 The Parsha starts out with, Vayeitzei Yakov mi’Be’er-Sheva, Vayeileck Charanah - And Yakov left Be’er-Sheva and went to Charan.” (Genesis 28:10)
Rashi comments, “It could have just said , and Yakov went to Charan.” Obviously we know from the previous parsha that Yakov was in Be’er Sheva. We also know that in order to get to Charan, he had to leave Be’er Sheva. So why was it necessary to tell us that he left Be’er Sheva?
Rashi says that when a tzadik leaves a place, his absence leaves a mark, and the city felt it when he left.
I would like to present a different perspective.
There’s a saying in Baseball – “You can’t steal second with your foot on first. “
In order to go from place A to place B, sometimes we keep ties to the previous place. And it prevents us from moving forward.
So the Torah is telling us that in order for Yakov to go to Charan, he had to cut his ties and leave Be’er Sheva, and say, ”OK, I’m finished here, let’s go on to the next place.”
It also involves a certain amount of trust on the part of Yakov and the rest of the Avos, in that Hashem says go and you go, and you don’t worry about what happened before, because you know that Hashem is going to take care of you wherever he sends you.
On Simchas Torah, when we dance Hakafos with the Torah, when we finish each Hakafah , the Gabbai calls out, “Ahd Kahn Hakafa – This Hakafah is over.” Time to move on to the next one.
The concept is mentioned in several other places in the Torah.
In Parshas Lech Lecha, Hashem says to Avram (Genesis 12:1), “Go, for yourself, from your land, your birthplace, and from your father’s house . . . “
Where?
“ . . .to the land that I will show you.”
“Right now, you have to leave. You have to trust. “
Then, by the Akeidah, Hashem says to Avraham (Genesis 22:1), “Take your son, your only one, whom you love, Yitzchak, and bring him up as an Olah (an offering) . . .”
Where?
”. . . on one of the mountains that I will tell you.”
We all have GPS’s today, in our cars, and hopefully, sometimes, they work. And in order to get where you want to go, when you start, you have to put in directions – I want to go here.
Imagine if you went to the airport and said to the ticket agent,
“Give me a ticket.”
“To Where?”
“ Well, I don’t know. I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
It doesn’t work that way. You would get nowhere, fast.
So the Torah is telling us that a lot of times we have to trust that Hashem will guide us.
It’s brought out again in the parsha of Bekurim (Deuteronomy 26:1,2) “You shall take from the first of every fruit of the ground that you bring in from your land that Hashem, your G-D, gives you, and you shall put it in a basket and go . . .”
And where do you go with it?
“. . . to the place that Hashem, your G-D, will choose, to make his name rest there.”
The lesson here seems obvious. The Torah is telling us that, unlike a GPS system, which doesn’t always work, we have the Ultimate GPS up in Shamayim, which is HaKadosh Boruch Hu. And if He tells us to go and do something, we don’t need all the final directions. The lights don’t all have to be green before we start out. We don’t have to have the road mapped out for us. If Hashem says “Go,” we have to trust that He will tell us where to go and He will guide us when we get there.
It’s a big lesson for myself and perhaps for all of us.
May we always have that bitachon (faith) in Hashem, to know that He is guiding our every move, every day, so we don’t have to worry about the details. We just have to start, and Hashem will get us there.
Where? Where He wants us to go.
A story is told about the Rambam. He was the doctor for the Sultan and was close with him. They were actually friends.
One day, the Rambam was walking by the palace and the Sultan asks him, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?!”
“I don’t know.”
The Sultan gets very angry and throws him in jail.
The next day, the Sultan regrets losing his temper and let’s his friend and physician out of jail. And he asks him,
“Where were you going yesterday?”
“I was going to my office.”
“Then why did you say you didn’t know where you were going?”
“You see, I didn’t end up at my office. Instead, I ended up in your jail. So I really didn’t know where I was going. I only knew where I intended to go. G-D knew where I was going.”
May we always trust in Hashems’ guidance. He knows where we are going.
Copyright © 2009 – Heshie Klein, MD
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