Thoughts on Parashat Lech Lecha 5786
Rabbi Menachem Mirski
How do we say “congratulations” in Hebrew? Mazal tov. What does it mean? Good luck! So when someone gets married what do we say? Good luck! A child is born in a family… What do we say? Good luck… yeah, like we immediately think about all kinds of bad things that can happen.
Is it pessimism? Maybe.
But maybe it unveils a deeper logic in Judaism, in our spiritual tradition that is extremely and extraordinarily focused on human history, history that has left such a strong mark on us that we don’t even notice it? This deep logic is actually pretty neat, logically symmetric: Just as we see, or try to see, every tragedy and misfortune as an opportunity for something good to emerge, we see every fortunate event as a potential challenge.
Let’s begin with the phrase itself. Mazal tov. The word mazal comes from the root נ-ז-ל, “to flow down,” and in the Mishnaic Hebrew t means “constellation,” “planet,” the dripping influence of the stars. המזלות (hamazalot) is the Hebrew word for zodiac signs. The Hebrew verb לִנְזוֹל (linzol) means to leak, to drip. What is the linguistic connection between stars/zodiac signs and leaking/dripping? That’s how the ancient Israelites understood the source of rain: they imagined that the sky above the earth formed a dome with holes in it – the stars – through which the upper waters were coming down to earth, to supply us with water, to make everything grow. This whole process – especially in Eretz Israel – was profoundly marked by uncertainty and luck – because we never knew what to expect. On a spiritual level luck is understood not as something random but as a Divine gift.
In the Talmud (Shabbat 156a), Rabbi Hanina says, “Mazal makes one wise, mazal makes one wealthy,” but Rabbi Akiva’s students push back: Ein mazal l’Yisrael—“Israel has no binding mazal.” The stars may rule the nations, but the Jewish story is written in a different ink: covenant, not constellation. Tov is simply “good.” So Mazal tov is a wish: May the heavens drip goodness upon you. It is celestial kindness in two syllables.
Now travel back three millennia. A man stands on the dusty road out of Haran. His name is Avram. Behind him: father, mother, brother, the predictable tyranny of Ur, the predictable comfort of Haran. Ahead: famine, Pharaoh, four invading kings, a childless wife, a night sky that mocks his loneliness. Above all of that the Divine voice tells him Lech lecha—“Go forth, to yourself, from your land, from your birthplace, from your father’s house, to the land I will show you.” No map. No GPS. No five-year plan. Just a promise: I will make you a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. (Gen. 12:2) Lech lecha—go forth, to yourself, into the unknown. The first gift God offers is not safety; it is a promise of greatness wrapped in peril.
Later, under that same perilous sky, God lifts Avram’s eyes: Habet na hashamayma u-sefor hakochavim—“Look toward heaven and count the stars… so shall your offspring be.” God is saying: Your future is stellar, but it is also astral—beyond your control, beyond your merit, beyond your lifetime. The promise is not that the road will be smooth; it is that the road will continue.
This is the first clue to the spiritual logic of Mazal tov. We do not say “You deserved this” or “Everything will now be easy.” We say Mazal tov precisely because every summit is also a cliff. The birth of a child is a miracle—and a lifetime of worry. The wedding canopy is joy—and the first test of vows. The bar mitzvah speech is triumph—and the first adult moral choice. Judaism refuses to let blessing calcify into complacency. Just as we are trained to hunt for redemption inside every tragedy, we are trained to hunt for challenge inside every celebration.
Think of the Passover seder. We spill wine for the plagues—diminishing joy because others suffered. Think of Yom Kippur. We confess in the plural, even for sins we never committed. Think of the broken glass at the wedding—joy must remember destruction. This is not pessimism; it is spiritual realism. Mazal tov is the verbal equivalent of that shattered glass. It says: Congratulations—now the real work begins!
The Talmud (Moed Katan 9a) records a custom: when a scholar dies, we say Baruch Dayan HaEmet; when a child is born, we say Mazal tov. Same mouth, two moods. Why? Because death is final; birth is potential. Death closes a ledger; birth opens a question mark. Mazal tov is not a period; it is an ellipsis. Good luck… because luck is what you’ll need when the predictable ends and the covenantal begins.
Now let us state the Covenant plainly, in four unbreakable clauses:
- Judaism is fundamentally linked to the physical existence of the Jews. No people, no proof text. The Torah is not a Platonic idea; it is a family story carried in DNA and deli orders.
- As long as Jews exist, the theological theses of Judaism cannot be refuted. Every Israeli kindergarten, every Yiddish curse, every Shabbat elevator is a living footnote to Sinai.
- The Covenant is a promise that the Jewish people will endure “until the end of time” as a witness for the one God. We are not promised dominion, only duration. Isaiah’s job description: You are My witnesses. Not conquerors. Witnesses.
- The Covenant is not a promise that the Jewish people will not suffer, nor that individual Jews will not perish. The stars shone on Egypt, on Titus, on Treblinka. The promise is collective endurance, not personal immunity.
This is why Mazal tov is the perfect covenantal phrase. It refuses the illusion of control. It admits the mazal—the wild, dripping, celestial maybe—that hovers over every human beginning. And it dares us to walk anyway.
Picture the Jews of 1946 in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp. A baby is born in a barracks that still smells of death. The mohel is a former partisan with trembling hands. The sandak is a woman who lost six children. And when the cut is made, the whisper rises: Mazal tov. Not because the world is suddenly safe, but because the world is suddenly obligated. This child is another star in Avram’s impossible count. The Nazis tried to edit the sky; the Jews answered with a birth certificate.
Picture the refusenik in a Soviet prison, 1973. He teaches his daughter the aleph-bet by scratching letters into a bar of soap. When she recites the whole alphabet without mistake, he hugs her and says Mazal tov. Good luck—because tomorrow the guards may confiscate the soap, and the alphabet will have to live in her memory alone.
Picture the IDF soldier in a Sderot hospital, 2024, cradling his newborn son hours after a rocket barrage. The maternity ward is half-underground. The baby’s first lullaby is a siren. And still the father texts his mother: Mazal tov. Good luck—because this child will grow up knowing that sirens can end, but the covenant does not.
Every Mazal tov is a quiet rebellion against entropy. It says: We see the cliff, and we dance on it. It says: We know the stars are indifferent, and we count them anyway. It says: We have turned the pagan wish for luck into a Jewish dare to hope.
My friends, we sit here in comfort, but the road still calls. The bar mitzvah boy who just chanted his portion will face choices his parents never imagined. The bride under the chuppah will learn that love is less a feeling than a daily construction project. The convert who just emerged from the mikvah has traded one identity for another, and the questions have only begun.
So let us say Mazal tov not as a polite reflex but as spiritual judo. Let us say it when the diagnosis is good—and brace for the side effects. Let us say it when the startup raises millions—and remember that ninety percent fail. Let us say it when the ceasefire is signed—and begin teaching the next generation why it matters.
Because the stars are still dripping. The road is still open. And somewhere, Avram is still walking, still counting, still whispering to the night: Good luck? No—good courage.
Mazal tov. May the challenge be equal to the blessing. May the journey outlast the map.
Shabbat shalom.
Rabbi Mirski
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