”Hashem said to Avraham ‘Go forth from your land.’$$$SEPERATE QUOTES$$$” (Bereishis 12:1)

“Rabbi Yitzchak began ‘Hear my daughter and see and forget your nation and the house of your father.’ (Bereishis Rabbah 39:1)

“Rabbi Yochanan [expounded the pasuk]: ‘Go forth from your land’ — this means your kingdom. ‘From your birthplace’ — this means your neighborhood. ‘And from your father’s home’ — this refers to your father’s [actual] home.” (Yalkut Shimoni ibid.) “$$$SEPERATE QUOTES$$$ ‘To the land that I will show you’ — Why did He not reveal [the destination] to him? To make it precious in his eyes and to give him reward for every single step.”

Rashi similarly states “[Hashem] did not reveal the land to him right away in order to make it precious in his eyes and to give him reward for every command.” 

It’s easy to set goals. It’s easy to talk about them at length — to be confident I know what I want to be like what I want my husband children and home to be like. It’s easy to plan the ideal life for every family member down to the finest detail.

But how will we get there? Somehow we assure ourselves we’ll make these goals a reality. Many people have traveled these paths before us; they certainly must have paved the way. And indeed we quickly find their tracks and follow the path laid out for us all along: in our parents’ home our school and our seminary.

But a single call suddenly stops us: “Lech lecha! Go forth!” The words reverberate from one end of the world to the other telling to us wherever we are to put down our bags stand still for a moment and ask ourselves if we’re truly heeding the cry of “lech lecha.”

The question is simple: Have we gone anywhere? Have we truly left our place of origin the land where we were born and the home of our family?

We all have plenty of baggage from our childhood. There are the unspoken rules the admiration for certain things and the disparagement of others. Everyone learns the standards of the place they live in the social pressures the questions about what the neighbors will say.

“Lech lecha” calls that echoing voice. True there are things we’ve always been told certain we’ve always thought and things we’re accustomed to. The time has come to take a second look and to know that not all the footprints in the sand are a sign for us.

It’s not easy to suddenly change direction after following the same path for decades. But if we hear a call from Heaven if we know it’s the Will of Hashem then we pick up our traveler’s staff and set out on our way.

If Avraham had known which road he was traveling on it would have weakened the power of his detachment. It would have taken away from his disassociation from his land from his birthplace and from his father’s home because it would have been a step toward a specific goal — the chosen land.

Had his destination been revealed to him he would not have fulfilled and implemented each of Hashem’s commands.

But because his destination was not revealed it became clear that the command of “lech lecha” was a goal in and of itself an injunction to strive to detach himself to free himself and to disconnect himself from it all. (ibid.) 

The disassociation is a goal in its own right. We must try to extricate ourselves from everything we have always been told we cannot do or we will not be. We must try to free ourselves from the mistaken ideas so deeply rooted in us from our apathy or our lack of restraint from our cynicism or excessive indulgence. We must learn to pay no heed to what our friends say about our husband’s job or what our neighbors advise us to wear next season. If we can detach ourselves from all these things and keep moving forward soon we will come to the Promised Land.