• This Week's Torah Portion

One of the most common questions asked about Parashat Lech L’cha concerns the very first verse: Why does God command Abraham “Lech L’cha,” adding in the seemingly superfluous l’cha (for yourself)? Quoting the Talmud and Midrash, Rashi famously glosses these words as:

“Go for your own benefit, for your own good: there I will make of you a great nation whereas here you will not merit the privilege of having children ( Rosh Hashanah 16b). Furthermore, I shall make known your character throughout the world (Midrash Tanchuma, Lech L’cha 3).

This commentary suggests that the word l’cha (for yourself) aims to counter Abraham’s wariness to part with everything he has always known with a promise of personal reward: fertility and fame. I have always wondered about this interpretation, which is based on the vocalization and translation of this second word as l’cha. Given the lack of vowels in the Torah, why not read the two words as the same, as lech, lech (Go, go! Leave in a hurry!)? That reading, of course, begs a whole set of additional questions, beginning with what Abram is running away from, and why the urgency, given his advanced age. After all, according to Genesis 12:7, Abram was already 75 when he left home. More foundationally: What was the relationship between Abram and God that led to this command? Ruhama Weiss’s “Al taḥzor el atzmekha” (“Do Not Return to Yourself,” 2013), responds to these questions in part, by sidestepping them and in part, by offering a more general, pastoral or psychological teaching. Weiss is a poet; columnist; and professor of Talmud and spiritual care at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Jerusalem. Her ability to take a classical text and mine it for pastoral, spiritual, or emotional guidance is one of her specialties.  

Do Not Return to Yourself   Do not return to yourself, If you’ve already been waylaid, Turn it into a different way. Do not repent. Never cling to an answer, It will not feel obliged to return the favor. Go forth from your land and from your birthplace And from your father’s house. Especially your father’s house. For years, you sojourned there innocently. And never stop at Mount Nebo. If the greatest wanderer did not withstand the test, Who are you to endanger yourself. Come close, touch, encounter form outside yourself, flee to The pleasure of beyond. Until you return to the defeat you cannot escape Until you return to dust.

אל תחזור אל עצמך אַל תַּחְזוֹר אֶל עַצְמְךָ אִם כְּבָר נִשְׁמַטְתָּ בְּצַד הַדֶּרֶךְ, הֲפֹךְ אוֹתוֹ לְדֶרֶךְ חָדָשָׁה. אָל תַּחְזוֹר בִּתְשׁוּבָה. לְעוֹלָם אַל תַּחְזִיק בִּתְּשׁוּבָה, הִיא לֹא תַּחְזִיק לְךָ טוֹבָה עַל כָּךְ. לֵךְ לְְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמוֹלַדְתְךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ. בְּעִקָּר מִבֵּית אָבִיךָ. שָׁנִים רַבּוֹת שָׁהִיתָ בַּּתֹּם. וּלְעוֹלָם אַל תַּעֲצֹר בְּהַר נְבוֹ. אִם הַנַוָד בָּאָדָם לֹא עָמַד בַּמִבְחָן, מִי אַתָּה שֶתִּסְתַּכֵּן. גַּשׁ, גַּע, פְּגַע מִחוּץ לְעַצְמְךָ, נוּס אֶל חֶדְוַת הַחוּץ עַד שׁוּבְךָ אֶל הַתְּבוּסָה שֶׁאֵין מָנוֹס מִמֶּנָה. עַד שׁוּבְךָ אֶל הֶעָפָר.

In her poem, Weiss adopts the conventional vocalization of “lech l’cha,” but builds on its possible double meaning. She reads urgent messages about going forward, not back, into the (divine, biblical) directive. Recalling those midrashic sources that attempt to understand the backstory behind God’s command to Abram to leave home-the stories of Abram smashing the idols in his Terach’s idol store ( Genesis Rabbah 38), and of his discovery of the one God (Genesis Rabbah 39) – Weiss’s poem imagines a series of personal, psychologically oriented commands or insights that precede God’s directive to leave. Playing on the expression “laḥzor el atzm’cha,” which normally means a return to one’s prior self or health, Weiss’s speaker literalizes the words and orders the opposite: “Al taḥzor el atzm’cha” (don’t return to your prior self). Instead, the speaker commands the reader to go forth with determination. More radically, in the context of a tradition that has always valued the act of “ḥazarah bit’shuvah” (repentance or return), Weiss literalizes this expression to mean “don’t return to the (old) answer.” That answer, the speaker contends, won’t reward loyalty or return the favor. Look ahead, instead. The speaker quotes the opening verse of our parashah: “Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house” (Genesis 12:1). The addressee of this command is never specified as Abram. Weiss transforms these words into a call for personal development beyond childhood innocence. The theme of moving beyond innocence recalls the Bible’s description of Noah as righteous and innocent/blameless. Accordingly, the poem encourages all of us to move beyond our “arks” and childhood houses and encounter the broader world. The fourth stanza clarifies that this directive extends beyond Abram and Genesis. Here the speaker alludes to the very end of Deuteronomy, warning the reader not to tarry at Mount Nebo, where Moses viewed the Promised Land only to die there, his longed-for destination forever out of reach (Deuteronomy 34:1-5). I asked Weiss about the meaning of the phrase “ha-navad ba-Adam.” She shared that she was imagining the greatest vagabond of all: Moses, who wandered from Egypt to Midian, back to Egypt, and then spent 40 years in the desert…but never arrived anywhere. Moses thus becomes an object lesson against succumbing to the impulse to rest. The final stanza of the poem returns to the original directive, urging the audience to move beyond our limited selves to experience the pleasure of outside. Recalling the beginning of the story (lech l’ch a me’artzecha), the speaker issues two commands: gash and ga (approach and touch), followed by a third rhyming command of pega (physically encounter). If God tells Abram to go to the land God will show him and rely on sight, Weiss’s speaker emphasizes sound and touch, modeling this with repeating, rhyming sounds. The speaker calls on us to go forth and keep going until we have no choice but to return to the dust from which we are created in the ultimate sense: in death. All this takes us back to my original thought about vocalizing the words as “lech, lech.” The awareness of our mortality should exhort us to keep moving forward, growing, and resisting complacency, until we have no choice but to succumb to our mortal limits.