Parshat Lech Lecha: Breaking Free From Your Past and Childhood Patterns

Abraham is known as Avraham HaIvri, Abraham the Hebrew. To be a Hebrew means to see beyond what the physical eye can perceive. It means recognizing that we are capable of rising above the limitations of nature. Being Jewish means living beyond the boundaries of what seems naturally possible.

This applies to our emotional lives as well. Very often, we struggle to free ourselves from childhood experiences and painful memories. We carry the wounds of our childhood and the emotional pain of our past into the present, unable to leave behind what happened long ago.

Lech Lecha: A Journey Beyond the Past

Hashem tells Abraham: “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house...” (Genesis 12:1).

At first glance, the order of this verse seems strange. Logically, Abraham should first leave his father's house, then his birthplace, meaning his hometown and immediate surroundings, and finally his country. So why does the Torah list these places in the opposite order?

Because this commandment is not merely about a geographical journey.

Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin, citing the great Chassidic masters, explains that a person is wherever their thoughts wander. Wherever our minds are focused, that is where we truly are. A person can be sitting in a synagogue, but if his thoughts are occupied with business, then mentally, he is not in the synagogue at all. He is at work. If I open my prayer book and begin to pray, but my mind is wandering through the shopping mall, then in a sense, that is where I am.

When Hashem commands Abraham to leave his land, his birthplace, and his father's house, He is teaching him something much deeper. First, leave behind the habits and patterns of the country in which you grew up. Stop returning to them, even in your thoughts. Next, take a more difficult step. Leave behind the habits and influences of your hometown, the attitudes and behaviors you absorbed from your surroundings.

Finally, and most difficult of all, leave behind the habits and patterns you acquired in your childhood home. Do not carry them with you into the new life that Hashem is showing you.

You Are Not Destined to Repeat Your Childhood

Women sometimes tell me, “Hagit Shira, sometimes I hear my mother's voice coming out of my own mouth, and I'm shocked. Where did that come from?”

They become deeply frustrated. “My mother was always angry, and now I'm angry too. What can I do? My father struggled with depression, and now I struggle with depression. Everything I witnessed growing up seems to be repeating itself in my own home.”

It does not need to be this way. Abraham teaches us that we can make our own Lech Lecha. We can rise, leave certain habits behind, and stop allowing them to dominate our thoughts. We can open a new door, begin a new journey, and learn to live beyond the limitations of our past.

Abraham grew up in a home filled with idol worship, yet he chose an entirely different path. Consider Rebecca, who was raised in an environment steeped in corruption and spiritual impurity. And think of our matriarch Rachel. Look at the kind of father she had and the deeply troubling environment in which she grew up.

And yet, our patriarchs and matriarchs knew how to separate themselves from the negative influences of their past. They chose to build new lives, lives guided by holiness, goodness, and spiritual purpose. Their beginnings did not determine their futures, and neither must yours.

You, too, can choose a different path. You can leave behind the patterns that no longer serve you and create a new life, one filled with goodness, spiritual growth, and sweetness.