Navigating The Crossroads of Life - Lech Lecha

 Life is
filled with crossroads. When we come to these crossroads, do we imagine that
when choosing left or right, even if the two paths veer only slightly
differently from one another, do we realize that as we continue in a direction,
our choices eventually bring us to totally different places.  

Think about
the crossroads of your own life ?  

Do I go to
this School or that  

Do I marry
him or him  

Do I go into
this business or that  

Do we live
here or there  

Each of
those decisions sets us into a direction which brings us to other crossroads
and other directions.  

Think of two
lines on a piece of paper which start out together, then one veers one way and
the other, the opposite way. Can they meet again? Maybe? Or they go off the
paper never to see each other again.  

One may
represent what we could have been had we taken certain crossroads and another
the road we actually take.  

We can
rarely be aware of the absolute consequences of each of those decisions at the
time we face them. Sometimes we think nothing of it, but that decision changed
everything.  

In the
television series Star Trek there was something called the prime directive
warning not to interfere in the development of a planet. We see this also in
science fiction with time travel often called a temporal prime directive. The
idea is that one small amount of interference, one seemingly inconsequential
meddling and redirection can potentially shift an entire society or world into
a different path.  

In our
world, Maamad Har Sinai – the revelation at Mount Sinai was Hashem shifting the
world and its reverberations are still being felt.  

Moses tells
us  

אֶֽת־הַדְּבָרִ֣ים
הָאֵ֡לֶּה דִּבֶּר֩ הֹ’ אֶל־כׇּל־קְהַלְכֶ֜ם
בָּהָ֗ר מִתּ֤וֹךְ הָאֵשׁ֙ הֶֽעָנָ֣ן וְהָֽעֲרָפֶ֔ל ק֥וֹל גָּד֖וֹל וְלֹ֣א יָסָ֑ף 

Rashi: We
render this in the Targum by ולא פסק “and He did not cease”, — as the Gemarah
writes in Sanhedrin: for His voice is strong and goes on continuously  

In this
perasha which features the first words from Hashem to Abraham, advice was given
relating to the path we take in life  

Lech Lecha  

On Saturday
evening when some went out for seuda shelishi, a few of us began discussing two
statements brought by the Zohar which some can suggest might be among the key
instructions on living life and dealing with the crossroads we face. 

I saw a
beautiful statement from Rav Yakov Nagen 

He writes:
My teachers taught me that the first four parshiot of the book of Bereshit,
“Bereshit,” “Noach,” “Lech Lecha” and “Vayera,” are a summarized guide to
spiritual enlightenment. From one’s initial phase, “Bereshit,” one must come to
a place of “Noach,” a place of calm and tranquility.  

From there
he can continue to “Lech Lecha,” the phase of journey. The double language of
“Lech Lecha,” “go unto yourself,” teaches that the journey is a journey inward,
and through this process a person comes to “Vayera elav Hashem,” the revelation
of G-d, enlightenment.  

This week,
parshat Lech Lecha, we will study the aspect of the journey itself. 

The Zohar
HaKadosh in one place explains that the double language of “lech lecha” calls
on a person to embark on a journey into himself: “lech lecha unto yourself…to
know and to fix yourself” (Lech Lecha 67b-68a).  

In an
awesome teaching in Orot HaKodesh, R