“Go Forth…and Find Your Authentic Identity”

Each year, Jews read a chapter of the Five Books of Moses, in synagogue, completing the cycle over 52 weeks. This week we read the third chapter, known as Lech Lecha, which means “Go Forth.” This is what G-d tells Abraham. Leave your country, and go forth. “And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing.” Abraham gathers up his household and obeys, leaving the green pastures of Haran for an uncertain future.

Biblical commentators say “Go forth” means “Go forth and find your authentic identity, and then become it!.”   So even though he is 75 years old, Abraham sets out to find his true self, and when he does, he will become the founder of the most powerful innovation in history – the notion that there is only one G-d, along with the ethical principles that accompany that idea. He will be revered, not only as the forefather of the Jewish religion but Christianity and Islam as well.   

There is a useful message in this chapter. Innovators travel very great distances in their quest for relevant novelty. But the greatest distance they must travel is within themselves. Like Abraham, we must find and define our authentic inner selves, before finding and defining how we will change the world and discovering how we will, like Abraham, be “a blessing.”  

Sometimes, this inner journey is long. As Nietzsche counseled, “Become yourself!.” But how can we become ourselves, if we do not yet know who we are? And unless, like Abraham, we begin this journey, and go forth, we will never arrive.             

If Abraham could undertake it, at age 75, what about those who are only 25?   

Go forth, my friends, go forth. There is no time to waste.

abraham 
“And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing.”