The Family Jewels - Parshas Lech Lecha And another reposting...

Hello one and all. I hope that everyone had a superb week.

"Reb Nachman tells us about a person who lived long, long ago. There were no Jews in his community and no yeshivas in any nearby towns or even distant villages. This person was alone in his spiritual quest and had no one from whom to receive instruction about how to live a sacred life. Nonetheless, he was consumed with love for Hashem. Hashem therefore opened for him the primordial Torah so that he would be able to transform his yearning into concrete deeds. This person was our first patriarch, Avraham Avinu." (Taken from the holy book Where Earth and Heaven Kiss by Rabbi Ozer Bergman)

"Hashem said to Avram, lech lecha/Go for yourself, from your land, from your relatives and from your fathers home to the land that I will show you." The word lecha (which the Artscroll translates as for yourself) seems superfluous. Why not just say lech/go? Why lecha/for yourself? Reb Nachman takes the words in their litteral sense. Lech lecha means go to yourself. Sometimes we start looking for deeper meanings in the Torah when it's all there in the pashut pshat. Go to yourself. Avraham was the first yid, the first one to see through all of the sheker in the world and say "there must be more". So Hashem came to him and told him, "You want to find meaning? You want to find Me? Look first into yourself. Every Jew, no matter in what land, no matter from what family, no matter who he or she's father may be has what Reb Nachman refers to as the "Nekudas haemes/the point of truth". We may know it as the "pintile yid". Its all the same. What Hashem is teaching us here became later on one of Reb Nachmans teachings, every Jew is good, no matter how bad he or others thinks he may be. When one finds, at least looks for, or even more at least yearns to find his true Jewish self the n Hashem will come to him and show him "The Land". But it's not easy. Avraham was called ivri because he stood on the other side of the river. He went against the trend, he did his own thing. If it was just to leave his land, his family, his fathers home, that would have been easy. Avraham was thrown into blazing furnaces, his life was constantly threatened but he did it anyway. And then Hashem tells him to go to the land that He will show him. But he didn't show him anything!?!?! Where is Avraham supposed to go?!?!? That’s how deep his faith was, because really its all about faith. Put your faith in Hashem and you can defeat the most powerful armies (the war of the four kings!!), Avraham is then offered to take the booty but he shuns the honors and instead gives it up to Hashem. Then Hashem makes a covenant with Avraham and adds the "hey" of His name to say now that you proved that your willing to go the extra mile with me, I will be with your forever.

Back to us. The bottom line is if you want to find Hashem, if you want to live a meaningful life, look into yourself, look for yourself and Hashem will find you. We see the same thing by Moshe. After Hashem came to him at the burning bush and told him to go save the Jews, Moshe refused for a week!! How could he refuse Hashem!?!?! He was saying the whole time "me ani?" Who am I?? And that’s why he was zoche to be the leader of Cllal Yisroel. He was a prince, he had it all, he could have been anything, but he saw that it was all sheker. So he started looking, and Hashem found him. We'll get back to that when we get there be"H. Our lesson is to look for the good, the emes in not only all others but especially in ourselves. Once we start to do this Hashem will find us and we will be able to do so much more with His help.

And when we get down on ourselves lets just remember what the Baal Shem Tov said about when Hashem showed Avraham the stars. The decendants of Avraham are like stars. We see the starts from a great distance and they appear to be mere tiny specks but in reality in heaven they are gigantic. So too, in this world many people look very small. But if we remember that in reality, in Hashems eyes both we and every Jew have real greatness. If we tell ourselves all these things over and over with Hashem's help they will start to sink in. Once we start having just a little more emunah in Hashem our lives will change with leaps and bounds.

Always remember that these aren't just stories, their life lessons, they are the map to help us get through. We say three times a day in shemona esre, elokeinu, v'elokei avoseinu / our G-d and the G-d of our fathers. First he is our G-d, lets not worry where we came from we can still reach the heavens.
Peace and joy, and a wonderful Shabbos,
Etan & Gang