GEN787 With ten trials was Abraham our Father proved. Pirkei Avot V:4.  “From the day that heaven and earth were created, no famine had ever come, until the days of Abraham – and then not in all countries, but only in Canaan – in order to test him, and to bring him down to Egypt; for it is stated: there was a famine in the land; so Abram when t down to Egypt.” [this verse. The verses which follow are ibid. 12:1-3, 7.]  Why was this a test? Consider: Before it tells of the famine, Scripture records what the Almighty told Abraham: “Go you out of your land … kindred … father’s house, to the land I will show you.  And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing … and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”  Soon afterward the Patriarch heard the Almighty’s words again: “To your progeny will I give this land.” So we find Abraham solemnly promised that he would give rise to a great nation, be blessed, etc. and the land of Canaan would belong to his descendants.  Yet soon after he arrives in the promised land, famine strikes it, and he must go to Egypt to live! What sort of fulfillment of the promise was this? How would we have reacted?  Scripture records not a word of protest or complaint by Abraham.  His faith unshaken, he continued trusting the Almighty, that every promise would yet be fulfilled, no matter what he faced now. To the Jewish people, such a test is familiar.  The promises and assurances of the Torah have not come true automatically.  Blessings and riches, wealth and fortune, have not always followed observance as readily as the Torah might have led us to hope.  But as Abraham withstood the trial, so must we.  The way of the Jew is never to lose hope or relinquish trust.  If we cannot have what we like, we must learn to like what we have.  But patiently, serenely, we are ever to accept, with the faith of our Patriarch, that every promise by God must come true in its own time.  SINAI3 31