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Lech-Lecha – A
Personal Journey Our portion opens this week with the words Lech-Lecha. The beauty of a Day School education is the ability to understand or more easily find meaning in the text of our heritage in the original Hebrew. If one did not know the Hebrew, they could find a Hebrew-English version of the Tanach (Bible). The difficulty with a Hebrew-English or all English version is that the English is an interpretation (I don’t like to consider it a translation) of the Hebrew. With different Tanakhim (Bibles, based on Publisher), there are different English words (note the Hebrew is always the same). This could be a great advertisement for Adult Hebrew classes or for making sure your child takes their Hebrew studies seriously, but that is not my intent. I want to return to the words that open our Parsha – Lech Lecha. In many versions it says “Go Forth.” My interpretation is the more literal “Go” (Lech) “for (or to) you” (Lecha). Why was God telling Abram (whose name later in the portion becomes Abraham) to go for himself? Couldn’t Abram go on blind faith? He didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing. Couldn’t he go simply because God told him to? When we tell our children something and they ask why? isn’t it good enough to say – because I said so? The answer might be yes. But in truth, it must be because something in us is telling us to do it. Abram left his land, his home, the place he was born, not simply because God said so, but because he knew that there was more out there for him. He needed to go out and experience, he needed to become, Abraham (the addition into his name was the addition of God into his life). Our children need that same luxury. There were many times in my life that my parents told me what was right for me and what I should do. But that was based on their experiences. I needed to go for myself. I needed to experience for myself and not be an extension of what my parents thought was right and wrong. The same was true for Abraham and is true for our children. I might think that I know everything and that I have experienced everything and know everything that my children should do, but at some point, they need to go for (to) themselves, from their land, from the place they were born, from their father’s house, in order to gain their own experiences. God wasn’t looking for Abraham. Abraham was looking for God. Sometimes our children, like Abraham, need to have guidance, but be alone to find Him. AS A FAMILY: Look at a prayer or verse from this week’s Torah portion in Hebrew and interpret it for yourself.
FOR FURTHER
DISCUSSION:
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