(Delivered October 23, 2026)
When I was in rabbinical school, one of the concepts that we played with a lot was different notions of time. Many of us live our lives unquestioningly in the realm of everyday time. We busy ourselves with tasks and appointments, we monitor how quickly we walk, the pace of our beating hearts, and how many things we can fit into a 50-minute hour. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, we measure out our lives in coffee spoons. This is a mode that can feel energizing, and deeply alive. But also when busy-ness masquerades as fullness, we can grow numb and weary.
But every week our tradition invites us to take on a different understanding of time. From sunset on Friday through sheer darkness on Saturday, a full twenty-five hours as measured by everyday time, we enter a space that is anything but everyday. In this other world, time is measured not in coffee spoons but in deep breaths, in songs, in prayers, in moments of profound connection. On Shabbat, we can connect to one another, to ourselves, to our tradition, and to the divine. Shabbat opens up a space inside us and around us that fills not with busyness, but with fullness itself.
Our Torah portion this week, Parshat Lech Lecha, begins with God speaking to Abraham—here still called Avram—and saying לֶךְ־לְךָ. Go, go! Famously, the grammatical construction of the phrase לֶךְ־לְךָ is curious. Dayeinu—it would have been sufficient for God to say לֶךְ—go! The second part of the phrase, לְךָ is a little harder to translate. It can be merely a particle of emphasis, a sort of “this means you.” But many commentators rightly point out that there’s a suggestion of reflection or even mysticism in this emphasis. The word לְךָ can mean to yourself, or for yourself, or toward yourself.
These shades of meaning open the possibility that God’s instruction to Avram is a spiritual invitation as much as a geographical one. God is telling him, there’s more to you than you know, more to this world than you realize. And finding it will mean finding yourself. Later in the parsha, in the section we’ll read tomorrow morning, Avram is called עִבְרִי—boundary crosser.
If we braid these valences together, the ideas of going to ourselves and of crossing boundaries, Shabbat Lech Lecha becomes an invitation to move beyond the everyday routines and rhythms, to cross a boundary in time, and to find ourselves in a place of stillness and peace. And when we do this, when we go to ourselves, perhaps it feels like coming home.
