Left or Right, Right or Left, I am here for You

Famous words in this week’s Torah Portion: Lech Lecha. 

God tells Avraham: Go for yourself. 

Rashi, who is basic, explains: Go for your own benefit and your own good. 

In 2021, this is like cool water for my thirsty millennial self-help soul.

I justify crawling further into the depths of me. me. me. 

Self- actualization. My-boundaries. Self-awareness. Self-satisfaction. 

Only, I am actually drowning in the self-centeredness of it all. 

Lech Lecha: Go for yourself: For your own benefit and for your own good. 

In 2021, its meaning hasn’t actually changed. My thirsty soul is still actually looking for one thing: self-transcendence. 

Lech Lecha: The work it takes to raise myself above the labels, the rules, the mask--of my ego. 

Avraham’s Lech Lecha, his going for himself, was inclusive. He went with his entire family and all of his stuff. 

He didn’t create boundaries resulting in abandonment. He didn’t assert himself and leave it all behind. 

He took all of his people and old things and worked on developing a new relationship with them. 

Immediately he was challenged: The land he chose was not vast enough for his stuff and his nephew’s stuff. Their herdsmen fought. 

Avraham asserted himself when he set the boundary with Lot:

Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me now. If you go to the left. I shall place myself on your right, and if you go to the right, I shall place myself on your left. 

Rashi, who is basic, explains: Wherever you settle, I will not go far from you, and I will stand by you for protection and assistance. In the end, that is what happened. Avraham protected Lot. 

Left and Right: I am here for you. 

North and South. Or East and West: Go wherever I don’t care. 

Cardinal directions are objective. No matter where you are coming from, going NSE&W takes no common ground. 

Left and right are subjective. They are only helpful instructions if you and I are standing in the same frame of reference. When you and I are standing on the same side. 

God to Avraham: Go for yourself. 

Avraham to Lot: I will stand by you for protection and assistance.

We are all in this together, and we stand on the same side of the sidewalk of human frailty. We care about the same things even if we want to go in different directions. Even if you go left and I go right, or you go right, and I go left.

I still have to care about you. 

Lech Lecha: For your own benefit and for your own good. 

 To the place of no ego.

 To the place of transcendence.

 Where I genuinely care about you and can see things from your perspective too. 

Lech Lecha: Is going above myself.

Credit to Rabbi Shais Taub’s weekly Parsha Podcast.

Photo: Bellefoto