NOVEMBER 3 • 2022 | 47

we discover who we truly are. “Go 
to yourself.”
There is, however, a fourth 
interpretation: “Go by yourself.” 
Only a person willing to stand 
alone, singular and unique, can 
worship the God who is alone, 
singular and unique. Only one able 
to leave behind the natural sources 
of identity — home, family, culture 
and society — can encounter God 
who stands above and beyond 
nature. A journey into the unknown 
is one of the greatest possible 
expressions of freedom. God wanted 
Abraham and his children to be a 
living example of what it is to serve 
the God of freedom, in freedom, for 
the sake of freedom.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Lech Lecha means: Leave behind 
you all that makes human beings 
predictable, unfree, delimited. Leave 
behind the social forces, the familial 
pressures, the circumstances of 
your birth. Abraham’s children were 
summoned to be the people that 
defied the laws of nature because 
they refused to define themselves as 
the products of nature. That is not 
to say that economic or biological 
or psychological forces have no part 
to play in human behavior. They 
do. But with sufficient imagination, 
determination, discipline and 
courage, we can rise above them. 
Abraham did. So, at most times, did 
his children.
Those who live within the laws 
of history are subject to the laws 
of history. Whatever is natural, 
said Maimonides, is subject to 
disintegration and decline. That is 
what has happened to virtually every 
civilization that has appeared on the 
world’s stage. Abraham, however, was 
to become the father of an am olam, 
an eternal people, that would neither 
decay nor decline, a people willing 
to stand outside the laws of nature. 
What for other nations are innate — 
land, home, family — in Judaism are 
subjects of religious command. They 

have to be striven for. They involve 
a journey. They are not given at the 
outset, nor can they be taken for 
granted. Abraham was to leave behind 
the things that make most people and 
peoples what they are, and lay the 
foundations for a land, a Jewish home 
and a family structure, responsive not 
to economic forces, biological drives 
and psychological conflicts but to the 
word and will of God.
Lech Lecha in this sense means 
being prepared to take an often 
lonely journey: “Go by yourself.” To 
be a child of Abraham is to have the 

courage to be different, to challenge 
the idols of the age, whatever the 
idols and whichever the age. In an 
era of polytheism, it meant seeing 
the universe as the product of a 
single creative will — and therefore 
not meaningless but coherent and 
meaningful. In an era of slavery, it 
meant refusing to accept the status 
quo in the name of God, but instead 
challenging it in the name of God. 
When power was worshiped, 
it meant constructing a society 
that cared for the powerless, the 
widow, orphan and stranger. During 
centuries in which the mass of 
humankind was sunk in ignorance, 
it meant honoring education as the 
key to human dignity and creating 
schools to provide universal literacy. 
When war was the test of manhood, 
it meant striving for peace. 
In ages of radical individualism 
like today, it means knowing that 
we are not what we own but what 
we share; not what we buy but what 
we give; that there is something 
higher than appetite and desire — 
namely the call that comes to us, as 
it came to Abraham, from outside 
ourselves, summoning us to make a 
contribution to the world.
“Jews,” wrote Andrew Marr, “really 
have been different; they have 
enriched the world and challenged 
it.” 
It is that courage to travel alone, 
if necessary, to be different, to swim 
against the tide, to speak in an age of 
relativism of the absolutes of human 
dignity under the sovereignty of God, 
that was born in the words Lech Lecha. 
To be a Jew is to be willing to hear 
the still, small voice of eternity urging 
us to travel, move, go on ahead, 
continuing Abraham’s journey toward 
that unknown destination at the far 
horizon of hope. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the 

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have 

been made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This 

essay was written in 2018.

 

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION

• What is it that makes you who you 
are? How much of that is innate 
and how much comes from your 
surroundings (including your family 
and friends and society in general)? 
• Do you think the focus and main 
beneficiary of the command to 
Abraham of “Lech lecha” was 
Abraham himself, or others (such 
as his descendants or the world in 
general)? 
• The journey Abraham took was 
from the most developed society 
at that time (Mesopotamia) to an 
underdeveloped obscure part of the 
world (Canaan). Can you suggest 
a reason and message for this 
journey? 
• Do you think Judaism is counter-
cultural today? Can you give 
examples of how? 
• Do you have the courage to be 
different? Would you say you need 
the courage to be different in your 
life? Why?

