Mental Health in the Parsha – Parshat Lech Lecha – Leaving Everything You Know
This is Shabbat Aliyah, and what is happening right now is genuinely something to behold. People are packing up entire lives and moving to Israel in numbers that are hard to wrap your head around. Families, singles, retirees, kids. Leaving good jobs, close friends, aging parents, the house they raised their children in, and getting on a plane toward a country at war because something in them said it was time to come home.
It is one of the most inspiring things I know. And I want to say something this week that does not usually get said out loud in all the celebrating. It is also really, really hard. Not just logistically. Emotionally. And this week’s parsha knew that three thousand years ago.
The first oleh
The whole thing starts with two words. לך לך. Go. Hashem tells Avram to leave and go to a land He will show him, and with that, the first aliyah in history begins. Avram is, in a real sense, the first oleh. Everyone making the journey now is walking a road he opened.
But look at exactly how Hashem describes what Avram has to leave. מארצך וממולדתך ומבית אביך. From your land, from your birthplace, from your father’s house. Three things, and the order is strange. If you were listing them by distance, you would go the other way, leave your father’s house, then your town, then your country. The Torah lists them backwards on purpose, and the chachamim noticed. It goes from the easiest to leave to the hardest. Your country is an abstraction. Your hometown is more personal. But your father’s house, the people, the smells, the kitchen table, the place that made you who you are, that is the one that tears.
Anyone who has made aliyah, or any big move, knows that order in their bones. The paperwork and the plane ticket are not the hard part. The hard part is the people you are leaving, and the version of yourself that only exists in the place you came from.
“To a land I will show you”
And then there is how little Avram is actually told. אל הארץ אשר אראך. To the land that I will show you. Not “to this specific place.” Just, go, and I will show you when you get there.
Think about the uncertainty in that. He leaves everything solid for a destination he cannot even picture. That is aliyah too, and honestly it is most big leaps of faith. You jump before you can see where you are landing. You trade a life you understood for one you do not yet, on the strength of a feeling that this is the right thing.
That uncertainty takes a real toll, and we do not talk about it enough. The not-knowing. Will I find work. Will my kids adjust. Will I ever stop feeling like a foreigner in the one place I am supposed to belong. Living inside that open question, for months, sometimes years, is exhausting in a way that has nothing to do with whether you made the right choice. You can be completely sure you did the right thing and still find it brutally hard. Both of those are true at once, and neither one cancels the other.
The famine comes almost immediately
Here is the detail that I think every oleh needs to hear, and it is one we tend to skip right past. Avram follows the call, uproots his whole life, finally arrives in the Promised Land, and then, almost the moment he gets there, ויהי רעב בארץ. There was a famine in the land.
Read that again. He does the brave, faithful, enormous thing. And his reward, right out of the gate, is hardship. The dream he was promised meets a hungry, difficult reality before he has even unpacked.
If that is not the experience of so many olim, I do not know what is. You arrive full of purpose and emotion, you kiss the ground, and then comes the bureaucracy, the banking you cannot figure out, the language that moves too fast, the career you built over decades suddenly not counting for much, the loneliness of a Shabbat table with no one you have known longer than a month. The famine comes almost immediately. And when it does, a quiet, cruel voice starts whispering, maybe you made a mistake.
I want to say this as clearly as I can. The hardship is not a sign that you got it wrong. Avram got it completely right, and the famine still came. Arriving somewhere holy does not mean arriving somewhere easy. The struggle after the leap is not evidence of a bad decision. It is just the shape of a real beginning.
He did not go alone
There is one more detail that matters enormously for anyone in the middle of this. When Avram leaves, the Torah says he took Sarai, and Lot, and והנפש אשר עשו בחרן, the souls they had gathered in Charan. He did not go as a lone hero. He went with his person, with family, and with a whole community of people they had drawn close over the years.
That is not a footnote. That is survival. The single biggest protection against the loneliness and disorientation of a move like this is not grit. It is people. Avram, the model of faith, did not white-knuckle his aliyah in isolation. He brought his people, and he kept building community everywhere he stopped, putting down roots, calling out, making connection wherever he pitched his tent.
If you are making this journey, the most important thing you can do for your own mental health is refuse to do it alone. Find the people. Say yes to the Shabbat invitation even when you are tired. Let the veteran olim adopt you. Ask for help with the bureaucracy out loud. Building your community is not a distraction from your aliyah. It is the aliyah.
“Do not be afraid”
And here are the words I hold onto most. Later in the parsha, when Avram is worried and low, Hashem comes to him and says אל תירא אברם אנכי מגן לך. Do not be afraid, Avram, I am your shield.
Notice when that reassurance comes. Not at the triumphant start, when he is full of excitement. It comes later, in the harder middle, when the fear has set in and the first thrill has worn off and the doubts have crept up. That is exactly when it is needed, and exactly when it tends to arrive. The promise is not that there will be nothing to fear. It is that he will not face it unprotected and unaccompanied.
To every person deep in the hard middle of this right now, long past the exciting part and not yet at the ease you were hoping for, that word is for you too. The fear is normal. It does not mean you are failing. And you are not facing it alone, not from Above, and not, if you let people in, from beside you either.
What we can carry
None of this is me having it figured out. It is just what I want us to carry this Shabbat Aliyah, for everyone on the road and everyone who loves someone on it.
Expect the grief, and let it be allowed. Leaving is a real loss, even when you are running toward something wonderful. You can be overjoyed to be here and still cry for what you left. Both belong.
Do not read the famine as a verdict. The hardship after the leap is not proof you were wrong. Avram got it right and it was still hard. A holy choice and a hard road live together.
Refuse to do it alone. Community is not a luxury of aliyah, it is the lifeline of it. Find your people, and let them find you.
Know that the fear usually comes in the middle. The hardest stretch is often after the excitement fades and before the belonging sets in. That is not the end of the story. It is the part right before the promise.
And if the weight of it gets too heavy, reach out. Starting over in a new country, in a new language, sometimes in a war, is one of the most stressful things a human being can do. Needing support through it is not weakness. It is wisdom.
Avram left everything on the strength of two words and a promise he could not yet see. The famine came, the fear came, and he kept going, with his people beside him and his faith just barely ahead of him. Every oleh is walking that same ancient road. May it lead all of us home, and may the hard middle give way, in its time, to the belonging we came for.
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If any of this is sitting close to home, please reach out. In Israel, ERAN’s emotional first-aid line is 1201, with English-language support available. In the US you can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Wherever you are, a local crisis line, your doctor, or one person you trust is a good place to start. Nobody should walk this road alone.
Dedicated l’ilui nishmat Zev (Will) Shakin, z”l, who loved Israel and lived v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha. May his memory be a blessing, and may his light keep reaching the people who need it.
Mental Health in the Parsha is a weekly series on the weekly Torah portion and what it can offer us right now. These thoughts are meant for reflection and conversation, not as a replacement for professional mental health care.
