Lech Lecha - Going To... Yourself - Rabbi Asher Perkesh

00:02 Once, a chossid came to the Rebbe Maharash, complained about himself, and said that he was a schemer. Everything he did, everything he said, was done with cunning. In other words, he was not a straightforward, sincere person. The Rebbe Maharash told him that the remedy was to undertake six hundred fasts, [unclear]. The man was utterly astonished and said, “What do you mean?” He did not understand the idea of fasting. After all, in the way of Chassidus, fasting is not the point. The Rebbe Maharash said to him, “What do you think? That I mean fasting—not eating from morning until night? That is not what a fast is about. That is called, as people say today, going on a diet. That is not what I mean. By a fast, I mean avodah: every day, think about yourself for fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes a day. When I say to think about yourself, I do not mean to think about Chassidus, but simply to think honestly about yourself. Think about what is going on with you.” That was the Rebbe Maharash’s answer. Two years later, the man had changed from one extreme to the other; he had been completely transformed. The Frierdiker Rebbe relates that he heard this from the Rebbe Rashab. The Rebbe Rashab said that he had seen this Jew, and that not only had the man’s inner faculties changed, but

02:10 he had undergone a change in his very essence. “Yes, if you had seen him,” the Rebbe Rashab told his son, the Frierdiker Rebbe, “if you had seen him, you would have been amazed at the change in this Jew’s very essence.” When the Frierdiker Rebbe told the story, he said: There is a phrase in the Gemara, “This means.” What does “This means” mean? Something must come out of every story. We must learn a lesson from this story: a Jew should think about himself for fifteen minutes every day. And that is the theme of the weekly parsha, Parshas Lech Lecha. Regarding the verse “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house,” there is a well-known question: What does the second word, “lecha,” mean? What is it telling us? It seems unnecessary. The verse could have said simply, “Go.” What is “lech lecha”? And more generally, the first command and the first instruction that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave Avraham Avinu was the verse “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.” What is the meaning of this? As is known, this was one of the ten tests—and according to some opinions, the first of the ten tests: the test of leaving, of “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house.” This was the first instruction that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave the first Jew: he had to leave his land, his city, his—

03:59 “father’s house, to the land that I will show you.” The holy Or Hachayim explains, in the name of the Alshich, that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu said “lech lecha,” He meant that Avraham would reach the root of his soul. In other words, Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Avraham Avinu that by leaving “your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house,” he will reach “lecha,” his true self; he will reach the true root of his soul. For every Jew, the root of the soul is the soul’s very essence, which is “truly a part of G-d Above.” The soul is part of the Essence. And as the Baal Shem Tov says in the name of Reb Saadiah Gaon: “When you grasp part of an essence, you grasp all of it.” A Jew is part of the Essence, and when you grasp that part, the entire Essence is present in it. In other words, a Jew is a piece of G-dliness, and that is a Jew’s true essence. Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Avraham Avinu, “Lech”: by leaving “your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house,” “lecha”—you will reach the true root of your soul. And as he says here in Tehillim, your avodah will shine in your root Above. In other words, when a person is down here, flesh and blood, a physical, material being in this world of falsehood, what effect can an action, a deed down here, really have? It is something entirely [unclear]. Yet here we are told that when a Jew does a deed,

05:50 when a Jew takes even a small action in this physical world, with his physical body, he affects all the worlds. This happens by going beyond his own measures and limitations, beyond his materiality, beyond his own “your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house.” Through this “lech,” he connects with “lecha”—with his true essence, with the true root of his soul. And thereby, through his avodah, through the actions he performs down here—and this is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Avraham Avinu here, and likewise, “the deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children,” for every Jew—the actions he performs down here have an effect Above, and through this he reveals his own soul. This is what He goes on to say: “To the land that I will show you.” “That I will show you,” as he explains, means, “I will show you and reveal you in Myself.” Yes, through “I will show you”—the meaning of “to the land that I will show you” is: I will show you your own essence. “To the land that I will show you,” Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Avraham Avinu: “I will show you and reveal you in Myself.” By Avraham’s self-sacrifice in leaving “your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house,” he will reach his true essence and reveal his true essence. And this is the beginning of avodah. So it is explained in the Rebbe’s maamarim, and also in the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, that—

07:38 the holy Baal Shem Tov explains this and cites something on the subject in the name of Rav Saadiah Gaon. Rav Saadiah Gaon says that the primary purpose for which man was created in this world is to break down his materiality, to break his character traits. The Baal Shem Tov says that this is the meaning of “lech lecha,” which Hakadosh Boruch Hu said to Avraham Avinu. In other words, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose Avraham Avinu and he became the first Jew—and this, after all, is what Parshas Lech Lecha is about, as is known. Avraham Avinu already appears in Parshas Noach; he is mentioned in the Torah even before Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose him. It is not like the account of Noach: we see that the Torah tells us nothing about Avraham Avinu and his avodah. Although Avraham Avinu engaged in much avodah, and the Midrash tells many stories about him—about his strengths, his self-sacrifice, his concerns, and his activities—none of this is written in the Torah. Only in Parshas Lech Lecha does something new begin: “And Hashem said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your land and from your birthplace.’” This is where the story of Avraham Avinu begins. In other words, this is where it starts, and where all of Avraham Avinu’s avodah comes in. Although he was a great tzaddik and did many things, because all of this was before “And Hashem said to Abram, ‘Lech lecha,’” it was avodah that came from

09:02 Avraham Avinu himself, not from the very fact that he was a Jew. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose Avraham Avinu—“You are Hashem, the G-d who chose Abram”—the choice came from Above. Then Hakadosh Boruch Hu said, “Lech lecha”: go beyond yourself, leave “your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house.” Then, through “lecha,” he could reveal the root of his soul—“I will show you and reveal you in Myself”—and reveal the very essence of a Jew in the physical world. From then on, all his avodah would have an effect Above and below. In this way, he could connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, change the world, and make the world a dwelling place for its Creator. This answers the well-known question: Why does the Torah tell us nothing about Avraham Avinu until now, and only begin his story here? The point is that a Jew’s connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu began when Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose him, not through his own avodah. That is why the Torah does not tell all the stories about Avraham Avinu before “lech lecha”: so that we should not think that Avraham Avinu’s distinction came from his own avodah, from the things he himself had done. With Noach, that was indeed the case. “For you I have seen to be righteous before Me”—Hakadosh Boruch Hu saw that Noach was righteous before Him, and therefore He

10:25 chose him. It arose from Noach’s virtues, his avodah, his righteousness, his fear of Heaven, his conduct, his wholeheartedness, and so on. But that is not what Avraham’s story is really about. Avraham’s story is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu came to him from Above, regardless of his measures and limitations. Hakadosh Boruch Hu revealed Himself to Avraham Avinu, and only then—“And Hashem said to Abram, ‘Lech lecha’”—go beyond yourself. Then all your concerns [unclear], and from that point Avraham’s connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu was deepened. And here it says, “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house.” What are the three things—“your land,” “your birthplace,” and “your father’s house”? Chassidus explains that in avodas Hashem these are three things a Jew is told: when he wants to connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu and reach “the land that I will show you,” to reach his true self, to connect his soul with its root, with G-dliness, he must leave behind his own imagined notions and his own state. For this is the beginning of avodah, and avodah starts with “Go forth from your land.” In the familiar words of the verse in Tehillim: “Forget your people and your father’s house.” The first move, the first approach, as Chassidus often explains, must be to leave—“Forget your people and your father’s house”—to leave behind his habits and his ways of behaving. And here he lists three things: “your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house.” What are they

12:06 The three elements of “from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house”? Here we are saying that the first departure must be a departure from oneself. Regarding the word “your land,” Chassidus offers several interpretations. One is that “your land” refers to earthliness, to materiality—the whole matter of being earthbound and materialistic. Materiality here means the general coarseness, the general sense of being bound up in the physical, that comes from the substance of the body and the animal soul. This earthliness and materiality do not allow a Jew to have a sense and feeling for G-dliness. So one must leave “your land”—one’s general materiality and physical coarseness. The Rebbe Rashab explains this general coarseness in one of his letters. He relates a story about the Mitteler Rebbe: when he was a young child, he once stood praying at length, as a young child, [unclear], praying for a long time with tears and weeping. People saw that [unclear], that he was praying at length like an adult. They asked him: What was so extraordinary here? The Mitteler Rebbe said he had found an interpretation of the verse, “Hashem my G-d, I cried out to You, and You healed me.” The plain meaning of “Hashem my G-d, I cried out to You, and You healed me” is: Hashem, my G-d, I pleaded with You, I prayed to

13:43 You, “and You healed me”—that You would make me well. But the Mitteler Rebbe, when he was a young child, interpreted the verse differently. He understood “and You healed me” as related to weakness, to a weakening of strength. He said: “Hashem my G-d”—G-d, my G-d; “I cried out to You”—I ask You. What do I ask of You? “And You healed me”—weaken my materiality; weaken the substance of my body and animal soul. And this is how the Rebbe Rashab explains the story: we are speaking here about general materiality. We are not speaking about specific issues. After all, everyone has their own particular matters that need correcting—character traits that need correcting, ways of thinking that need correcting. Every person has their own particular shortcomings that need correcting. But before all that, there is general materiality. Over the course of life, a person grows accustomed to a physical, material way of living, even in permissible matters. But this immersion in the physical affects the soul, until the person becomes caught up in earthliness and materiality, in a general coarseness, a general attachment to the physical. Material things and the concerns of this world are plain and self-evident to him; they have a strong hold on him, and so he feels them. But when it comes to spiritual matters, he does not feel G-dliness. To become able to sense G-dliness, the first thing is “Go forth from your land”—to leave earthliness,

15:22 lowliness, coarseness, the general attachment to matter, the general materiality that makes a person coarse and does not allow him to develop a sense and feeling for G-dliness. Chassidus offers another interpretation. The Frierdiker Rebbe brings it up on one occasion, and the Rebbe cites it in a maamar: “your land” also refers to lowliness, from the word “land.” What is land? “Everyone treads on it.” It is the ground that everyone walks on. So “your land” refers to lowliness—but lowliness of kelipah. Lowliness of kelipah is when a person feels lowly. A person looks at himself in a lowly way. This is a lowliness of the opposing side. In the language of Chassidus, the Mitteler Rebbe’s maamarim use the expression “a threshold that is trampled underfoot.” Sometimes a person feels like a threshold that is trampled underfoot. A threshold is at the doorway, where everyone steps on it. When a person feels that way, as though he were nothing—“Who am I, and what am I?”—feeling that his very existence is lowly and insignificant, is that the wonderful virtue of humility? It is a kind of lowliness, the lowliness of kelipah. It does not allow a person to engage in the service of Hashem. Because when a person feels, “Who am I, and what am I?” with a worldly sense of lowliness, he naturally feels: How could I merit the gift of Torah and mitzvos? How could my Torah study and my service—my service—accomplish anything Above? That is why the verse says specifically that—

16:59 To be connected to G-dliness, the first thing is “Go forth from your land”: leave coarseness and materiality. “Go forth from your land”—and from the other side, leave the worldly sense of lowliness that the animal soul, the yetzer hara, wants to instill in you: “Who am I, and what am I? You are a threshold, something people step on, something coarse, and therefore you have no connection to G-dliness.” These are two aspects. The feeling “I am not worthy of this” does not let you have a connection with G-dliness. And “your land” also relates to the word for “will”: alien desires, worldly desires, that do not allow a person to have a connection with G-dliness. That is the meaning of “from your land.” Next comes “from your birthplace.” “Your birthplace” means, as it were, the things a person is accustomed to, habitual behaviors—a habit of undesirable things that a person has grown used to. Chassidus explains that “your birthplace” refers to the middos, to bad character traits. The Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya that the middos are called offspring, while the intellectual faculties are called parents. The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya, chapter 3, that father and mother are Chochmah and Binah. The intellect is the parents, like a father and mother, from whom children are born. So too, the intellect is the father and mother, and all the middos are born from it. Thus, “from your birthplace” refers to a person’s bad character traits. “And from your father’s house”—as we said earlier, “your father.” On a simple level, “your father” means what a person learns from his father, from his home, from the things he picks up through habits formed at home. Or, in line with what we discussed earlier, “your father’s house”—“your father” means the intellectual faculties: the undesirable outlooks, opinions, and ideas that a person has on account of his intellect. The verse comes and tells us: this is the order of things, from the bottom up. With this, we can understand why it is stated this way. There is a question: Why

19:02 does it say here, “from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house”? Seemingly, the order should be that one first leaves “your father’s house.” That is the sequence: first a person leaves the house, then the city, “your birthplace,” and then “your land.” That is the question. But according to the explanation in the service of Hashem, this is the order of the work, from below—from the lower matters to the higher ones. The first thing is “Go forth from your land”—to leave the earthliness, the materiality, the general attachment to the physical in the animal soul. A person must break that general hold of materiality. That is the first movement in serving Hashem, so that he can become connected to G-dliness. Then he must work on his middos, and that is “from your birthplace.” Then he must work on “from your father’s house,” meaning the intellectual faculties, the undesirable outlooks and opinions. That is the order of the work. And the verse says that when there is “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house”—and the Baal Shem Tov says that after breaking materiality and bad character traits, the “go forth,” the departure from oneself, leads to going forward, to genuine progress, to “the land that I will show you.” What does “land” mean? I have already distinguished between the things that “land” can signify. As we discussed, there is the aspect of physicality. But here, “the land that I will show you” does not mean physicality, earthliness, and materiality—the coarse physicality that stands in opposition to G-dliness. On the contrary, here it is earthliness in the sense of refined physicality, the physicality one uses to fulfill “Hakadosh Boruch Hu desired to have a dwelling in the lower realms,” through material things. The approach in Chassidus was that a person should not, as we discussed in the story, literally fast, G-d forbid, and break the body. On the contrary, it should be

20:54 through the body. And the Rebbe said that the way is not literal fasting. Rather, the way is to restrain one’s mouth from speaking—yes, to guard one’s mouth, to guard one’s speech—and to think about oneself for fifteen minutes a day. That is the path a person should take with him, with the ultimate aim of bringing the Divine Presence down below. Through this, Hakadosh Boruch Hu brings it about that what had been “your land,” material earthliness, becomes “the land that I will show you”: we take the physical and make it a vessel for the spiritual, make the yesh into ayin, and make the world a dwelling place for G-dliness. Then there is the meaning of “your land” as lowliness. But this is holy lowliness; the aspect of bittul is “your land” as understood in Chassidus. The idea of land, the idea of bittul—yes, that is the very beginning of the work: a person must set himself aside, devote himself, give himself over entirely to G-dliness. That is the path of holy lowliness, of holy bittul, and bittul is the vessel for all the spiritual blessings and all the other aspects, so that the service of Hashem can have its effect. The initial bittul, the beginning of the work—“and he called there”—a Jew must have bittul before Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Then there is the meaning of “your land” related to the word for “will”: “Why is it called eretz? Because it wanted to do the will of its Maker.” To awaken the desire for G-dliness. Yes, and that

22:11 “To the land that I will show you”—Hashem will reveal to him His power and essence. Through this, the Jew’s true reality will be revealed; the true [unclear] will be revealed. It will become clear that a Jew is connected to Hashem. And this is the teaching of the weekly parsha, in which the Torah tells a Jew how to begin his avodah. What is the first step? What is the first thing a Jew needs in order to find the right path in serving Hashem? How does a Jew begin to serve Hashem and enter into G-dliness? Avraham Avinu, the first, is an example for all Jews of how they should serve Hashem. To become a vessel for G-dliness, all these things are required: there must be “lech lecha”—leaving behind one’s personal habits, one’s personal coarseness, one’s personal obstacles. And within that are all the details we discussed: “from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house.” Through this, one begins to become connected to G-dliness: “to the land that I will show you.” And through this, the “lecha” is fulfilled: your own power and essence, the Jew’s true reality, are revealed. This relates to what is known about the Rebbe Maharash: chassidim would ask the Rebbe about matters of serving Hashem. The story is cited in several letters in the Rebbe’s Igros Kodesh. There are several letters in which the Rebbe refers to this story—he mentions it several times, and even writes [unclear]. It appears in the biography of the Rebbe

23:41 Maharash, on page seventy-two. The Rebbe himself prepared the biography of the Rebbe Maharash. It is the only biography of one of the Rebbes that the Rebbe himself prepared; he worked on it, including footnotes and [unclear]. And the Rebbe refers to this story several times when answering people who ask about the path of serving Hashem, about the order of avodah. He cites it repeatedly as a fundamental principle in serving Hashem. And we learn several things from it. First, taking care of the body’s health: one must be careful regarding [unclear], regarding the purity of the soul and body, and, G-d forbid, a person’s physical well-being. One must look after the body’s health, which is one of the foundations of Chassidus. The Rebbe emphasizes this several times when he cites the story. And above all, what avodah is required? The avodah of purifying the soul and body concerns speech: holding back from speaking, restraining one’s mouth. Within this is the practice of spending fifteen minutes thinking about oneself. Here, too, the emphasis is on fifteen minutes. Some people go around all day thinking about themselves, but then their thoughts about themselves are bound up with material concerns and pride. On the contrary, even when it comes to holiness and being careful about teshuvah, this is [unclear].

25:00 That is not the way to serve Hashem, because serving Hashem must be done with joy. But one must devote fifteen minutes a day to genuinely thinking about oneself and about the purpose for which the soul descended below. This should be part of our “lech lecha.” For there is also the descent of the soul, which is truly a part of G-d Above. [unclear] And the spiritual soul dwells here below. Hashem brought the souls down from Atzilus, from the very highest levels, as explained in the maamarim on Lech Lecha. This refers to the descent of souls from the higher worlds to this lowest world. And through that descent [unclear]. It is certainly not a descent for its own sake; rather, it is specifically through the descent that one reaches the greatest ascent. Through “lech lecha,” one reaches the greatest ascent. And this is the matter of a person’s avodah: as we begin the year after Tishrei, Parshas Lech Lecha comes and tells us what the order of our avodah should be, until we reach the first “lech,” the first step forward. This is the meaning of “They go from strength to strength; each appears before G-d in Zion.” And we should merit that through the avodah of “going from strength to strength,” [unclear], we will soon merit to “appear before G-d in Zion,” with the complete Geulah. And may we merit to see our righteous Moshiach, amen, so may it

26:22 be His will. As discussed in the parsha, all the lands will come to us—not only those of the seven nations, but also those of the ten nations, including the Kenite, the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite. As explained in Chassidus, these allude to the three intellectual faculties of Chochmah, Binah, and Daas, which will be present here below in their fullest perfection with the complete Geulah.