46 | NOVEMBER 3 • 2022 

W

ithin the first words that 
God addresses to the 
bearer of a new covenant, 
there are already hints as to the 
nature of the heroism he would 
come to embody. The multi-layered 
command “Lech lecha” 
— “go forth” contains 
the seeds of Abraham’s 
ultimate vocation.
Rashi, following 
an ancient exegetic 
tradition, translates the 
phrase as “Journey for 
yourself.” According to 
him, God is saying, “Travel for your 
own benefit and good. There I will 
make you into a great nation; here 
you will not have the merit of having 
children.” 
Sometimes we have to give up our 
past in order to acquire a future. In 
his first words to Abraham, God was 
already intimating that what seems 
like a sacrifice is, in the long run, 
not so. Abraham was about to say 
goodbye to the things that mean most 
to us — land, birthplace and parental 
home, the places where we belong. 
He was about to make a journey from 
the familiar to the unfamiliar, a leap 
into the unknown. 
To be able to make that leap 

involves trust — in Abraham’s case, 
trust not in visible power but in 
the voice of the invisible God. At 
the end of it, however, Abraham 
would discover that he had achieved 
something he could not have done 
otherwise. He would give birth to a 
new nation whose greatness consisted 
precisely in the ability to live by that 
voice and create something new in 
the history of humankind. “Go for 
yourself ” — believe in what you can 
become.
Another interpretation, more 
midrashic, takes the phrase to mean 
“Go with yourself ”— meaning, by 
traveling from place to place you 
will extend your influence not over 
one land but many: “When the 
Holy One said to Abraham, “Leave 
your land, your birthplace and your 
father’s house …” what did Abraham 
resemble? A jar of scent with a tight-
fitting lid put away in a corner so 
that its fragrance could not go forth. 
As soon as it was moved from that 
place and opened, its fragrance began 
to spread. So the Holy One said to 
Abraham, ‘Abraham, many good 
deeds are in you. Travel about from 
place to place, so that the greatness 
of your name will go forth in My 
world.’” Bereishit Rabbah 39:2

Abraham was commanded to leave 
his place in order to testify to the 
existence of a God not bounded by 
place — Creator and Sovereign of the 
entire universe. Abraham and Sarah 
were to be like perfume, leaving a 
trace of their presence wherever 
they went. Implicit in this Midrash 
is the idea that the fate of the first 
Jews already prefigured that of their 
descendants, who would be scattered 
throughout the world in order to 
spread knowledge of God throughout 
the world. Unusually, exile is seen 
here not as punishment but as a 
necessary corollary of a faith that sees 
God everywhere. Lech lecha means 
“Go with yourself” — your beliefs, 
your way of life, your faith.
A third interpretation, this time 
more mystical, takes the phrase to 
mean, “Go to yourself.” The Jewish 
journey, said R. David of Lelov, is a 
journey to the root of the soul. In 
the words of R. Zushya of Hanipol, 
“When I get to heaven, they will not 
ask me, why were you not Moses? 
They will ask me, Zushya, why were 
you not Zushya?”
Abraham was being asked to leave 
behind all the things that make us 
someone else — for it is only by 
taking a long and lonely journey that 

Four Dimensions 
 of the Journey 

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

