Reb Judith Goleman on Parshat Lech Lecha

The Torah portion starts with God saying to Abraham:  Lech Lecha.  Go.  Leave your country, and your birthplace, and your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  And all families of the earth will be blessed through you.

In Hebrew, Lech Lecha doesn’t actually just mean “Go.” It means go to yourself, or go for yourself.

Let’s say that God is calling to us, not just to Abraham. 

What does it take to go to your true self, the part of you that shines with God’s light? Or go for yourself, for the deepest life experience possible.  The deepest experience possible is defined in our tradition as alignment with the Divinity that sits inside you.

That’s what’s said to bring the deepest happiness, the truest sense of fulfillment. Aligning with the part of you that calls to you from the depths of your being.  The Kabbalistic Hassidic tradition says that this is a part of you that is natural to you and is longing for you and is unique to you – and that, unfortunately, any of us can go through our whole life ignoring .

Lech Lecha, the Torah portion, goes on to say, “Don’t ignore it, go to a land God will show you and God will bless you, and you will be a blessing.”

Let’s look carefully at each part of this statement in the Torah

So if we leave behind our country and our birthplace and our father’s house – let’s say, we cast aside ideas and ways of being that are from influences outside of ourselves and are not necessarily authentic expressions of our own truest nature, then we will be going toward a land God will show us.

In other words, I’ll clean off my consciousness: clear away preconceptions, automatic reactions, wishful thinking, to be present to my actual experience,  and by experiencing reality itself I will be in touch with God.  I’ll be in a land that God is showing me.

The holiest name of God- one we never pronounce - consists of several forms of the verb “to be” combined together, and, Rabbi Michael of blessed memory told me this Holy Name itself means “The Unfolding of Reality Itself.” 

God’s presence is within reality itself. 

When I’m able to truly be present authentically, fully, to what reality is presenting me, I am in a land that God is showing me.

Then, the Torah portion says, God will bless you.

I feel I may have experienced this. You may have experienced something like this as well.   In those rare moments that I become fully authentically present to reality around me, without thoughts or preconceptions, I do feel a sense of blessing.  Things flow and shine with the truth of their presence.  Concepts drop away, and there is just shining presence.

The Torah portion says next, “I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”

I feel that this statement in the Torah- that “I will make your name great” is comforting to the historic Jewish people, who have been insulted and made invisible, so many times over the centuries.  It has often happened that other nations have used us as a distraction from their own shortcomings and have projected onto us all human badness. 

We need our true name to be “made great,” honoring all our centuries of wisdom.  Acknowledging the many holy minds within Judaism who have worked for centuries on the task of how to heal this injured universe. The gifts of teachings we carry as a people.

“And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”

The holy teachings of Judaism have given rise to two other worldwide religions Christianity and Islam.

There also are teachings in Kabbalistic/Hasidic Judaism that each good deed we do with sincerity affects all the worlds with an immediate resonance.

So may we continue to do our best to listen to, and act on, our inner true self, the “land that God is showing us.” May we live there often, and find that we are being a blessing, to the best of our abilities to allow this, and helping with the healing of ourselves and of the world.