Parashat Lech Lecha

This week's parsha is Lech Lecha, translated either as 'Get out and go' or 'Go, for your own sake'.

Abram's dramatic departure from his place of residence is described in three stages. He was to leave his homeland, leave his society and leave his family. Anyone who has experienced emigration understands that each of these three levels of leaving is painful. No matter what one's relationship with a political system or a society, each of us has an affinity to the place where we were born. No matter how tense the relationship, there is a comfort in the familiarity of language and of social mores with which we have grown up. Our family is our security and our identity. Breaking from the family is heartbreaking.

And Abram's sacrifice was not because he was expecting to arrive at a more attractive destination. He was simply told to 'Go the land which I will show you'.

Abram had to break from all that was familiar to him in order to be the father of a new nation; indeed, the father of nations. He needed to leave behind a culture that was corrupting so that he could establish a new set of values based on Divine authority. The basis of the society was to be justice, compassion and social responsibility.

Abram was to go through many more tests before he would realise his destiny and fulfil his own expectations. He was to make many errors on the way. However, by the end of the parsha he has become Abraham. He has circumcised himself and his sons as a sign of the special covenant he has with G'd and has added the letter 'he', the symbol of G'd's name, to his own.