Yoel's Lemonade Stand

I've been thinking about real estate.

Not in the usual sense. Not about square footage or school districts or whether the kitchen needs updating. I've been thinking about the real estate deal that G-d offers Abraham at the beginning of this week's portion.

"Lech-Lecha," God says. "Go forth. Leave your country, your birthplace, your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you."

Now, I don't know about you, but this strikes me as possibly the worst sales pitch in history.

Imagine if I came to you and said, "I want you to leave everything you know. Your home, your family, your business connections, your entire support system. And in return, I'm going to give you... something. I'll show it to you when we get there. Trust me."

You'd think I was selling swampland in Florida.

And yet Abraham goes.

The text doesn't tell us that Abraham agonized over this decision. It doesn't say he made a list of pros and cons, or consulted with financial advisors, or took a preliminary scouting trip to check out the neighborhood. It just says: "And Abram went, as the Lord had spoken to him."

This has always puzzled me. Abraham was, by all accounts, a successful man in Haran.

Seventy-five years old. Settled. Comfortable. Why would any sensible person abandon all of that on the basis of a promise with no specifics?

I think the answer is in the phrasing of G-d's command.

"Lech-Lecha"—literally, "Go to yourself" or "Go for yourself."

G-d isn't just telling Abraham to take a journey. He's telling him that the destination is, in some essential way, who Abraham already is. Or who he's supposed to be. In other words, the land G-d will show him isn't just a geographical location; it's the fulfillment of Abraham's own nature.

In advertising, we have a saying: "People don't buy what you sell, they buy what they are." Or what they want to become.

So Abraham wasn't buying land. He was buying (or perhaps discovering) himself.

Now, I'll grant you that this is not a particularly practical approach to life. I cannot recommend that everyone reading this quit their jobs tomorrow and wander off into the wilderness in search of their true calling. Your families would not thank me, and I suspect your rabbis would have strong words for me after services.

But here's what strikes me as genuinely radical about this portion: Abraham is asked to give up certainty for possibility. And he does it. At seventy-five.

Most seventy-five-year-olds I know are not in the business of radical reinvention. They've made their peace with who they are. They've settled in.

Abraham refuses to settle.

Later in the portion, G-d tells him: "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to

count them. So shall your offspring be."

Again, notice what G-d doesn't say. He doesn't say, "You're going to have exactly 2.3 children, they'll live in comfortable homes in the suburbs, and your retirement will be secure." He says: Count the stars. If you can.

You can't, of course. Nobody can count the stars.

What G-d is offering Abraham here is something that cannot be quantified, cannot be guaranteed, cannot be reduced to a contract with specific deliverables. He's offering him infinity. Or at least the possibility of it.

And so now that I think about it,  this seems to me a pretty good deal, actually. Certainly better than most of the deals (or marketing decisions) we make in our daily lives, where we trade the possibility of greatness for the certainty of adequacy.

As I tell all my clients… There are no guarantees in marketing. And anyone who gives you one is either lying or doesn't understand what marketing is. Marketing is like a casino. Except the odds are really in your favor because it’s a casino where you can count the cards, see the dealers and hands, and where the more famous you are, the greater your chances of getting lucky become. But it’s still a casino, and there are an infinite number of reasons why a campaign or ad or idea might not work.

The only person who guarantees such things is G-d, and as successful as I have been for myself and my clients, even I am not G-d.

Most people embarking on a new marketing campaign understand this, which is why most business people spend their entire business in Haran. It's comfortable in Haran. We know where things are. We understand how the system works. The cost of living is reasonable.

But as a famous Apple ad once said, “No one ever got fired for recommending IBM. But no one ever got promoted either.” And nobody ever became the father of nations by staying in Haran.

The covenant that G-d makes with Abraham (the brit) is not a transaction. It's not "You do this, I do that, and we call it even." It's a relationship that extends across generations, across centuries, across the very fabric of history.

And it starts with two words: "Lech-Lecha."

Go. Become.

I don't pretend to have Abraham's faith. I don't pretend to hear voices telling me to pack up and leave for destinations unknown. But I do think there's something in this portion that speaks to anyone who's ever felt the pull of something larger than themselves or their business or whatever decision they are hanging on the fence about. Anyone who's ever wondered if there might be more to life than what they can see from their current vantage point.

Abraham went. At seventy-five. With his wife, his nephew, and a promise he couldn't fully understand.

And here we all are, thousands of years later, still talking about it.

That's not a bad return on investment.

Justin Oberman is the Marketing Editor of the LA Jewish Home and a copywriter, ghostwriter, and brand advisor to startups, Fortune 500 companies, and leaders. He can be reached at Justin@obermanpartners.com