Parashat Lekh Lekha: Purity of Heart

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.