Intention matters. Most of our mitzvot we fulfill through physical action. But our heart, our intention, our deepest kavannah, when we do them, also matters.
Avram was already on his way to the land of Canaan with his father. When he continued on his journey at God’s command, he could have thought of it as a continuation of this original journey, an ordinary change of location done for whatever human reasons originally initiated the move.
But the Torah tells us that Avram did it kaasher diber elav Hashem. Literally, this phrase means “as God had told him.” In other words, Avram carried out the command in the way that God had said it should be done. The Sefat Emet, though, reads it differently – he explains that kaasher diber elav Hashem means that Avram did it only because God had commanded it; he abandoned all other reasons for going. Even though he had had his own reasons for taking this journey, now that God commanded it, he did it with the sole intention of fulfilling God’s will.
That is what we mean when we say in the brachah before we do a mitzvah asher kideshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu, “as He sanctified us with His mitzvot and commanded us.” What we are saying is essentially what the Torah says about Avram – we are here, doing this mitzvah, shaking this lulav, lighting these Shabbos candles – we are here right now doing this solely because God commanded us to. We have a pure heart of service, a heart directed not in a million directions as it normally is, but in one direction only. We are here fulfilling Your command.
What happens when you do even one mitzvah in this intense way, with total purity of heart? You become a vessel for divine energy to enter the world. The world is uplifted and you are uplifted. We are normally so distracted and so full of complex motivations for every action; when we stop and direct our hearts, there is a power and intensity that we barely dreamed of, and there is light and there is peace. Doing a mitzvah with total intention, we walk the path of Avram, at one with God and the universe and ourselves.
Friday, October 19, 2018
Parashat Lekh Lekha: To the Land that God continues to Show Us
What God wants from us is continually unfolding. There is not a set, fixed destination point.
That’s why, when God tells Avraham to go on his journey, He says, go “to the land that I will show you.”
The Kedushat Levi asks –how could Avraham have taken the liberty to endanger his life and Sarai’s life by going to Egypt when he was not commanded to go there?
His answer – Avram was commanded to go there. The initial command “to go to the land that I will show you” meant “that I will continually show you.” It did not mean a one-time showing of the land of Israel. What God was saying was that He would provide Avram with guidance on his journey, continually show him the way. Initially, this meant entering the land of Israel – that was the first destination point – but as time and circumstances unfolded, a famine occurred, and Avrahm understood that God was now showing him the next land, the next move on his journey – Egypt.
When we read the story of Avram, we may feel a little distance – well, yeah, if God actually spoke to me and told me where to go and what to do, I would do it, too. But no, it turns out that God’s directions even to Avram, are more subtle than that. Yes, there are direct communications, but there is also a continual “showing” or unfolding. Even the first step is not explicit – how did Avram know that God meant the land of Cannan when He said “the land that I will show you.” How did God “show” him where to go? The text doesn’t explain it, I think, because it was intuitive. Avram searched out what God’s will might be by the signs and circumstances around him, and through his own reflection on what those signs might mean for him.
We are not so different from Avram, then. After all, we know we have a generalized duty to go on some journey in this life, to leave our (childhood) baggage behind and go to a place that God has in mind for us. What, where, this place is – what God really wants from us – that is for us to inuit, for us to search out based on what God “shows us,” based on the clues that continually unfold in our lives.
And at different points we may be led in different directions. Sometimes it may even seem that we are being led to “Egypt,” to the wrong kind of place, in the opposite direction of our destiny. What we learn from Avram is not to hold on to the original destination point or to some idealized notion of what our destination point should be, but to allow ourselves to be continually led, to allow ourselves to be continually “shown” – through all the seemingly random happenings of our lives – the next step and the next step on our divinely guided journey.
That’s why, when God tells Avraham to go on his journey, He says, go “to the land that I will show you.”
The Kedushat Levi asks –how could Avraham have taken the liberty to endanger his life and Sarai’s life by going to Egypt when he was not commanded to go there?
His answer – Avram was commanded to go there. The initial command “to go to the land that I will show you” meant “that I will continually show you.” It did not mean a one-time showing of the land of Israel. What God was saying was that He would provide Avram with guidance on his journey, continually show him the way. Initially, this meant entering the land of Israel – that was the first destination point – but as time and circumstances unfolded, a famine occurred, and Avrahm understood that God was now showing him the next land, the next move on his journey – Egypt.
When we read the story of Avram, we may feel a little distance – well, yeah, if God actually spoke to me and told me where to go and what to do, I would do it, too. But no, it turns out that God’s directions even to Avram, are more subtle than that. Yes, there are direct communications, but there is also a continual “showing” or unfolding. Even the first step is not explicit – how did Avram know that God meant the land of Cannan when He said “the land that I will show you.” How did God “show” him where to go? The text doesn’t explain it, I think, because it was intuitive. Avram searched out what God’s will might be by the signs and circumstances around him, and through his own reflection on what those signs might mean for him.
We are not so different from Avram, then. After all, we know we have a generalized duty to go on some journey in this life, to leave our (childhood) baggage behind and go to a place that God has in mind for us. What, where, this place is – what God really wants from us – that is for us to inuit, for us to search out based on what God “shows us,” based on the clues that continually unfold in our lives.
And at different points we may be led in different directions. Sometimes it may even seem that we are being led to “Egypt,” to the wrong kind of place, in the opposite direction of our destiny. What we learn from Avram is not to hold on to the original destination point or to some idealized notion of what our destination point should be, but to allow ourselves to be continually led, to allow ourselves to be continually “shown” – through all the seemingly random happenings of our lives – the next step and the next step on our divinely guided journey.
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