Lech Lecha

So this weeks Parasha, Lech Lecha, was easy to relate to since I'm here in Israel for the year. It was my own personal Lech Lecha. I left my land, my home, my family, friends, everything, to come here. I learned so many different lessons from the Parasha but I didn't have time to write my own dvar Torah so here are some ideas I discussed (WITH MY AWESOME BRITISH FRIEND- hi Ariella!) 

I give her total credit for this---->>>>>

The first question we were asked was "Why was Avraham picked?" 
This parsha is the first major intro about Avraham. We aren't told anything about Avraham's character or traits. This seems a little strange as we must wonder how come G-d speaks to Avraham and not anyone else. The שפט אמת says, Avraham wasn't picked. G-d sent out a message to the entire world saying He needed a few shelichim and the only man that answered was Avraham. This doesn't mean that he was picked, it's that he volunteered. This is a beautiful pshat as it teaches us two lessons, 
1) G-d was looking for anyone to do the job (not a particular person or character)
2) Anyone could've done the job, by just volunteering, it was all up to the individual.
This is such a powerful lesson to us today as ה׳ is always looking for good people in every generation. We have to listen out to hear the call and then pick up on it.  

Here is a short mashal spoken by my Rav to illustrate this point. 
A husband comes home to his wife, and she asks him "why do you love me?" He thinks oh dear the dreaded question! He responds, "because you're beautiful." She starts crying, and the husband has no idea what he said wrong! She says "so if I wasn't beautiful you wouldn't love me?" The husband quickly says, "I love you because you're intelligent" she starts crying even more!! He knows he's really making it worse so he says, "I love you because you're such a great cook!"  Now she starts hysterically crying so he realizes he's saying something wrong and says to her, "I love you because I love you." We learn that if you love something because of something else, when it goes away you'll stop loving. There was no particular reason Avraham was "picked",  and this is why there was no context to Avraham or his personality. ה׳  was giving love to the entire Jewish people, not dependent on the quality of the person. ה׳ says I love you because of you. We are the children of G-d and He loves us no matter what we do. 
We then ask why does Avraham go from place to place to build a mizbeyach? Try to imagine the scene...Avraham, an old man walking into a random city, carrying  rocks and literally, standing there and physically building a mizbeyach? People came from all over wondering what this guy was doing. They must've wondered at the time, what gods did this guy believe in.... 
Avraham then calls out in the name of ה׳ and gets other people to also call out to ה׳ 
What's he doing? He's explaining to people that G-d is monotheism. Thinking about the parsha and Avraham's character and life we see that everything Avraham does is in order to bring the entire world closer to G-d, and we learn that this is the job of the Jewish people. We learn that the first part of Judaism is monotheism, shown by Avraham's belief in One G-d. The second part we learn is ethics. Avraham, lives the ethics. He does ethical acts all the time. For example, the war against the 4 kings and the 5 kings later on in the parsha, shows Avraham going and saving the entire population. He saved Sodom which was the completely utter opposite of what Avraham believed in. The people in Sodom didn't believe in ה׳ and the extent of their awfulness was that they weren't even allowed to have guests in Sodom. What was Avraham's crowning quality? That he had guests!! This taught the world, and us now as we read the parsha that the job of a Jew is ethical monotheism. 
An extremely beautiful link can be made by looking into the differences between Avraham and Hagar. Hagar was asked "where have you come from and where are you going?" טו :ח 

She answers, "I am fleeing from Sarah." She doesn't say where she is going, only where she came from. Abraham however always knew the direction he was going in. At first he comes to eretz yisrael, and then continues to Egypt later on in this parsha, he always knows the path he's taking. This idea is really incredible, it is so important we have direction in our life. Everyone knows where they just came from, yet we must ensure that every step of the way and of our journey in life, we, like Avraham Avenui have a strong direction and path. 

Shabbat shalom and may we always have a straight journey and direction in our life. 
Ariella :)