Thanksgiving table, standing with Israel today comes with a price. Many people, like Haran, wait to see which side is winning. The true children of Abraham are willing to walk into the fire.
Then comes the test of the journey itself. Abram was not the first in his family to set out for Canaan. “Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot and his daughter-in-law Sarai, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there” (Genesis 11:31). Terah began the journey and stopped halfway. He never saw the Promised Land. He died in Haran (Genesis 11:32).
Every generation has its Terahs, and ours has millions of them. They are Jews in Brooklyn, Boca Raton and Los Angeles who love Israel with all their hearts. They give generously to Israeli causes, march in the Israel Day Parade, and cry at the Western Wall every time they visit. They talk about moving to Israel “someday.” But that “someday” never comes. There is always one more reason to stay: the job, the mortgage, the grandchildren, the fear of starting over in a new language. Their hearts are in Jerusalem, but their homes are in Florida.
Terah set out for Canaan, which is more than most people ever do. But the Bible remembers Abram, not Terah, because Abram found the courage to leave everything familiar behind and dive into the unknown. Starting the journey is easy. Finishing it is the test.
I wrote my book Countdown: American Jews and God’s Plan for Redemption about the millions of American Jews who, like Terah, love Israel but stopped halfway. I also wrote it for the Christians who love the Jewish people and want to understand the prophetic drama unfolding before our eyes. The God of Abraham is calling His children home, and the clock on American Jewish life is running faster than most of us want to admit. Terah’s story does not have to be ours.
Then comes war. Four powerful kings from the east invade the region, crush the armies of five local kings, and carry off Abram’s nephew Lot along with everything he owns (Genesis 14:1-12). A survivor escapes and brings the news to “Abram the Hebrew” (Genesis 14:13).
This is the first time the Bible calls Abram a Hebrew, and the timing is no accident. The Hebrew word is Ivri, from ever, “the other side.” The Sages explain that the whole world stood on one side, and Abraham stood alone on the other (Genesis Rabbah 42:8).
Think about what Abram is up against. These four kings are the superpowers of the ancient world, led by Chedorlaomer, king of Elam. For twelve years they ruled the region. When the local kings rebelled, the eastern armies swept through the land and crushed everyone in their path: the giants of Ashteroth-karnaim, the Horites, the Amalekites, the Amorites, and finally the king of Sodom and his four allies (Genesis 14:4-10). Not one nation could stand against them. And Lot is not even on Abram’s side. He chose to leave Abram and settle among the wicked people of Sodom (Genesis 13:11-13). Any sensible man would mourn his nephew and stay home.
But Abram does the insane thing. He arms 318 men from his own household, a shepherd’s militia, and chases the most terrifying army on earth all the way to Dan in the far north. He attacks at night, routs them, and brings Lot and all the captives home (Genesis 14:14-16).
That is what makes Abram a Hebrew. Every voice of reason stood on one side of the river: you cannot win, this is not your fight, stay home. Abram stood alone on the other side, trusting that the God who called him to this land would fight for him. After the battle, Melchizedek, king of Salem, said it plainly: “Blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand” (Genesis 14:20). Abram did not win because his army was bigger. He won because he was willing to stand alone with God.
Our generation is watching the same transformation. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdered 1,200 people and dragged 251 hostages into Gaza. Within days, Israel faced its own four kings: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the regime in Iran standing behind them all. Every voice of reason told Israel what Abram’s neighbors would have told him: you cannot fight on every front, the world will turn against you, accept a ceasefire and stay home. Most of the world did turn against Israel. Israel stood almost alone, on one side of the river, with the rest of the world on the other.
Yet the sons and daughters of Israel did not hesitate. Reservists flew home from New York and Bangkok, left their jobs, their studies and their families, and went to war to defend their people and bring the hostages home. Many of them were born in America, Britain, France and the former Soviet Union. Like Abram, they risked their lives to save their fellow Jews, and placed their trust in God. On the battlefield, the hyphens fell away. A nation of American, British and Russian immigrants is becoming a nation of Hebrews.
And then comes the hardest test of all. At one hundred years old, Abraham finally becomes the father of Isaac, the son God promised him. Then God speaks: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you” (Genesis 22:2). Abraham rises early in the morning, saddles his donkey and walks for three days toward the mountain, with Isaac at his side. In the end, God stops his hand. But Abraham climbed that mountain ready to give up the most precious gift of his life.
Every Israeli parent knows that walk. For three years, mothers and fathers across Israel have driven their sons and daughters to army bases, hugged them at the gate, and watched them leave for Gaza and Lebanon. They haven’t had a good night’s sleep since, knowing their children are in harm’s way. Some of their children never came home. These heroic parents are walking up the mountain with their children, just as Abraham did, trusting the God of Israel with what they love most.
Abram did not receive his new name when he arrived in the land. He earned it, one test at a time: in the furnace, on the road, on the battlefield and on the mountain. Only then did God call him Abraham.
The same is true for us today. Coming home to Israel is not the end of the journey. It is the beginning. The furnace, the war, the sleepless nights are not signs that something went wrong. They are the tests of Abraham, and they are turning a nation of hyphenated Jews into Hebrews, the people we were always meant to be.
And as we pass these tests, we are bringing the promise of Abraham’s name to life. God did not call him the father of one nation. He called him av hamon goyim, the father of a multitude of nations. Today, millions of people from those nations, Christians across America and around the world, pray for Israel, bless the Jewish people and stand with us through every one of these tests. They are part of this story too.
Abram became Abraham one test at a time. Today, in the land God promised him, his children are finishing what he started.
Rabbi Elie Mischel is the author of Countdown: American Jews and God’s Plan for Redemption.
