Leaving for an Unknown Destination
Rabbi Tom Samuels, MCJC
October 28, 2020
In this Shabbat’s Torah portion, Abram hears a call from the Divine God to leave his home, all that he knows, for an unknown, indeterminate place:
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-אַבְרָם, לֶךְ-לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ. “Go to yourself, leave your land, your father’s house and go to a land that I will show you…and you will be a source of blessing.”
The language used here is at first glance, odd, inconsistent with the Biblical text’s style up to this point. Abram is literally told to “go into himself”, rather than to “go out there”, beyond the familiar, away from your family, towards somewhere out “there,” external.
There is an indeterminacy of the journey. Abram’s final destination isn’t really all that relevant. It is the act of leave-taking itself, that painful, terrifying moment when Abraham leaves behind the known, the predictable for nothing more than a promise. (Irwin Kula)
The great 19th century Jewish mystic Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter (more commonly known as the Sefat Emet, taken from the title of his most well known book), interprets Abram's story this way: "Go to the place that I will show you - where I shall make you visible, where your potential will be realized in unpredictable ways.” Abram, the Sefat Emet imagines, wandered from place to place until he finally discovered his purpose in life.
The text continues, and Abram leaves for the desert - a harbinger for the path of the people that will come from him, whose journey from the known to the untamed, unpredictable wilderness is where he and they both encounter God.
The Hebrew word for wilderness is מִדְבָּר, midbar, from the root .ד.ב.ר, dbr, to speak. The connection between the wilderness and speech, Divine speech, is thus made: That when we leave the comfort, the familiar, when we head into the elemental terrain of the wilderness, we can access, encounter the voice of God, the Divine within.
This is more than geographic, external. This is deeply soul-engaging, experiential. That locale where the shechina, the Divine Presence dwells. The “go into” with which God summons Abram. (Danny Gordis)
How then will each of us leave the familiarity of our own “homes”? Our priors? Assumptions? Challenge our own complacency with the hope that maybe, just maybe, we can reveal those fleeting sparks of meaning and purpose where we too can realize our potential that we all seek in our lives?
Rabbi Tom Samuels, MCJC
October 28, 2020
In this Shabbat’s Torah portion, Abram hears a call from the Divine God to leave his home, all that he knows, for an unknown, indeterminate place:
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-אַבְרָם, לֶךְ-לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ. “Go to yourself, leave your land, your father’s house and go to a land that I will show you…and you will be a source of blessing.”
The language used here is at first glance, odd, inconsistent with the Biblical text’s style up to this point. Abram is literally told to “go into himself”, rather than to “go out there”, beyond the familiar, away from your family, towards somewhere out “there,” external.
There is an indeterminacy of the journey. Abram’s final destination isn’t really all that relevant. It is the act of leave-taking itself, that painful, terrifying moment when Abraham leaves behind the known, the predictable for nothing more than a promise. (Irwin Kula)
The great 19th century Jewish mystic Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter (more commonly known as the Sefat Emet, taken from the title of his most well known book), interprets Abram's story this way: "Go to the place that I will show you - where I shall make you visible, where your potential will be realized in unpredictable ways.” Abram, the Sefat Emet imagines, wandered from place to place until he finally discovered his purpose in life.
The text continues, and Abram leaves for the desert - a harbinger for the path of the people that will come from him, whose journey from the known to the untamed, unpredictable wilderness is where he and they both encounter God.
The Hebrew word for wilderness is מִדְבָּר, midbar, from the root .ד.ב.ר, dbr, to speak. The connection between the wilderness and speech, Divine speech, is thus made: That when we leave the comfort, the familiar, when we head into the elemental terrain of the wilderness, we can access, encounter the voice of God, the Divine within.
This is more than geographic, external. This is deeply soul-engaging, experiential. That locale where the shechina, the Divine Presence dwells. The “go into” with which God summons Abram. (Danny Gordis)
How then will each of us leave the familiarity of our own “homes”? Our priors? Assumptions? Challenge our own complacency with the hope that maybe, just maybe, we can reveal those fleeting sparks of meaning and purpose where we too can realize our potential that we all seek in our lives?