Lech Lecha. Go forth.
If there are two Hebrew words that every reader of the Bible should know, they are these. The opening words of God’s call to Abraham and a summons that changed not only biblical history but our understanding of what it means to be human.
The plain meaning is straightforward. Plucked from obscurity in Mesopotamia, Abraham is commanded to journey to Canaan, where God promises to make him a great nation and a blessing. Peoplehood, blessing, and yes, land – the constitutive elements of Jewish identity from the very beginning, whatever some today would have us believe.
But the rabbis, being rabbis, were never satisfied with the straightforward. God’s call, they intuited, was more than a biblical precedent for Waze. After all, in the prior chapter Abraham had already set out for Canaan with his father Terach. Lech Lecha must mean something more than geography.
Some commentators understood it as a summons to abandon the idolatry of his ancestors and embrace monotheism. Others saw it as a call for Abram’s goodness to spread throughout the world, while still others read the words as “Go toward yourself,” an inward journey of self-discovery.
One interpretation, however, offers an insight as original as it is sublime.
Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, the nineteenth-century Hasidic master known as the Sefat Emet, taught that Lech Lecha is a command to remain forever in motion. A person must always be a mehalech — one who walks, who advances toward new understanding and fresh perspectives. Whoever ceases to grow, he warns, becomes captive to habit and nature.
God’s call was undoubtedly a summons to a new land, a new faith, and an inward exploration. But at its core, the Sefat Emet teaches, it was a charge to go through life never ceasing to see ourselves and the world anew. Never to mistake who we are for all that we might yet be. Never to allow the experiences of yesterday to foreclose the possibilities of tomorrow.
This teaching illuminates a turning point in the biblical narrative itself.
The stories preceding Abraham, Genesis chapters 1 through 11, are among the most memorable in Scripture: Eden, Cain and Abel, the Flood, the Tower of Babel. But their protagonists are largely static. Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise, but we see little evidence of moral transformation. Cain murders his brother, is condemned to wander, but never visibly becomes a different person. Noah survives the destruction of civilization and emerges into a world made new. Yet the last time we see him, he is drunk and exposed in his tent. The circumstances of these early figures change, so far as the narrative reveals, their characters do not. They may travel, but they do not grow.
Until Abraham. Until Lech Lecha. Until the Bible introduces a new possibility: that the greatest journey is not from one place to another, but from who we are to who we might yet become. Not that Abraham’s moral development follows a straight line. Far from it. The same Abraham who courageously rescues his nephew Lot twice puts Sarah at risk out of fear for his own life. The same Abraham who welcomes strangers with extravagant hospitality sends Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness. The same Abraham who challenges God to spare the innocents of Sodom remains inexplicably silent when commanded to sacrifice Isaac. Steps forward and backward. Abraham’s development is anything but linear. But his character is not a fixed portrait. His life is an unfolding story.
The literary critic Erich Auerbach, in his celebrated comparison of Homer and the Hebrew Bible, illuminated a related distinction. The heroes of Greek epics are presented with relatively static identities. Odysseus returns to Ithaca after twenty years, still recognizably the man who departed. Biblical characters, by contrast, emerge through the unfolding drama of their lives. Jacob wrestles with angels, his past, and himself, emerging with a new name. Joseph begins as a self-absorbed braggart and matures into a man capable of forgiveness. Esther moves from royal beauty contestant to courageous defender of her people. Their tomorrows are different from their yesterdays.
Contemporary psychologist Carol Dweck offers a useful vocabulary: the distinction between a “fixed mindset” and a “growth mindset.” The former assumes that our abilities and qualities are largely unchangeable; the latter recognizes their capacity for development. The possibility for growth lies at the heart of the covenantal life.
As a congregational rabbi, I am privileged to be privy to the quiet stories of people’s lives. These pastoral conversations are among the most sacred dimensions of my work. I think of adults whose painful childhood encounters with Judaism continue to shape their relationship with faith. People carrying the wounds of betrayal, struggling to trust again. Traumatized souls emerging from failed marriages, wondering whether love can be approached without suspicion or fear. Different experiences, different burdens, but a common question: Will what happened yesterday determine who we are tomorrow?
There are no easy answers, no quick fixes. The wounds we carry are real. Healing takes time, sometimes a lifetime. We cannot simply decide to forget our histories or wish away their consequences. But neither are we condemned to remain forever the people those experiences made us.
Abram was seventy-five when God called him. Sarai was sixty-five. Rabbi Akiva was forty when he began studying Torah. Moses was eighty when he confronted Pharaoh. At every age, at every stage, the possibility of becoming remains.
The heroic stories of our people are not measured merely by riches amassed or battles won. They are found in the quieter, sometimes harder work of transformation: the courage to begin again, break a habit, admit a mistake, seek forgiveness, learn anew, love anew, trust anew.
That is the promise of Lech Lecha. The promise of what it means to be a descendant of Abraham. No matter how long we have lived, no matter how far we have traveled, the most important part of our becoming may still lie ahead.
Lech Lecha. Go forth. The journey is not over. Neither are we.
