Lech Lecha

Rabbi Marc Margolius (writing for IJS; Mindful Torah)

Rashi interprets the enigmatic phrase lekh-lekha (literally, "go for yourself" or "to yourself") to mean "for your own benefit, for your own good;" if Avram travels to the new land, he will benefit from the blessing of offspring, and be renowned throughout the world for his good character.

Reflecting a different stream of interpretation, the 19th century Eastern European commentator Malbim understands the phrase as "go to yourself." an instruction for Avram to discover his own essence by casting off the negative influences he had inherited from his homeland, his native place, and his paternal home. In the same vein, a 17th century Italian Kabbalist reads this verse as "addressed to every person. Search and discover the root of your soul, so that you can fulfill it and restore it to its source, its essence. The more you fulfill yourself, the closer you approach your authentic self. This is the sense of 'know your self: to know your very self so that you can rectify your self- and I will help you.'

Avivah Zornberg

Here begins the journey of Lekh lekha (12:1)-with its strange order of abandonments-first land, then community ("moladetkha"-again, the vlad root: "Leave that which produced you as one possible realization of its potential"), and, finally, father's house. For the first time, a journey undertaken not as an act of exile and diminution (Adam, Cain, and the dispersed generation of Babel), but as a response to a divine imperative that articulates and emphasizes displacement as its crucial experience.

For what is most striking here is the indeterminacy of the journey. What is left behind, canceled out, is defined, clearly circled on the map of Abram's being; but his destination is merely "the land that I shall show you": from "your land," the landscape of your basic self-awareness, to a place that you will know only when the light falls on it with a difference.

- Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch

From the time that God said to our father Abraham, "Go from your land..." and "Abraham went on, journeying southward", began the process of birurim -- of extracting the sparks of holiness that are scattered throughout the universe and buried within the material existence.

By the decree of Divine providence, a person wanders about in his travels to those places where the sparks that are to be extracted by him await their redemption. The Cause of All Causes brings about the many circumstances and pretexts that bring a person to those places where his personal mission in life is to be acted out.

Kedushat Levi

For this is a great general principle: to every place that a person goes, he goes to his origin/source/roots, for of course in that very place lies his origin/source/roots and he needs to elevate them (the sparks) – to this is said “lech lecha” (i.e. go to yourself)- yourself to your origin/source/roots, to elevate them, the sparks…

Rabbi Mark Margolius

Rabbi Art Green points out that many Jewish metaphors for the Divine are "vertical," inviting us to seek God in the mountains or the heavens. He reminds us that Jewish tradition also includes other metaphors which invite us to seek holiness or wholeness by going deep within ourselves. We can conceive of this, he writes, as "a journey inward, where the goal is ultimately a deep level of the universe within the self rather than the top of a mountain or a ride in the clouds." The danger is that this might serve as a prescription for preoccupation with self. But according to Rabbi Green, the self is potentially a great gateway to deeper connection with others. "This inwardness," he writes, "is not only that of the individual, but the shared inner self of the human heart, the human community, and the world around us. Inwardness means the One is to be found within all beings." 95

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (as taught by Rabbi Tamar Appelbaum)

Lech lecha m'artzecha, get away from your self-centered earthiness: El ha'aretz asher erecha - look at the earth from the perspective of God. The other commandment is Hebet nah ha'shamaima - Look toward heaven. Words that are later echoed in the prophet's call: Se'oo marom einechem. Lift your eyes and see -a little higher than yourself, free from the perspective and confinements of ego, society, earth and age. The Torah gives us a beautiful application of the wisdom we attain when we rise above the horizon of our limited perceptions. Habet nah ha'shmaima u'sephor hakichavim ...ko y'heyeh zarecha. (15:5) Look toward heaven and numbers the stars...so shall your descendants be. You look at a star from where you stand on earth, the star seems a very tiny, diminutive twinkle of a light. Is this the right way to evaluate a star? Habet nah ha'shmaima u'sephor hakichavim. Look, consider and evaluate stars the way they are in heaven. There each star is of vast magnitude, of marvelous meaning-in sharp contrast to the way in which it is seen from the perspective of the earth. Habet nah hashmaima u sephor hakichavim...koyhych zascha. Look toward heaven and number the stars...So shall your descendants be, This is God's blessing to Abraham. His descendants will be endowed with the ability to see heavenly.

Avivah Zornberg

The demand on Abraham and Sarah is to leave one existential environment, one set of paradigms, to emerge ("He took him outside" [15:5]) from their enclosure in the present (deathly sterile when outgrown) into a new condition, in which a fertile self-realization becomes possible...

The "shredding of destiny"- there is kri'ah, a tearing apart of a gestalt apparently cut-and-dried. (Gezar din is literally the "cutting edge of judgment," the irrevocable sentence of fate.) It is possible, the Sages insist-and Abraham is the first to live this possi bility-to move to a new place, to deconstruct all the structures of the old place of being, and in a radical act of kri'ah, of akirah, to create entirely new paradigms of reality....A voice urging discontinuity seduces him: only through a destabilizing process can Abraham move from being Abram (av ram), the father of Aram ("which was his place, mekomo," says Rashi [17:5]-suggesting the mastery over a known modality of existence, a sterile fatherhood) to being Abraham (av hamon goyim), the father of many nations-master of multiple, successive places, who can then engender his true being ("Abraham has a son").