The Bereishis - Noach - Lech Lecha Sequence
Lech Lecha
Every detail in the Torah holds personal lessons for us in our lives as Jews. This also applies to things such as the names of the Parshios and their order.
Over the past week, I have been reflecting on the sequence of the first 3 Parshios of the Torah and the personally empowering message that it teaches us.
Bereishis is the story of Creation. On the personal level, this represents the worlds that we build for ourselves. We shape our lives to be in a certain way; where we will live, what we will do and a general expectation of how things will be. This gives us stability and a framework of familiarity and security in which we live our lives. This world reality becomes the paradigm of how we see ourselves and the world around us.
But then comes Noach and the great Flood that washes away the world that was created in Parshas Bereishis.
The waters of the Flood represent the turbulence that we experience in life. These waves shake the stability that we have come to expect and trust in, believing that it will always be there. They erode the world that we have built and may even wash it and our dreams, away entirely.
A person may lose their job, have to relocate, experience health challenges or financial hardship. A person may lose their relationships or face challenges with their children.
When the world that we have known is overturned, what then? What does one do when the world that they knew is lost and they have lost the stability and structure that they have come to depend on?
When one’s world is washed away, it is so easy to become lost themselves; to lose faith, to lose hope and to resign oneself with a victim mentality and become paralysed with grief and despair.
The Torah’s lesson is that after Noach comes Lech Lecha - “go for yourself”. The Torah is teaching us that after we experience a flood, we have to pick ourselves up and move forward; to step into the unknown with faith and hope and rebuild a new world for ourselves.
This has been the story of the Jewish people. We have gone through the booms and busts of Exile and Redemption. We built a Commonwealth in our Land only to have it destroyed by the Babylonians. We came back and rebuilt, only to see it destroyed by the Romans. When the second Temple was destroyed, we went on to build the great Torah centres of Babylon.
In the last generation, we suffered the great and destructive flood of the Holocaust, that decimated the rich and vibrant Jewish world of Pre-War Europe. But once again we rebuilt ourselves, with vibrant Jewish communities in the USA, Australia and of course the jewel of our crown, the flourishing communities, society, economy and Torah institutions in Eretz Yisroel.
At any of these junctures, after any of these “floods”, we could have resigned ourselves, lost our faith and will to live-on and disappeared into the sands of time. But with the Torah’s message, after each “flood”, we once again set out on the journey of Lech Lecha, to move forward and rebuild.
In the collective history of the world, we are in the Lech Lecha stage. Hashem created a perfect world where His Presence was manifest. That world became corrupted and the Divine Presence driven away. Our mission is Lech Lecha, to work towards a new world - the “the new heavens and the new earth” of the Final Redemption, when the Shechina will once again be revealed, never to depart again.
Over the past week, I have been reflecting on the sequence of the first 3 Parshios of the Torah and the personally empowering message that it teaches us.
Bereishis is the story of Creation. On the personal level, this represents the worlds that we build for ourselves. We shape our lives to be in a certain way; where we will live, what we will do and a general expectation of how things will be. This gives us stability and a framework of familiarity and security in which we live our lives. This world reality becomes the paradigm of how we see ourselves and the world around us.
But then comes Noach and the great Flood that washes away the world that was created in Parshas Bereishis.
The waters of the Flood represent the turbulence that we experience in life. These waves shake the stability that we have come to expect and trust in, believing that it will always be there. They erode the world that we have built and may even wash it and our dreams, away entirely.
A person may lose their job, have to relocate, experience health challenges or financial hardship. A person may lose their relationships or face challenges with their children.
When the world that we have known is overturned, what then? What does one do when the world that they knew is lost and they have lost the stability and structure that they have come to depend on?
When one’s world is washed away, it is so easy to become lost themselves; to lose faith, to lose hope and to resign oneself with a victim mentality and become paralysed with grief and despair.
The Torah’s lesson is that after Noach comes Lech Lecha - “go for yourself”. The Torah is teaching us that after we experience a flood, we have to pick ourselves up and move forward; to step into the unknown with faith and hope and rebuild a new world for ourselves.
This has been the story of the Jewish people. We have gone through the booms and busts of Exile and Redemption. We built a Commonwealth in our Land only to have it destroyed by the Babylonians. We came back and rebuilt, only to see it destroyed by the Romans. When the second Temple was destroyed, we went on to build the great Torah centres of Babylon.
In the last generation, we suffered the great and destructive flood of the Holocaust, that decimated the rich and vibrant Jewish world of Pre-War Europe. But once again we rebuilt ourselves, with vibrant Jewish communities in the USA, Australia and of course the jewel of our crown, the flourishing communities, society, economy and Torah institutions in Eretz Yisroel.
At any of these junctures, after any of these “floods”, we could have resigned ourselves, lost our faith and will to live-on and disappeared into the sands of time. But with the Torah’s message, after each “flood”, we once again set out on the journey of Lech Lecha, to move forward and rebuild.
In the collective history of the world, we are in the Lech Lecha stage. Hashem created a perfect world where His Presence was manifest. That world became corrupted and the Divine Presence driven away. Our mission is Lech Lecha, to work towards a new world - the “the new heavens and the new earth” of the Final Redemption, when the Shechina will once again be revealed, never to depart again.