Our portion opens with two famous words. Lekh lekha. There is a strange doubling which we feel in the words themselves, the word “go” gets an unlikely companion, “for yourself”. Many of our teachers have heard this lekha as “go to yourself”: a journey outward that is really a journey in.
We usually tell this story as a beginning, the first Jewish heroes: Avram and Sarai, the first to believe in one God, first to leave the many gods of their ancestors behind, first to walk toward a land they had never seen. They are the first that create a clan that is not just based on familial connections but also on a worldview. And that is true. That is our story as a people, a story worth telling every year. But this is what the tradition calls peshat, the obvious meaning of the words. The simple reading: ancestors creating a familial group that can be entered into by the embrace of the idea of one God.
And today I want to tell it in a different way, because we have this belief that every word in the Torah reverberates for each of our souls, going back all the way to Sinai. So tonight I want to tell you that the Zohar sees this story, the story of Avram and Sarai, not only as the story of the first Jews, but as the story of every soul. Yours. Mine.
In the Zohar on our parashah, there is a passage I love. It describes a great tree, planted by the King among the supernal plantings. Its roots spread to the four sides of the world. Waters flow out from beneath it, and the watering of the garden depends on it. And then comes the line: “All the souls of the world fly forth from it. These souls enter the garden in order to descend to this world.” Just before a soul descends, the Zohar continues, the Holy Blessed One makes the soul swear to keep the commandments of the Torah and to do God’s will. And then, and I really love this – the text says: God hands the soul a hundred keys. Those are the blessings we are supposed to say every day – and how do we know this? Because lekh lekha, in gematria, sums up to one hundred. This is one of the main Jewish teachings, back in the Talmud: a Jew needs to say 100 blessings every day.
Imagine, carving into your day one hundred moments of being thankful. What an incredible, beautiful, discipline. What a way of finding God’s goodness, hidden in our world. But the text does not stop there. The next words also mean something: Lekh lekha me-artzekha u-mimoladtekha u-mi-beit avikha. ” Go for yourself, from your land, from your family, and from your father’s house to the land I will show you.”
And the Zohar tells us: when you read mimoladetekha, from your family, read it as from your place of birth. Where is the place where your soul came from? That Tree of Life, from where all souls are born. Savor that for a moment. What a gift, to be reminded that no matter what, your soul comes from the Tree of Life.
The text continues: “And from your father’s house”: that is the Shekhinah, the place where the soul rested in God’s presence. “To the land that I will show you.” And here the Zohar says, so simply: “this is this world.”
Now. Let’s sit with all that for a bit. Lekh lekha, this command of going, was not said once, to one man, in Haran. It is said to every soul before it comes to this world. Leave the tree. Leave the garden. Leave your Father’s house. Go down, to a land I will show you. Every one of us in this room heard lekh lekha once. And we said yes. And we came.
So what do we learn in this text? The Torah, read through the Zohar’s eyes, teaches three things.
First: you did not come empty-handed. You received a survival strategy for keeping the connection to the Tree of Life in this broken, difficult world: a hundred keys. A hundred blessings every day.
Now when the Talmud says – one hundred blessings, there are those who look at it and begin summing up, like this anxiety: ok, so 19 blessings in the Amidah, times 3, for each Amidah you say, that is 57, plus the blessings of the Shemah, that’s seven, 64, plus the 15 blessings for waking up…. You know, like if God is testing you every day – can you make the quota?
But God is not a supervisor in a car dealership. The blessings, says the Zohar, are a key. And keys are for opening what is closed. Every blessing opens you to something. Waking up. Praying. Putting on clothes. Shoes, listening, seeing. Having food. Eating bread. Fruit. Each blessing opens a door to the presence of God in our lives.
And the Zohar’s proof text is sharp. “Whoever robs his father and his mother and says, ‘It is no transgression’…” Our sages in the Talmud read it this way: whoever enjoys any thing in this world without saying a blessing has robbed the Holy Blessed One and the Assembly of Israel. Having a good time without acknowledging God’s goodness, you are robbing not only God – but yourself. Because then you can’t feel the Presence. When you walk through this world without saying a blessing you are leaving the keys in your pocket and complaining that every door is locked.
Second teaching: you did not get a map. “The land that I will show you.” Not “the land I have shown you.” No address. No itinerary. The soul arrives in this world not knowing exactly where it is going. This is a journey towards growth, not a tourist attraction.
Now: one verse before lekh lekha, the Torah tells us: va-tehi Sarai akarah, ein lah valad. Sarai was barren; she had no child. The journey begins with Sarai, and Sarai’s story begins with what she does not have. And that is honest.
Every soul arrives with an empty place in it. Something missing, something longed for, something that will not come on our schedule. The Torah does not hide that emptiness. It puts it right at the start of the journey. And then it sends the soul on that journey anyway.
And because this is a journey towards growth, the souls change – even in their names. Avram receives a heh and becomes Avraham. Sarai’s yod becomes a heh, and she becomes Sarah. A letter that can only be said when you breathe, a letter from God’s own Name. They become who they are on the way. That is what our journey in this world is for. You are given a name at the start and then – you spend a lifetime growing into the name you were meant to carry.
And Avram and Sarai do not walk alone. When they finally set out for Canaan, the Torah says they took with them ha-nefesh asher asu be-Ḥaran, “the souls they had made in Haran.” Rashi says: Avraham brought the men under the wings of the Shekhinah, and Sarah brought the women. A soul’s journey is measured, in part, by the souls it touches along the way.
And last but not least, actually, fundamental: you must take the first step. You cannot wait for God to make it happen for you. At the end of chapter 11, before God has said a single word, the family is already moving. “They went out together from Ur of the Chaldees, to go to the land of Canaan.” Only after that we read God speaking to Avram – lekh lekha.
And the Zohar says: from here we learn that whoever is aroused to bring themselves closer to God is helped. Avram first stirred himself and only then lekh lekha is written. This is the Talmud’s teaching, the one who comes to be purified is helped, now told as the story of a soul.
The Zohar calls this it’aruta di-letata, the arousal from below. The heavens do not move until something moves down here. It puts it in the language of light: the white light from above rests only on what has first been stirred below. God’s voice comes. But it comes to someone already walking. And the walking never stops – the moment you think you are good enough, right enough, doing enough – you begin sliding back. The example is Avram’s father, Terakh. He set out too. Same road. Same destination: “to go to the land of Canaan.” But then the text say: “they came as far as Haran, and they settled there.” Va-yeshvu sham. Terah is the soul that starts the journey and stops halfway. Settles. Gets comfortable. Most of us know Haran very well. We have all lived there. Some of us are living there right now: we reached a certain level, and now we think we can rest. But the Zohar says – there is no rest in this world. We have to keep moving forward, growing, understanding, bringing light constantly – and this is why this world is so broken and so dark. Even Terakh, it is told in a midrash, made teshuvah, and came back – Va-yeshvu becomes va-yashuvu, they made teshuvah, they returned.
So. Lekh lekha. You heard this command once, under the great tree, before you were born into this world. You were handed a hundred keys to find goodness every day. You were not given a map, but you were told: the land I will show you is this world.
Avram and Sarai were the first to believe in one God. But they are also the shape of every soul’s journey. They leave home. They carry an emptiness. They grow into their names. They gather souls along the way. And they start walking before they are called, in order to be called.
This week, take the keys out of your pocket. Find a blessing, say it. Tonight. Tomorrow morning. Take one step toward your promised land before you feel God’s presence. The Zohar promises: the moment something stirs below, the light from above comes to rest on it.
Shabbat shalom.
SHACHARIT
Summary: We are in the middle of the reading, as we are in the second triennial. Much action is packed in Lech Lecha. After setting out to Canaan, Avram hears God telling him to go, the first of the sister-wife stories happens, and Lot separates from Avram. Our triennial picks up just after that, in what is called the War of the Four against the Five, and the Covenant Between the Pieces.
~ What is the story of the War of the Kings doing here? What does it say about Avram, and how does it challenge our understanding of the figure of Avram? Why and how is this story relevant for the rest of Avram’s narrative, in your opinion?
~ Is it possible to read this story as a condemnation of Sodom, already? How, in your opinion?
[Sodom as arrogance and not wanting to give the taxes owed due to too many blessings. Greed and selfishness begin this war– this is Philo’s reading; Sodom in Rabbinic thought is also about not sharing your bread with the poor. A Sodomite, in Jewish thought, is about cruelty to the poor and the transient, a reading supported by Ezekiel 16: Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquillity; yet she did not support the poor and the needy.]
~ Can you find a way of reading this story as an allegory for the soul?
[Avram I the soul, or reason, in Philo’s reading; conquering the nine kings. Each of the kings is one of the four basic emotions (desire, pleasure, fear and grief) or one of the five senses.
Zohar: Lot is the evil inclination. The twelve years of serving a foreign king, revolt in the thirteenth, and the reckoning in the fourteenth – the Zohar connects this as our souls spending twelve years in slumber, thirteen years old is the soul’s awakening; 14 is reckoning with the impulses within, meaning, Lot is rescued and subdued by Avram. This fits the bar mitzvah. It also anticipates Ishmael circumcised at thirteen (17:25), which closes this same parasha.]
Bonus: can you recognize the words of Melchitzedek in any prayer?