The Pilgrimage on Our Own Front Porch: From Lech Lecha to Abraham’s Tent in Vayeira

Last week we read Lech Lecha. The call to “Go Forth” seems kind of overkill. We just finished the High Holiday celebrations which were originally pilgrimage based holidays. We just got “home” - uplifted, but weary from the month long “journey” into the inner precincts of our soul. The memory of the “Holy of Holies” has begun to fade, and yet, no sooner than we have “unpacked” we are summoned once again. Shouldn’t we get a little break? Not a chance. The “Lech Lecha” siren sounds its cautionary note, “complacency season” is upon us and we have come down from the “spiritual high.” It is not uncommon to experience the emotional equivalent of an “allergic reaction” to prayer and anything associated with it. We worked so hard to find “flow” and yet we feel powerless, observing ourselves beginning to unravel.

As we lean into the regular rhythm of life, we are instructed to “go forth” and hit the road again, This time however, we are not traveling upward to the holy city. In fact we don’t even need to go anywhere special. The Lech Lecha “Going Forth” is a different kind of journey, one we can undertake from the comforts of our own home. Often, the most fundamental journeys we need to undertake, await us within the familiar walls of the places where our “life” happens.

Too often we defer the road we need to navigate within our own lives, the gut wrenching “roads less traveled” in favor of what we might find in “Kansas - beyond the yellow brick road” - we prefer the path back to Jerusalem, Crown heights, or Uman, anything to avoid navigating the complex ground of our own lives. The feeling of discomfort we feel standing on the ground of our own lives, mustn’t be avoided if we are ever to discover the sacred ground that surely lies beneath whatever is the source of our greatest discomfort.

The moment we find the guts to take a harder look at our inner “Lech Lecha” terrain, we are treated to a small taste of the expanded consciousness of “Vayera” - We learn from Abraham to forego the direct encounter with a G-d force that would drown our consciousness, in lieu of the indirect one with three tired and bedraggled strangers. Like Abraham, we can learn more about G-d, by resisting the urge to avoid the pained look in the exhausted face of a stranger, by Meeting his gaze we pierce a wall, and suddenly we are in the presence of Angels. The G-d that Abraham encounters in Vayera, is revealed in the softness of an act of kindness, performed at the “entrance to his tent” - despite the personal pain he was experiencing in the aftermath of his Brit Milah (circumcision) - regardless of the “heat of the day” - opting, from within his complex world, to shift his focus instead, to the pain of a stranger. There is so much we can learn about the nature of covenental life, from the pilgrimages we make right here at home, beginning with what we see, while sitting on our front porch.

Tonite we will gather in the Chabad Community Shul to sing Kabbalat Shabbat together. The first Friday Project of the season is sponsored by Rebeca Entine in memory of her Husband Ben Entine. For those of you who were fortunate to know “Reb Ben” as he was affectionately called by so many, I know that you miss him as much as I do. Though he was a genuine renaissance man, he was first and foremost a “Baal Chesed” a person who was a Maestro when it came to kindness. Together with Rebeca they had an open home and fed an entire generation with Shabbat meals that were unforgettable experiences. He was a quintessential “Abraham person” and it is fitting that tonites dinner is in his memory.

It’s not too late to reserve for tonite at www.nsjewish.com. Hope to see you at 6!!!!

Much Love

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Yossi