"Mikedem"

I find it absolutely mind boggling how Avraham was such an amazing human being! He seemed to do everything right. He was the ideal man that God was waiting for all of the years after Adam sinned! He listened to God and left his homeland behind. He never even had children along the way, which Hashem promised to him and, yet, he continued to spread the word of God. Incredible!

Something that completely threw me off was when there was a mention of the word "Mikedem." We learned that this word is used in a negative way to mean that the people were moving further and further away from perfection/ the way that God wanted them to be. However, in this case it was used with a positive meaning. Avraham went to Cna'an, the land that God showed him, and moved further and further into the land to spread the word of God. I was just so surprised when we read this and found that it was being used in a positive way! This just goes to show that a man as great as Avraham had endless possibilites. He didn't necessarily know where he was going, but he went. He did as much as he could to spread the word of God, even though he was in a foreign land that he didn't recognize. We can take this as a lesson that we can still be religious Jews in exile. We can continue our faith and not be ashamed of who we are. We do not need to go around preaching our religion to others, but we should be able to practice our religion to the best of our ability and be proud of it!