Parshat Lech Lecha - פרשת לך לך

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-אַבְרָם, לֶךְ-לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ, אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ
Hashem said to Avram: 'Go for yourself, from your land, from your birthplace and from your father's house to the land that I will show you.'
(בראשית יב:א)

There are two parts of this Pasuk that I would like to deal with. The part that immediately interests us is the list of places that Hashem commands Avram to leave - Avram's land, his birthplace and his father's house. After that, Avram we read of the oddly vague "place that I will show you."

There is one obvious question to be asked on the first part of this pasuk. It is posed in the Kli Yakar's commentary: when one lists where one hails from, one normally starts with the most local place and then mentions increasingly bigger areas. For example, I was born in Hendon, which is in London, which in turn is in England. Here however, the list order is reversed. One possible reason for this could be that when moving away from a certain place, a person notices things that he used to take for granted. Personally I have noticed many cases of American and English expatriates assuming an exaggerated persona. I believe that the reason for this is as much to do with being homesick and attempting to compensate for the inability to actually be immersed in the old country's culture as it is to play the culture card on local people. By this I mean that I will often exaggerate my Londoner accent for Israeli and American friends as it is both a talking point, and also reminds people where I come from and what kind of behaviour and customs to expect from me. It also serves to confirm to myself that I am different from Israelis and that although I have moved abroad, I am not a native. To misquote Sting, "I'm an Englishman in Jerusalem!"

Coming back to the point, the word ארץ in Hebrew means land, but it also has another connotation. The word may be read as "א-רץ," meaning "I will run." The concept of the ground in Hebrew is the place you are heading to to, what your goal is. By way of comparison, Egypt is called מצרים, which derives from the word צר, meaning thin. Eretz Yisrael, a very thin strip of land geographically, is called "Eretz tova U'rechava - A good and wide land." How can that be? The answer is simple enough; that Egypt was a spiritually stifling place for the Jews to live in, whereas in Eretz Yisrael, our potential is significantly "wider" and expanded.

It is only natural that a man once removed from his natural surroundings will pine for them and attempt to re-enact them in his mind. For this reason, Hashem first told Avram to leave behind the land he came from. He wasn't telling him to literally leave the land first, that would be impossible! What was meant was for Avram to leave that mentality behind, to abandon it completely. Only after he had left behind this mentality could he truly leave his home and his father's house without feeling the need to come back.

But where shall he go to? We have grasped the fact that Avram had to leave behind all that he used to know, but where was he to head to? The Pasuk simply says the place "אשר אראך - that I will show you." How can Avram go somewhere without knowing where it is that he is to be heading?

To answer this, we may look at the beginning of the Pasuk. The first two words Hashem said, "לך לך," may be translated as "Go for yourself," but it can also be rendered "Go to yourself." Or, alternatively, "Go (to) 50." 50 is known as one of the many numbers of Kedusha. The concept here is not that Avram was being instructed to merely head for a different place on the map, rather that he was being commanded by Hashem to go to his limit, to reach the highest spiritual level he possibly could.


Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom!

Parshat Lech Lecha - פרשת לך לך

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-אַבְרָם, לֶךְ-לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ, אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ
Now the Lord said unto Avram: 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee.
(בראשית יב:א)

This week's Parsha is named for the famous command that Hashem gave to Avram (as he was known before his name was changed to Avraham): "Lech lecha; Go for yourself - from your country, from your birthright, from your father's house."

There's a tremendous amount in these words that Rabbis over the centuries have seen fit to comment on, but I'd like to pick up on something that I first heard from Rav Daniel Katz of Ramat Eshkol, Jerusalem, and that I heard again from Rav Mordechai Machlis of Ma'alot Dafna this week. The words "Lech l'cha," meaning "go for yourself" when translated literally, seem a bit extraneous - of course Avram was going for himself; when he left, he was fulfilling the word of God because he wanted to.

We may resolve this diffiuclty by translating the word "Lecha" in another way. We can say that it means "to yourself." The command meant that Avram had to go within himself and come to realise who he truly was -he had to be true to himself. This command, according to the Rambam, the first of Avram's ten tests from Hashem, was literally to leave his father's house and head abroad where he would gain a different perspective.

I would like to add something to this way of looking at things. Following the Rambam's view, (that this was indeed the first of Avram's tests,) we can say that it was the foundation upon which all the others were built. The other tests included extremely challenging situations such as the being thrown in a furnace, his wife being abducted, circumcising himself at the age of 90 and culminating in the horrific test of being asked to sacrifice his only son. These tests were highly demanding and required true devotion to Hashem, especially in the case of the last test. But above all the tests was the first test of Lech lecha - that Avram had to remain true to himself.

I'd like to suggest that at any given time, Avram was not just being tested on one front, for Hashem was also checking to see whether Avram was behaving in a manner that was true to himself. When he was asked to give himself a Brit Milah at a very advanced age for example, in order to pass the test he couldn't merely tick all the boxes; his actions could not be construed as contrived. He had to genuinely want to do that which was asked of him.

From the holy city of Netanya, wishing you a Shabbat Shalom!

Parshat Vayera - פרשת וירא

I saw this last week a video of Rav Milstone of Yeshivat Hakotel and Midreshet Harova giving a shiur in Midreshet Harova for Parshat Miketz last year. There was one part that was relevant to our week's Parsha, and I'd like to give it over here.

He said in the name of the Netivot Shalom (EDIT: I *think* he said it was in the name of the Netivot Shalom, but I know that the Maharal also said it) that there is a certain fundamental saying in Chassidic literature that the greatest Kedoshim of Am Yisrael automatically did what had to be done. He continued by stating that there is a madrega of fulfilling God's will that is in the mind. The best kind of term I can think of this is, "acquiescing to God's will." We have come to a logical conclusion that this is what must be done, and this is what happens when the mind wants to do what God wants.


In addition to the level of doing Hashem's will in mind, there's also a level above in which one the stimulus to do a mitzvah emanates from the heart. The highest level however, is from within in the limbs of your body. The Tzaddikim who worked on keeping their bodies pure and utilising them in pursuit of pure activity turned their bodies into a "מרכבה לשכינה" It is when your body wants to do the will of Hashem that a man is on the highest spiritual level possible. It should be that our feet start taking us to the Minyan. When our limbs start doing what God wants them to do, we are on the highest level possible - the level of true Tzaddikim.

But isn't that a problem? Haven't we then turned into automatons, mere robots? If the purpose of existence is free choice, then what has happened here? Surely this can't be!

Here is where our Parsha comes in. If we look at the Akeidah, we see that at the point that Avraham raises his knife the pasuk says, "וישלח את ידו - And he cast his hand." What does it mean by "He cast?" Why did he throw his hand forward to do the mitzvah? This terminology is not easy to understand and caused many commentaries to remark upon its usage. As Rav Milstone said, "You don't throw your hand. Throw a ball, throw a piece of paper." Why not say "ויקח - And he took?"

The answer is given that as his limbs had learned to do the will of God, to do as God truly wanted, they opposed Avraham's attempt to pick up the knife. God as we know didn't want him to slaughter Yitzchak, and his limbs were able to "sense" this. And so when he went to take the knife, his hand would not budge. His hand refused to move for the love of God, quite literally!

But he wanted to do it, for that was the command of Hashem as he saw it. So "וישלח את ידו" - he overpowered and threw out his hand to do the Mitzvah.

Shabbat Shalom!