Go to Yourself
This article appeared as a small pamphlet titled Lech Lecha in 5757 (1997) and was later published by Gal Einai as part of the collection of HaRav Ginsburgh’s articles known as Essa Einai in 5758 (1998). This article is based on some of the same foundations as another article titled, “Openness, Identity, and Maturity” also printed in Essa Einai.
It is being published here in English for the first time, in relation to parashat Lech Lecha and with some minor editorial changes.
fINDINg yOUR TRUE SELf
God’s first words to Abraham, the first Jew, are Lech Lecha, “Go to yourself ”:
Go [to] yourself from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and he who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you.¹
The Torah is eternal and its message is meant for every soul, in every generation, in every part of the world. Thus, God’s first words to Abraham resonate and reverberate through history with an eternal message. First and foremost, the Jew hears this Divine command to Abraham and understands that God is instructing him or her personally, that they too must be independent and free of all dependence upon the illusory, so-called natural values of society, culture, and family. Every individual must set out on the path of life in search of his true self—“go to yourself.”² The essence can only be revealed in the place where God chooses to make the individual’s name known. Only there, can the person be shown to the world— “to the land that [i.e., where] I will show you.” There, his true mazal and destiny³ await him—it is there that “I will make you into a great nation, etc.”—and there he will become an influencer, a light that illuminates the many—“and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you.”
In the education of a Jewish child (and likewise an adult), this essential teaching and its practical directives for all generations, are governed by the quintessential instruction regarding education: “educate a youth according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not depart from it.”⁴ It is incumbent upon the educator who is genuinely devoted to his student to inquire into and seek out each child’s essential charge, his individual character, and his unique mission in life, to help him develop his own senses and talents, through which he will merit to find his portion and inheritance in Torah and in God so that Godliness will be revealed within his heart. This principle is further illustrated by the Chasidic explanation of the phrase, “our God, and the God of our fathers”⁵: first, one is obligated to connect with “our God,” and only afterward, to the “God of our fathers.” There is a verse in the Torah that demonstrates the same principle, “this is my God, and I will glorify Him; the God of my father, and I will exalt Him,”⁶—first “my God,” and only afterward “the God of my father.”
SELf-ImAgE AND THE COLLECTIvE BOND
I lecha—“go to yourself ”—there are n the search for one’s true self, lech two interpretations in Chasidut.⁷ One interpretation (according to the Arizal) explains “lech lecha” as a movement from below to above, from the mundane to the supernal. According to this interpretation, “to the land that I will show you” refers to the supernal land, which is actually the supernal Congregation of Israel, the source of the souls of the entire House of Israel. A second interpretation (according to the Zohar) explains “lech lecha” as a movement from above to below. According to this interpretation, “to the land that I will show you” refers specifically to the physical Land of Israel in this world.⁸ Both “these and these are the words of the living God.”⁹ Additionally, King David said, “I shall walk before Havayah in the lands of the living.”¹⁰ “I shall walk” ( אֶתְהַלֵּך) is in the reflexive form and thus refers to walking to oneself, just like “lech lecha.”¹¹ The reference to “the lands of the living” in the plural also refers to two aspects of “land”: to the supernal land and to the physical land.
These two lands also allude to two aspects of will, because the word “land” (אֶרֶץ) in Hebrew connotes will—“why is it called land (אֶרֶץ)? Because it desired (רָצְתָה) to do the will of its Creator.”¹² The supernal will within the soul is the desire to be included within God’s essence, which is above all reason and knowledge, even the reason and knowledge that is according to the revealed Torah given to us. The lower mundane will, the will associated with the physical land is the lower will within our soul, which follows the rationale of the mitzvot of our holy Torah, all of which are practical mitzvot to be performed in the mundane and physical reality.
According to the two interpretations above, the service of “lech lecha” calls upon us to free ourselves from our self-image— composed of both our innate self-image, together with the self-image that has been shaped over the course of years spent in pursuit of material and spiritual success for the sake of aggrandizing ourselves both to ourselves and to others—and to see our individual self as it is rooted and included within the all-inclusive Congregation of Israel (“go forth and see”¹³).
“Lech lecha” from below to above means his going out from the separate individual to the collective—to the general soul of the generation, the soul of the “tzaddik yesod olam” [the tzaddik who is the foundation of the world],¹⁴ the extension of Moses that is present in every single generation.¹⁵ That is, he identifies with the collective inasmuch as he is “bound up” [achid] within the soul of the Nasi, the leader of the generation, who stands, from his shoulders upward, taller as it were than all the people of his generation,¹⁶ except that from the height of his stature he continually descends, “from the mountain to the people,”¹⁷ to provide the people, all types of goodness, whether physical or spiritual. Every single person must see himself as included within the soul of the tzaddik from which we learn the service of complete submission and giving over of oneself to fulfill the instructions of the tzaddik to his generation.
“Lech lecha” from above to below means his going out from himself, as a man of stature, to identify, with everlasting honesty, with the collective specifically as it is reflected in the plain folk, to feel himself dwelling among his people (in his land), giving of himself to the other (who appears lower than him) with a true love of Israel, with all his heart and soul, to do good for him with all that is within his power, in body and in soul. Here his own essence is reflected in the other who is lower than him in particular, and, in general, in the people of his generation, according to their condition and standing wherever they may be (“and you shall seek from there”¹⁸, and consider this well).
DISCOvERINg ONE’S TALENTS
W of “lech lecha” there is, as it were, e thus find that in the instruction a thing and its opposite. On the one hand, man is instructed to be independent—free of all dependencies. On the other hand, he is shown that the way to this is the way of absolute nullification of the sense of having a separate ego. The opposites point to freeing yourself from your false separate and particular self and aspiring toward your true self, which is rooted within the collective—both the collective that is above you, whose embodiment in our world is the tzaddik of the generation, and the collective as it seemingly stands below you, the people of your generation as they are.
The truth itself provides the guidance and instructions needed to pursue it. There can be no independence for a Jew—not for the individual nor for the collective— except by nullifying the ego and returning to Zion and to Jerusalem.
Returning to Zion refers to a return to “the point of Zion”—also known as the inner point of the heart—where the will, the deepest yearning of the heart (רְעוּתָא דְּלִיבָּא) can be found. This is where one experiences the supernal will within the soul, will that lies above all rational thought. Likewise, the value of “Zion” (צִיּוֹן) is the same as “Joseph” (יוֹסֵף)—for he is the tzaddik yesod olam, the tzaddik who is a foundation of the world for that generation.
Returning to Jerusalem, whose name literally means “the wholeness of awe [of God],” within the people of Israel, regardless of their state. Regarding each individual, Jerusalem refers to the lower will, which follows the Torah’s rationale and the knowledge it reveals. Practically speaking, Jerusalem reflects the service of tzedakah, both spiritually and physically, the commandment referred to simply as “the mitzvah” in the Jerusalem Talmud.
Parents must entrust their children with true educators who are aware and dedicated to their role¹⁹: to help his student develop the special talent with which he was graced from Heaven out of an awareness (which flows from the educator to the student) that the entire purpose of the use of his talent is not in order to build his character—that is, to cultivate a separate ego, God forbid—but rather to serve as a means of going out from his first self (his first nature), in search of his true self, as it is included within the collective.
The student must understand that his talent or talents were entrusted in his hands from Above in order to bring about nachat ru’ach above and nachat ru’ach below. To the extent that he devotes his talents, and their utility, for holiness, for God, for His Torah, and for His people, so will he fulfill within his soul, “go to yourself, from your land, etc., to the land that I will show you.”
A pARTNER IN CREATION
O his Promised Land, he will be able nce the student merits coming to to reach a complete and true actualization of his talent; he merits to express his innermost and truest self through the use of his own special talent, a thing that was not at all possible for him before his coming to the land.
The story of Genesis, as it precedes Abraham and continues through his life, parallels the stages in the development of every individual’s special talent:
Before arriving in the Promised Land, the individual resembles Noach who is described as one of “those with little faith”²⁰ (מִקְּטַנֵּי אֲמָנָה)—which can also be read as “those of little artistry” (מִקְּטַנֵּי אָמָּנוּת)— indicating that he is not yet capable of fully bringing forth his true artistic talent. Indeed, the calling of every Jew is to be a partner with the Holy blessed One in the work of Creation—“the work of an artist’s hands.”²¹ The Sages interpret the verse, “[working] with the king in his craft”²² as describing the souls of the righteous whom God consulted before Creation. However, the more literal meaning of the verse is that those who are close to the king are those who work with him in his craft. Thus, the goal of every Jew should be to become a partner in Creation, using his or her talents to benefit all of Creation.
When that happens, one merits to see how the promise God made to Abraham— “all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you”—comes about automatically and of its own accord, i.e., without the need to aggrandize oneself before others. Rather, when the individual’s talent is fully revealed and applied, “I will make your name great” and its influence spreads over the entire world.²³ This is also what happened to Abraham who ultimately came to “Emek Shaveh, that is, the King’s Valley.” It was so named because it was “the valley where all the nations agreed and crowned Abraham over them.”²⁴
1 Genesis 12:1–3. 2 Mei HaShilo’ach writes in the beginning of his commentary on Lech Lecha: Our patriarch Abraham began to investigate and seek after the root of his life once he realized that it is inconceivable that all the desires of this world cannot be defined as “true life.” For all worldly desires only serve to remove the numerous worries and obstacles we face. Once all worries are negated, what is the true core of life upon which the world was created? To answer this question, God said to him, “Lech Lecha,” meaning “Go forward” to yourself, to your true source, for truly anything else in this world cannot be called “life,” and the main point of life you shall find in yourself. “You will rejoice in God, in the holy One of Israel you will glory” (Isaiah 41:16), this is what life is. 3 Note that the Land of Israel was divided into plots by a lottery (Numbers 26:55), indicating that the connection between individuals and the plots where they live in the Land of Israel was determined with super-rational authority. 4 Proverbs 22:6. 5 Amidah, first blessing. 6 Exodus 15:2. 7 See Rebbe Hillel of Paritch, Pelach HaRimon, beginning of Lech Lecha. 8 See Keter Shem Tov (Kehot ed.), 26. 9 Eiruvin 13b. 10 Psalms 116:9. 11 Yechezkel 1:14. 12 Bereishit Rabbah 5:8. 13 Song of Songs 3:11. 14 Proverbs 10:25. 15 Tikkunei Zohar, 69. 16 1 Samuel 9:2; 10:23. 17 Exodus 19:14. 18 Deuteronomy 4:29.
19. An individual who did not benefit from such a relationship must at least become his own educator. 20 Sotah 48b. 21 From the liturgy of Yom Kippur (“as clay in the hand of the potter”). 22 1 Chronicles 4:23. 23 A well-known Chasidic expression, in the name of the Rebbe Rayatz. 24 Rashi on Bereishit 14:17 (based on Bereishit Rabbah).
