“How you climb amount is more important than reaching the top.” 
…and God said to Abraham, “cut the tip of thy willy and forever be self-conscious in groupeth showeriths…and get rid of the ham in your name….Abram, you will be the father of a nation.”
Yes people this is the parshat where Abraham is first approached by God to be the first Jew and where the covenant of circumcision is made between the seeds of Abraham and God. It is an exciting and important part of the Jewish narrative as it is this line that has spawned the most ancient of all Jewish traditions and hilarious one liner comedy acts.
I like to look at this parsha as a symbol of the journeyman. God asks Abram to, “Lech Lecha” to go forth and leave his home, his father and memories and create new ones in a new land and God. This is the first Journey of the Torah and the start of the Journey of the Jewish people.
Abraham starts his new Journey with a very clear start point, move to Cannan and wait further instructions. The Journey always has an initial motive even if the motive is journey for journeys sake.
A journey is never simple and it’s never about the start and end, it’s about all the good and bad in between. I like to think that we gain more from the process then the end result. I spent 13 years in an educational institution and at the end of that journey I gained a numbered result, a tangible conclusion to the end of the biggest chunk of my life to date. I don’t think the end result was the most important thing I got from my years in high school. Through the process I learnt how to interact with others, I learnt the importance of fun, I learnt how to recover from heart break and anger and I started to shape the person I am today.
You can’t always be so focussed on reaching the end goal otherwise the path to get there is far less enjoyable and you miss out on so much living in between. It’s the process that makes us strong and the rights and wrongs along the way which help us grow and develop.
”You can’t compromise the process, otherwise you’re an asshole when you go in and an asshole when you come out, it’s all in the process.”
When Abraham embarked on this journey he never could have imagined what would become of it, all the joys and heartaches, the wars and the birth of a nation. He started this journey knowing he would never see the end, because he understood importance of the process and path.
I encourage us all to embrace our journey of life and make the process one of substance and meaning. I think Yvon Chouinard said it best when he said, “The best journeys answer questions that in the beginning you didn’t even think to ask.”
Aleh Ve’Hagshem
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