Lech L'cha -- 5777

“Look around from where you are, to the north and the south, to the east and the west.”  These are God’s words to Abram in Genesis 13, and I think they are vital today.

We – myself included – have cloistered ourselves beyond what’s healthy. Our cities and states offer segregated experiences. We encounter people of a different socio-economic class only across a counter, not in truly shared space. The generations don’t mix much. Facebook is America’s primary source of news, and its algorithms feed us what we want to consume. We are rarely challenged with a fact or opinion with which we disagree.

Rather than cocooning ourselves in our personal realities as we have done, Americans are called to look around ourselves and to understand in a deep and meaningful way the experiences of those who are different from us:

• The retiree who lives in a mobile home, and the retiree who lives in a condo by the beach.
• The urban high school dropout, and the Ivy League lawyer.
• The father whose job isn’t coming back, and the mother who loves to work.
• The immigrant taxi driver and the new recruit.
• The former foreman and the savvy CEO.
• The hungry and the full, the young and the old, the eager and the scared, and everyone in between.

We are America, those at the edges and those in-between. This nation’s greatest challenge has always been how to be One while, at the same time, being Many.

How can we accomplish this? By going out of our way to talk and listen to others. By reading books from different points of view. By visiting each other’s homes rather than another Starbucks. By taking a trip to an undiscovered part of the country. By subscribing to a news source that doesn’t confirm our existing biases. By popping the bubble that’s become an echo-chamber of our own thoughts.

We are no doubt each entitled to believe and vote as we will. But we are not entitled to believe that ours is the only opinion that counts, nor to denigrate the experiences of others. We owe it to ourselves, to our fellows, and to our descendants, to understand the contours of other peoples’ lives.

“This land is your land.  This land is my land. From California to the New York Island. From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me.”