Engaging our children in the parsha

The following are some suggestions of ideas for conversations with our children by the Shabbos meals. The key here is to get the children involved through debate and stimulation.

Feel any attachment?

Have you ever been to camp and been homesick? Why should you feel this way? The answer is that a person feels a natural pull towards their home and family. Do you follow any sports? When there are two teams playing – the country where you were born and a different country, which one do you naturally want to win? Obviously, your country! Why? Again, a person feels naturally drawn towards the country where they were born and also where they live in. What does this have to do with Parshas Lech Lecha?

Lech Lecha

At the beginning of Parshas Lech Lecha Avrohom Ovinu is told to leave behind three things: his land, where he was born and his families home. Where to? To an unknown destination! Imagine someone would approach you and told you to follow him now immediately and leave everything behind. Would you listen? Of course not. The only way you might is if he offers you to go somewhere special that entices you – somewhere where you always wanted to go. However, in Parshas Lech Lecha Avrohom is told to leave behind the place he felt a natural attachment towards and head to the unknown! This helps us understand a bit why this difficult act is counted as one of the ten trials of Avrohom. Avrohom was being told to follow Hashem blindly and go against his natural instincts. Furthermore, Avrohom was not a young man. Usually, the older you get, the more you get set into your ways and are happy with routine. Here, Avrohom was told to leave behind somewhere where he had spent so many years of his life and most properly felt settled. Now he had to go away and go travelling and becoming unsettled again. This was another difficult thing to do.

Lech Lecha and Us

What does all this have to do with us? R’ Chaim Volozhin (Ruach Chaim, 5:3) explains the phraseology and emphasis of Avrohom Ovinu, our father. All his actions, nisyonois, were the first of such done by man and therefore to him they were extremely difficult. However, after doing them, to his descendants they are now part of our nature and therefore much easier for us to do. The moshol to this is like the electrician who puts in the wiring and then afterwards everyone can just use a light switch to work it. What we came out from the nisoyoin of Lech Lecha is the Jew’s unnatural arousal and feelings for Eretz Yisroel. This is all due to the hard efforts of our ancestor Avrohom.