What is God’s first command to Abraham and in essence, God’s first command to every Jew? God tells Abraham: “Go to you, from your land, your birthplace and your father’s home to the land which I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). At first glance, this is hard to understand. What does God mean by, “go to you”? Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt explains: ‘God is telling Abraham to leave behind the influences that have shaped his value system: his land – his society; his birthplace – his peer group; his father’s home – his family. God says to Abraham: Don’t allow these influences to determine your beliefs in life. Don’t allow yourself to be a simple product of your environment, rather: “Go to you.” Go to yourself, Abraham. Look deep inside and find out who you are. And don’t let anyone else tell you. Trust yourself, because ultimately that is all you have to trust. Truth, God tells Abraham, is to be found within every one of us. But we are usually so busy seeking it from without, that we don’t notice what is right in front of our eyes, within. This is a shocking philosophy for a religion to give its adherents, let alone as its first command. Forget what your family tell you to be true. Forget what your friends say. Forget what society says is true. Look inside yourself, and trust what you know to be true.’
One of the underlying themes in the Torah is the importance of developing a sense of gratitude. Even the most spiritual person is liable to fall into the trap of ungratefulness. As Abraham approaches Egypt, a place of danger, after many years of marriage he says to his wife Sarah, “Now I realize how beautiful you are.” It seems that when he realized that he might lose her, he became aware of how much she really meant to him. Rabbi Ron Jawary comments: ‘One of the battles in life is to avoid this danger of becoming accustomed to people and things, and allowing this familiarity to deprive us of our sense of gratitude.
Unfortunately, we so often neglect to realize what we have until it is too late. The Talmud tells us that, in order to help us avoid this pitfall, we should spend a few moments before we partake of any pleasure in the world to say thank you to the Almighty. We should do this even for those things that we all take for granted.
By making a blessing before partaking of any pleasure we protect ourselves from becoming insensitive to the beauty and pleasure inherent in them. We can also take the most mundane moments of our lives and elevate them into a sublime experience, using them as stepping stones to reach the Divine. As King David said, “With every breath I take, I will praise the Divine.”
Prepared by Devorah Abenhaim
