Lech Lecha
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on Parashat Lech Lecha, read on Shabbat Lech Lecha — with one of this week's three questions for the two of you.
The first command in the Jewish story is not to study, not to pray, not to build. It is to go. Lech lecha — go forth, from your land, from your birthplace, from your father's house, to the land that I will show you. Avraham is not told where he is going. He is not given a map. He is told only the direction, the call, and the fact that the destination will be revealed as he walks. Hirsch reads this as the foundational Jewish posture. We do not stay where it is comfortable; we go where we are called, even when we cannot yet see the destination. And — the deeper teaching — every Jewish marriage is a lech lecha. We leave the known shape of our individual lives and step into a shared future that is, by definition, not yet visible.
When we married, what did each of us most clearly leave behind — what land, what birthplace, what father's house? What did the leaving cost us?
The full week — the passage itself with its source, the other two questions, and the closing verse of hope — lives in the app. Together Tomorrow on the App Store.