I woke up this morning thinking I surely wasn’t in Marin County anymore. The winter wonderland outside my window was beautiful, silent, and so different from the land I knew. And these thoughts immediately drew me to this week’s torah portion, Lech Lecha. It opens with a very powerful couple of verses (Genesis 12:1):

Vayomer Adonai el Avram lech lecha may artzecha, u’me’moledecha, u’me’beit avicha el ha’aretz asher areka.

And God said to Avram (not yet Avraham), Go [for yourself, to yourself, by yourself, into yourself] from your land, from the place you were born, from your parents’ house to the land I will show you.

Both parts of this verse intrigue me on a psychospiritual level. First, that word Lech lecha… lech means GO in the command or imperative form. The Lecha: cha means you or yourself, but it’s the le in front of it that makes in lecha… it’s a preposition (can you tell I was an English major?) – that means in various places for, by, with, into (among others).

How many different interpretations of lech lecha therefore can we come up with – “go for yourself” is how Rashi, the great French medieval commentator, translated it. Go, because it’s going to be good for you, because the Eternal will give you a blessing, make a covenant with you and your (currently non existent) children. Go because the Holy One will reward you with children, wealth, a fine reputation, and you shall become a blessing…

Because you shall be a blessing. Would you leave your land, your family, everything you know – for wealth? For children? For a fine reputation? To become a blessing? Apparently I would… Would you?

“Go into yourself”: this resonates for me – go from everything you know into yourself. Find yourself, go deep within yourself, to a sacred place that will be revealed – if you are willing to take the journey. Twice more in this very parasha (torah portion), God again tells Avram to go to himself – but in those instances – to go with the Cause of All Being, with the gifts that he has been given. And while God does grant Avram wealth (thanks to Pharaoh), a fine reputation, and a son (Ishmael) [Isaac is not born until the next parasha), the true gift is the one we each have – the gift of being created with the divine image, the tzelem Elohim, deep within us. Accessing it requires effort, and self awareness. And I believe that is part of what God is telling Avram (and each of us): Go into yourself, you who already have faith, let’s begin the journey so that you can truly become a blessing.

“Go by yourself”: I think there are some of us who need to find ourselves on our own, whereas others of us need our crew to help us. R. Ed Feinstein makes the point that it is our face that most displays our soul and yet we are unable to see it. We can’t see how our souls manifest in the world – without the aid of a mirror – or our reflection in others’ reactions to us.

Then the second part of the verse: go forth from your land, the place you were born, your parent’s house…It’s not about forgetting about those places: how could we? Our first five years are now known to influence us profoundly,  they are embedded in us. Before my mother died, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up – and I was already 26… it was only after her death that the path I was supposed to take opened up. I had to separate myself from her emotionally and recognize myself as an independent human being, certainly influenced deeply by her, but separate. How many of us have to DO something to make that separation real? Some of us move cross country, some of us take other journeys. How do we leave the lessons we learned from them? And indeed, should we? After all, we are a people that believes it is the parent’s responsibility to teach their children. V’shinantam levanecha – teach them to your children – we say this twice a day, every day in the v’ahavta… But after a point, our parents have taught us, and hopefully, taught us well, and it’s time to become a blessing on our own, find our own inner spark of the divine, find our own path. And to do it while we walk in God’s way…

R. Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, comments that the command to leave comes at an interesting moment. After all, Avram’s father Terach had already taken the family part way to Canaan – they had left their ancestral home, left their ways behind them and reached Haran already, father and son together. The journey had begun together. Only after his father had died, was Avram ready to complete the journey. The journey into the unknown. It required a leap of faith, to create something brand new – in Abraham’s case, a whole new nation – based on the behavior of our ancestor, and his ability to take personal, moral and communal responsibility…

What would it be in yours? To take that leap of faith?

I pray that each of us, as we face new challenges, or just the challenges of every day, can find the courage of Abraham, the kindness of Abraham, and responsibility of Abraham, and the faith of Abraham…