This week’s music ” יהודה כ”ץ “הודו” HODU”

These are basically Rashi’s thoughts about Hashem’s command to Avram,”Lech L’cha,” You should go! (Bereshit 12.1). “For your own pleasure and goodness.”

A 75 year old man is told to “leave his land, leave his birthplace, leave his father’s house. Everything that you may be connected to from your roots, leave it all behind! How can a test of this magnitude be understood as “for your own good?”

There is a beautiful insight from Rav Aharon of Karliner. What do we learn from this “pasuk” in our Holy Torah? The Torah is a life forming treasure that is alive for us forever. What can I learn from these two words that Hashem asked of Avraham? “Lech L’cha,” says The Holy Karliner, “go into yourself to your personal roots, and identify who you are, because that is the purpose of our existing in this world.”

Who am I? Where am I going? Why do I need to leave some things behind? All questions that Avram and each of us need to ask ourselves. The Slonimer Rebbe teaches in the name of The Holy Ari z”l, if we find the strength to accept this challenge we can get more clarity daily and move closer to our goal of understanding why we were sent into this world. What is it that each one of us, in his or her own way, needs to be searching for and doing, within the environment and circumstances that Hashem has set up for us on our personal stage of life?”

Avram was told to check out who he is, where he came from, what he needs to leave behind so that he can go forward to “The Land that I will show you.”

Of course this challenge comes with great blessings that Hashem shares with Avraham throughout the rest of his life. It becomes clear that this test was clearly for his own good.

So many of us have been blessed to accept this invitation of challenge and come home to The Land that Hashem has given us as our inheritance as B’nai Yisrael, the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaacov. No question that this acceptance necessitated a great deal of introspection and reverence.

I share this with you as I look out the window of our home in Tekoa. To my right I see our Home Land where the prophet Amos lived 2800 years ago. I turn to the east and see the mountains, “Harei Edom,” where Moshe Rabenu begged to be allowed entrance to our Land. Further east I can see a path in the hills of Jordan where certainly, Joshua led B’nai Yisrael along this path north to Jericho. One turn south and I look at The Herodian, Herod’s Temple of exile, here in Gush Etzion and just a short crow’s flight beyond, a straight line to “Har Hamoriah, Har Habayit, Har Beit Elohim,” known today as the Temple Mount. The Torah is mamash alive and we are living within, in this year 5780! What a blessing to get to be alive mamash inside of the world of Torah, both physically and spiritually.

No doubt here. It’s all for our own good and everyone’s invited to accept the challenge “Lech L’cha.”

Shabbat Shalom,
Yehudah