The fact that the Jewish People have survived for thousands of years against all the odds is commonly regarded as a miracle. Yet in this week's Torah portion, Abraham shows that while he has no difficulty in believing that his descendants would indeed prove to be eternal, another component of G-d's promise proved to be harder for him to accept.

Upon the successful conclusion of the war of the four kings against the five, Abraham's position in the Land of Canaan (Eretz Yisrael) is secure. He now enjoys considerable wealth and prestige. He lacks only one thing, a child of his own. "Behold I am childless, and the servant Eliezer is my heir" he tells Hashem, who responds with a promise: "He will not inherit you, rather your own child will inherit you." G-d then takes Abraham outside and shows him the stars of the sky. "Gaze upon the stars-can anybody count them? So shall your children be. And Abraham believed in Hashem, and considered it just."

Here a man of 86, until now childless, receives a blessing that not only will he personally merit a child, but that his descendants would eventually become a mighty nation, as innumerable and as permanent as the stars, and accepts this Divine promise with complete trust. And this is how we would expect a man of Abraham's unique stature and emunah (faith) to behave.

How strange then that immediately afterwards, the Torah portrays Abraham as having more doubts about G-d's promises. After promising him a child, Hashem goes on to tell Abraham: "I am the Lord who took you out of Ur Casdim to give you this land to inherit." Strangely, rather than accepting this second promise in the same manner as the first, Abraham asks, "How shall I know that I will inherit it?" requesting in effect a sign of proof that G-d indeed intends to fulfill His word. What prompted this sudden, apparent lack of belief in G-d's promises?

One answer, according to our Rabbis, is that Abraham was in fact sinning by asking for such an assurance. The Talmud in Nedarim 32b goes as far as to suggest that the exile and slavery of the Children of Israel in Egypt was a punishment for Abraham's seeming lack of trust in Hashem.

Rashi, the great commentator, is of the view that in reality, Abraham showed no disrespect to G-d at all. The question that Abraham asked, "Bamah aydah"-"How shall I know?" means rather "What is it that we have to our credit that we will merit such a wondrous gift?" And, according to Rashi, the answer, illustrated by the method through which G-d made the covenant with Abraham, is the sacrificial order.

A third school of thought among the commentators, notably Ramban (Nachmanides), says that Abraham was asking for an assurance or perfect knowledge that the promise of the Land of Israel was not conditional on the good behavior of the Children of Israel, or the wickedness of the people who were to be displaced, and for this reason G-d entered into a covenant with Abraham guaranteeing that the inheritance of the land was indeed an unconditional and irrevocable gift.

All of these answers, however, serve to highlight the observation that Abraham found the notion that he, an old man, would father a son and a whole nation easier to accept than that he was being given the Land of Israel as an inheritance. After all, on Hashem's first promise, Abraham saw no need to ask for a sign of reassurance.

Perhaps Abraham foresaw something that history would not confirm until thousands of years later. In the general history of nations, a people retains its identity as long as it lives on a specific land. Exiled, it assimilates. The Jewish people, however, have survived in exile for thousands of years. Indeed the portion of time in which they have actually dwelt on the Land of Israel through their long existence is very short. This is an historical anomaly, to say the least.

This miraculous ability to survive in exile is due in no small part to what has been described as the "portability" of the Jewish religion. However important to Judaism the Land of Israel and the Bet Hamikdash (The Holy Temple) are, Judaism can still be practiced in exile through the mitzvot of the synagogue and the home, and perhaps more importantly the learning of Torah and traditional texts. This was also recognized by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai in his plea to the Romans, "Give me Yavneh and her sages"-choosing to put the emphasis on survival through the preservation of Jewish learning rather than the Holy Temple.

Perhaps our forefather Abraham recognized that, unlike all other nations, our survival as a people would not depend on our possession of a particular land. In fact despite the shocking and growing levels of assimilation, which we fight against on a daily basis, the Jewish people are not in danger of immediate extinction. There are enough pockets of intense Jewish life with high birthrates and low assimilation to ensure that our physical survival as a people is not currently under threat. As events in Israel continue to show, unfortunately, our ability to live a life of serenity and unchallenged ownership in Israel at times still seems a bit far off. Perhaps it was Avraham Avinu who first understood how much more difficult the task of living up to the promise of the Land of Israel would be.

Rabbi Doug Zelden is rabbi of Congregation Or Menorah (Orthodox) in Chicago and hosts the weekly TV show "Taped With Rabbi Doug" (wwwtvrabbi.com).