This week’s Parsha, Parshat Lech Lecha, starts off by Hashem telling Avraham to “Go for yourself from your relatives and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” The OraChaim comments on this and explains that Avraham sacrificed leaving everything behind and do as he was told. He also explains that the 3 blessings (which were: be blessed by wealth, make a great nation from him and make his name known) that Avraham was promised by G-d would still be given to him if he had not left the land. However, Avraham still sacrificed everything he had anyways and left the land with the right intentions.

Last week in Parshat Noach, Noach only built the ark because G-d told him to, he only told people that would walk by the ark that Hashem was going to destroy the earth if they don’t do teshuva because G-d said so, so here there were no right intentions, which is one reason why it took him 120 years to build the ark which Rashi explains. Noach and Avraham were very different leaders and that was because Avraham’s intentions were greater than Noach’s. When you do something with the right intention, it means you think what you are doing is the right and you know it will benefit you somehow (even if you do not know what that somehow is).

Rabbi Sac’s, bring down an idea that despite the fact that leaders lead, that does not mean they do not follow, but the way they follow is different because they do not do things only because other people are doing it but because that’s what they believe is the right thing for them to do. They look ahead and think to themselves why is this the right thing for me to do, is this going to benefit me? Is this going to benefit me the people around me? We constantly want to become leaders and not become followers but as long as we follow with the right intentions and not care what others think then essentially we are all a leaders.