“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

This week’s parsha, Lech L’cha, is all about change for its central character, Avram. In just a few chapters, Avram goes through several dramatic changes in his life:

• Spatial: he hears the command (“Lech L’cha”) to leave his home in Charan
• Financial: with God’s blessing, he becomes wealthy in cattle, gold, and silver 
• Familial: after leaving his own father, Avram becomes a father himself when his first son, Ishmael, is born
• Physical: as a sign of his covenant with God, Avram undergoes the first brit milah

It’s at this stage that Avram undergoes another change in his identity by taking on the name Avraham (Abraham). Some of Avram’s changes are personal, redefining his own understanding of who he is; others are public, refocusing how others would see him. Changing his name might actually accomplish both – I think about Muhammad Ali, having changed his name two years prior, yelling “What’s my name?” at his opponent in the middle of a fight. In that moment, recognition of who he was – who he demanded to be – was the battle for Ali.

We usually think of consistency in people as a sign of their trustworthiness, and even their honor. There’s some truth to that – saying that “You always know what you’re going to get” from someone tends to be a pretty high compliment. But it’s worth taking a few moments to consider how the people in our lives (ourselves included) have changed for the better over time.

Nobody is better suited to answer this question than parents. How have your kids changed in the past year, or even the past month? What new priorities have they picked up, and what have they left behind? What difficult choices have they made, bringing on new responsibilities and relationships?

Give yourself that credit, too. How have you changed as a parent? What pieces of yourself do you feel more confident in now than you did before your kids were born? What difficult choices have you made, and what joys have you experienced because of it?

The changes we make – the changes that perfect us – are sometimes the small, day-to-day tweaks like driving a little bit slower or brewing your own coffee at home. But they’re also the dramatic, life-altering shifts: leaving your hometown, taking a new job, even changing your name. And while staying the same might make you reliable, Avraham’s trajectory in Lech L’cha reminds us that there’s beauty in the change, too.

Warmly,
Ezra Suldan, Family & Community Engagement Manager