'We Gotta Get Out of This Place'

“We gotta get out of this place

If it’s the last thing we ever do

We gotta get out of this place

Girl, there’s a better life for me and you”

I don’t know why these words from 60 years ago from a hit song from the British rock group The Animals, have continued to stick with me. At the time of the song’s release, I was not even a fan of rock music; I much preferred Pete Seeger’s banjo, the saxophone magic of John Coltrane and the classical music of Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok.

When the song came out in 1965, I didn’t even realize that The Animals’ lyrics concerned a young couple’s desperate attempt to escape from an urban slum: “In this dirty old part of the city / where the sun refused to shine / people tell me there ain’t no use of tryin’.”

And I did not know until a couple of months ago that a very large number of American soldiers in Viet Nam considered this song to be their “anthem,” expressing their deepest wishes: “We gotta get out of this / place / if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

Upon reflection, this long-ago rock song by The Animals, through the persistent perversity of my Muse brings me to the third parashah (weekly Torah portion) of Genesis, with God calling out to Abraham in Hebrew, “Lech lecha, Go forth:” “Go forth from your homeland, from your birthplace, from your father’s house to the land which I will show you.” (Gen. 12.1-4)

Of course, this portion refers to the very beginning of the story of Abraham roughly four millennia before The Animals fleeting lyric hit the airwaves in 1965. Nevertheless, I imagine Abraham, at the dawn of Jewish consciousness, urging his wife, Sarah, his nephew, Lot, and their many servants “to get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

And I hear Abraham continuing to his entourage: “We are by no means poor, not trapped ‘in the dirty old part of the city / where the sun refused to shine.’ We are certainly not hungry; as a matter of fact, we have been living in luxury in the city of Haran, privileged to be nourished by fine food, sleeping on comfortable beds.” The central problem for Abraham, the first Jew, then, was not physical but spiritual. He felt “cabin’d, crib’d, confined” by the materialism of his idol-filled world.

There is an ancient story found in the rabbinic Midrash known as B’resheet Rabba; it was not until my undergraduate years that I came to learn that this story is found nowhere in our Torah itself. Many of you have heard this story, this Midrash many times: as a teenager, Abraham finds himself alone in his father Terach’s shop, minding the store, as it were, in the place where his dad makes a good living fashioning idols of all shapes and sizes to be sold to his pious customers.

In a flash of angry awakening, Abraham realizes that the idols his father has been making were simply objects of stone without a drop of spirit within them – certainly not worthy of being called “God.” In his rage, the young Abraham – the world’s first iconoclast – smashes every single icon in his father’s shop, except for the largest one.

When his father returns to his shop and beholds the mess of shattered stone, he screams at his son: “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

“Who me?” replies Abraham. “I haven’t done anything. That big idol over there took a hammer and smashed up all the others.”

Terach, now red with rage: “Don’t mock me! Idols can’t do anything.”

“If idols can’t do anything, then how can you make them and go on to sell them to gullible customers who treat them as gods??” Abraham asks.

Indeed, Abraham has lived a life of privilege because his dad has made a good living fashioning idols and selling them. However, once Abraham has heard the voice of God, “Lech Lecha!, he has no choice but to “Go forth!” Abraham harkens to this Voice, and that has made all the difference.

JAMES B. ROSENBERG is a rabbi emeritus at Temple Habonim in Barrington. Contact him at rabbiemeritus@templehabonim.org.