November 8, 2024 / 8 Cheshvan 5785
Lekh L’kha begins, famously, with God’s call to Avram and Sarai to hit the road. “YHWH said to Avram: Go-you-forth from your land, from your kindred, from your father’s house, to the land that I will let you see.” The words lekh l’kha may mean something like ‘walk and then walk some more.’ In my teacher Rabbi Dr Erin Leib Smokler’s words: “the spiritual quest must be an active resistance to stasis.” Angels stand still; we humans walk!
That reminder comes from Sefat Emet, the 19th century Hasidic master, R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter. In brief sentences he lays out the big idea: “We are forever to be walkers toward that which God shows us, always through renewed perceptions. To be human is to be on the move. One who stands still without any renewal will immediately be overruled by nature and habit.” In other words, walk and then walk some more.
The last bit of Parashat Lekh L’kha brings us another command to Avram to walk. hit’haleikh l’fanai v’heye tamim – literally, ‘walk before Me and be “innocent, perfect, pure, naive, wholehearted, simple” (Rabbi Smokler’s list of possible translations).
Rabbi Smokler suggests that “the journey that began with the prompt of lekh l’kha is now amplified to a lifetime pursuit.” We’re invited to keep on walking, she writes, “toward an internal state of being, a state of temimut.” Note well: the journey of which the parasha speaks isn’t always a walk in the park. It sometimes takes us through difficult even treacherous terrain. Hear this midrashic description:
This is analogous to a friend of the king who was sinking in thick mud. The king looked and saw him. He said to him: ‘Rather than sink in the mud, walk along with me.’ That is what is written: “Noah walked with God.” To what is Abraham comparable? To a friend of the king who saw the king walking in dark alleys. His friend peered and began shining a light for him through the window. The king peered and saw him. He said to him: ‘Rather than illuminating for me through the window, come and shine a light before me.’ [Bereshit Rabbah 30:10]
As one of my very favorite kids’ books has it: ‘You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you have to go through it!’ So, boots on, everyone. The Torah’s call to us – all of us – is to keep on walking and shining our light.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi David
