Location! Location! Location!

Much of my life I have asked the question 'who am I?'...Surely self knowledge is core to spiritual growth...But of late I have come to a new question...one equally compelling and yet a question I had not thought so important.....'where am I?'....
For much of my life I thought where I was...the address of my existence...was an accident of my life...I could be here or there or anywhere for that matter...and it would make little difference...Who I was mattered...where I was was interesting but not consequential...

I have come to see that the address of my existence is core to my identity....and no accident...The Yisrael (my name) here...is not the same as the Yisrael who might be over there...anymore than the Yisrael who is the child of Joseph and Hannah (my parents) would be the same as the Yisrael who might be the child of some different parents...Place is central to who we are...Its no wonder that meshane makom meshane mazal...'if one changes ones place one changes one's fortune'...changing one's place for the mourner is the equivalent of changing one's name for the ill...

I came to understand that as I read the parsha of this week and noticed how often Moshe was called by Hashem to go to confront the Pharaoh as he goes out to the water...not in his palace...not in his royal habitat...but out by the Nile...why?...Why is Moshe told to go seek the Pharaoh out there?

I believe the answer is that for Pharaoh to be able to hear the message of Hashem he would have to be in a different place than the setting in which he was the god and all obeyed him...As long as Pharaoh was in the palace he would be unable to become the person he needed to become in order to listen to the will of Hashem...In the palace the context, the trappings, the social setting would all conspire to make it impossible for Pharaoh to be anything other than who he was..the obstinate god figure...who would destroy his people rather than admit wrong....Moshe is told to meet Pharaoh when he goes out to the water...when he is human...where he bathes and defecates like everyone else...where he can be free to be himself...and there ask him to 'Let my people go'.
In a different place Pharaoh can be a different person....and hope is possible!

The place where we inhabit defines us...It sets the boundaries and the parameter for what is possible...No matter how much we might wish to be other...unless we put ourselves in a different place it will be near impossible to make the changes we yearn for...Too many externals will keep us locked in...the expectations of others, the routine of our lives, the social norms around us...they all keep us from making radical change...In the context of our lives we are as stuck as Pharaoh...and the only way to make real change is to change our locus as much as we change our internal selves...

Coming to Israel did that for me....Change I could only wish for before became possible and real once I made aliya...For some of you I suspect there have been other changes in location as you sought a context to realize your spiritual yearnings. When we change our external settings we have a freedom to be and become...We are not constricted by the expectations of others or by the social norms...We do not worry about who we are offending or who will view us a inauthentic....We have no past that inhibits us...no fears that intimidate...We are free to be who we are meant to be

Changing where we are can make the formerly impossible real...Does it take courage to move one's space...of course...But without the external change one can spend one's whole life spinning a wheel in place with nothing ever getting done...To change the inside alone without a concomitant change of ones location is near impossible...If I want to be happy with 'who I am' ...I would do well to look to 'where I am ' and know that the answer to the one will say much about the possibility of the other...