You don't have to be ready "We think relationships are built on understanding. The Torah's first words to Abraham say otherwise."
If you ask most people what holds a marriage together, they will tell you some version of “love” or “really knowing each other”.
A greater truth might be that a marriage is built on the things you actually do for each other, day after day, long before you fully understand why.
Strange as it sounds, that's the secret of the Jewish connection to Hashem. The Torah hints to this message in the introduction to the very first Jew.
This week's portion, Lech Lecha, opens with G-d's call to Abraham: “Go out from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house." The commentator Ramban noticed something odd: When introducing Noah, the Torah told us he was "a righteous man", while Abraham gets no introduction at all. No mention of being righteous", of him smashing idols, nor about teaching the world about one G-d. Just a straight command: go. And he went. Why doesn’t the founder of the Jewish people get an introduction?
That silence is actually the point. The Torah leaves out Abraham's résumé on purpose. The foundation of a Jew's bond with G-d was never his own greatness, how much he understood, or how spiritual he felt. It's something far simpler: G-d asked, and he went.
Everyone else arrives at G‑d from the bottom up. They reason their way to Him and then act. A Jew is the reverse: G‑d reached down and chose us first, so the bond is carried in the doing.
The foundation of the relationship is doing what the other asks.
G-d asks of Abraham to "leave your land". The word for land, eretz, shares a root with ratzon, will. He also says “from your father's house", referring to the comfortable logic of your own mind. Even Abraham, already spiritual and devoted to Hashem, is told to break out of his mold. Real connection begins the moment I do what G-d wants not because it moves me or makes sense to me, but only because He wants it.
We often say: first let me understand more, believe more, feel ready to connect, and then I'll begin. But at Sinai, our ancestors said it in the opposite order: na'aseh v'nishma, "we will do, and then we will understand."
You don't master swimming on dry land and only then get in the water. You get in. The doing isn't a reward, it's the doorway to understanding.
Don't wait to feel spiritually ready. Pick one thing; a blessing before you eat, a few coins in a tzedakah box (or the app here), a line of Shema before bed, checking the mezuzah on your door, the Tuesday course on key concepts from kabbalah and how they come together to answer some of life’s biggest questions, and do it.
Not because you've worked out exactly why, or even how. As Nike says “Just do it”.
Take that single step. Take it because Hashem asked. That is how Abraham began. It's the foundation of any relationship, including our relationship with Hashem. It not just how we keep the relationship intact, it’s how we make the relationship alive.
Wishing you and your family a wonderful Shabbos,
Rabbi Kushi Schusterman