I once read in Simon Sinek's book Start With Why, a fascinating story about what made Apple stand apart from every other company when Steve Jobs started it. It wasn't only the innovation, and it wasn't just the technology. There were other companies just as advanced, some even ahead. The real question Sinek asked was even larger than that. How did Apple go from simply producing Macintosh computers to breaking into the music industry, the phone industry, the video industry, and nearly every creative market, and not only enter but lead each one?
After interviewing Apple executives and exploring their culture, Sinek found a simple but revolutionary truth. At every board meeting, Steve Jobs would ask one central question: "How can we challenge the status quo?" If everyone is doing things this way, if people are listening to music that way, if technology works like this, how can we look at it differently?
Our Parsha, Lech Lecha, begins with that same question. Avraham Avinu, our first forefather, is the first person in history to truly challenge the status quo. The Midrash describes how Avraham searched for the Owner of the castle. He observed the sun and thought, perhaps this is god, until it sank. Then the moon, and it too disappeared. He kept searching. What was he really doing? He was asking why. Why does the world exist? Why is everything here? Why am I here? And that question led him to the greatest discovery of all, the Creator Himself.
But the Torah goes even deeper. God tells Avraham, "Lech lecha me'artzecha umi'moladetecha umi'beit avicha", leave your land, your birthplace, and your father's house. These are three layers of identity and comfort. Your land represents the culture around you. Your birthplace represents your community and society. Your father's house represents the deepest habits and values you were raised with. Each is a status quo of its own.
Avraham is told to leave them all, not necessarily physically, but spiritually, mentally, emotionally, to break through the layers of comfort and convention in order to find truth and purpose.
That is what makes Avraham not only the father of faith but also the first entrepreneur, the first innovator. He saw the world as it was and dared to imagine how it could be. He left behind the comfort of what was known to discover the infinite potential of what could be.
In our lives, this message echoes powerfully. If we want to find Hashem, if we want to grow spiritually or personally, we must be willing to challenge our own status quo. Maybe we need to pray differently, to learn differently, to invest more heart and more time. Maybe we need to step out of our element, out of our comfort zone, and look at life with new eyes.
Like Avraham and like the greatest innovators of every generation, the path forward begins with one question: Am I ready to challenge the way things have always been so I can discover what I am truly meant to become?
Faith, like innovation, begins when we dare to ask why and refuse to stop until we find truth.
Shabbat Shalom Rav Shlomo