The 13th century Biblical commentator, Hizkuni, explains that Avram (he was not yet called Abraham) had already left his homeland Ur of the Kasdim and was living in Haran. Therefore he was told to leave his land- Haran, and not to go back to his birthplace, Ur, AND to leave his father’s house, and to go where G-d would guide him.
Quite a journey! Leave where you are, don’t go back to where you were, and separate yourself from your parents’ home. Go- and G-d will show you the way.
This story, one of the most famous in our Torah, highlights a pattern that many of us experience as we try to navigate our true path in life.
I am the child of an Avram, and the granddaughter of an Abraham. In these two generations that came before me, my ancestors were called to their own lech l’cha journeys.
My father, whose English name was Albert, but whose Hebrew name was Avram-Aba, literally, Father Abraham, received his Ph.D. in research psychology, and thought he would spend his career as a psychologist. When he had been in the field for a few years, an older colleague named Harry Rivlin gave him a sage piece of advice. Dr. Rivlin said, "Bert, if you really want to make unique contribution you should find another field, one where you can be a pioneer. This field you have chosen is too crowded."
My parents talked this over, and my mother, who was an elementary school teacher, urged him to consider the field of reading education, which was a fledging area in those days. Teachers didn’t know much about the challenges of teaching reading, or how to work with children who had difficulty learning.
Despite the fact that my father had never taught children, and had never taught anyone how to read, he decided that this was where he would try to make a contribution. After all, he did know how to do research, and how to learn things he didn’t know. And he had my mother’s guidance at every turn.
Within a few years, he had learned enough to write a textbook called How to Increase Reading Ability, that detailed a variety of methods for working with children of varying abilities. Revised editions of this text put me and my sister through college. When my father passed on at age 82, he had just completed the ninth edition.
My mother’s father, Abraham Fread, heard a different kind of a lech l’cha call. He left Czarist Russia at a young age, headed for Canada and later New York, where he built up a business as a peddler, and earned enough to bring over his younger brothers and sisters. Thanks to him, and my grandmother who also escaped the pogroms, I was raised here in "the land of the free."
I, too heard the lech l’cha call, and at age 36 left my normal life as a housewife and mother, to go begin the path to the rabbinate.
G-d speaks to us in many ways. Some people hear a voice in their head, that sounds like their conscience, or like the voice of a relative. The midrash, rabbinic legend, tells us that G-d spoke to Moses in the voice of his father so that he wouldn’t be frightened.
Some people have a gut feeling about a change they need to make, or a passion they need to pursue. The well-known biologist Candace Pert has devoted her career to studying the connection between emotions and cellular behavior. She has concluded that our bodies "know" before our minds can put our feelings into language.
G-d speaks to us through our bodies, and through our minds. Lech l’cha, go to yourself, is not only a major life-changing event, but also an ongoing process. As we mature through life, we may receive many such messages, related to jobs, to geography, or to relationships.
Like Avram, we have the ultimate source of wisdom as our guide. May we hear, and in hearing, be blessed.