One Verse, Five (or more) Ways to Hashem - The Last Torah I learned with my Grandma

Jacob left Beer-sheba, and set out for Haran. He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and messengers of God were going up and down on it. And standing beside him was ה', who said, “I am ה', the God of your father Abraham’s [house] and the God of Isaac’s [house]: the ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and to your offspring. Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants. Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely Hashem is present in this place, and I did not know it!” Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.” Early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He named that site Bethel; but previously the name of the city had been Luz.

ואנכי לא ידעתי AND I KNEW IT NOT — for had I known it I would not have slept in such a holy place as this.

ויפגע AND HE LIGHTED — ... Our Rabbis explained it in the sense of “praying”, just as (Jeremiah 7:16) “Neither make intercession (תפגע) to me”. Thus we may learn that Jacob originated the custom of Evening Prayer. Scripture purposely changed the usual word for “praying”, not writing יתפלל, “And he prayed” (which would have been the more appropriate word, but ויפגע which means to hit upon a place unexpectedly), to teach you also that the ground shrunk before him (the journey was miraculously shortened) as it is explained in the Chapter גיד הנשה (Chullin 91b).

וישב AND HE ABODE — Jacob wished to live at ease, but this trouble in connection with Joseph suddenly came upon him. When the righteous wish to live at ease, the Holy one, blessed be He), says to them: “Are not the righteous satisfied with what is stored up for them in the world to come that they wish to live at ease in this world too! (Genesis Rabbah 84:3)

אכן יש ה' במקום הזה, there can be no question that this is a location from where the gift of prophetic insights is dispensed, seeing that I have been granted such an insight without even having expected it or prepared myself for it spiritually. It is a fact that the characteristics of a person undergo changes in the land of Israel just as the climate and very air in this country are different, contribute to one’s mental and spiritual progress. Our sages have phrased this (Baba Batra 158) as “the very air of the Land of Israel makes one wiser.”

ואנכי לא ידעתי, if I had realised the special distinction of this site I would have prepared myself mentally for receiving these Divine insights.

...Furthermore, we can see from the order of his words that he did not speak about the holiness of the place. For if so he would have said "in this place, God is" instead of "God was in this place."

There is a midrash [in Genesis Rabbah 69:7] that says that Jacob awoke not from his sleep (mishnato) but from his Mishnayot (mimishnato). From this we learn that the essence of a person's worship is to come to perfect service of God and to grasp the meaning of God through both Torah and tefilla. hTere cannot be one without the other, because an ignoramus does not become a pious Hasid; and conversely, one who says, “there is nothing in the world for me except Torah” does not have even Torah. It is true that by studying Torah for the sake of heaven and cleaving one’s soul and one’s very being to the letters of the Torah, a person can achieve great holiness; but a person can only truly fear and love and yearn for God through prayer, and through the surrendering of the self that prayer entails, as we know from all our holy books. Our sages of blessed memory taught that when Jacob had his dream at Beit El, he established the evening prayer, Arvit. Until this point, Jacob had not known the secret of prayer. God did not reveal Himself to him until he became aware of its tremendous power.

And this is the meaning of the midrash that says that Jacob awoke from his Mishnayot – that is, he awoke from his study of Torah, for he had been studying for fourteen years in the yeshiva of Shem and Ever [between his exit from Beer Sheba and his journey to Haran]. Upon awakening, he realized that Torah alone would not bring him to a full awareness of God. Jacob said, “Surely the Lord is present” – meaning that through prayer, he was able to better understand God than he ever could through Torah alone. “And I did not know it” – meaning that I did not know the tremendous power of prayer, which enables us to come to know God in full fervor, and brings us, therefore, to the gates of heaven.

This “I, I did not know,” means I did not know myself at all. I was not aware of myself at all, but only of the unity of the Holy One, Blessed Be He.

(1) “I am in the midst of the exile” (Ezekiel 1:1). The inner, essential “I"...“We and our forefathers sinned” (Psalms 106:6). Adam sinned. He was alienated from his essence. He turned to the consciousness of the serpent and lost himself. He did not know how to give a clear answer to the question, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9), because he did not know himself, because he had lost [his] true “I,” with [his] sin of bowing to a strange god. [The nation of] Israel sinned. It “ran after foreign gods” (Deuteronomy 31:16). It abandoned its essential “I.” “Israel rejected goodness” (Hosea 8:3)...Thus does the world continue to sink, with the loss of the “I” of every [entity] – of the individual and of the whole. Learned educators come and focus on the superficial. They too remove their consciousness from the “I.” They add straw to the fire, give vinegar to the thirsty, and fatten minds and hearts with everything that is external to them. And the “I” grows progressively forgotten. And when there is no “I,” there is no “He,” and how much more is there no “You.” The Messiah is called “the breath of our nostrils, the anointed one of God” (Lamentations 4:20). This is his might, the beauty of his greatness: [that] he is not outside of us. He is the breath of our nostrils. Let us seek Hashem our God and David our king. Let us tremble before God and His goodness. Let us seek our “I.” Let us seek ourselves – and find. Remove all foreign gods, remove every stranger and illegitimate one. Then “you will know that I am Hashem your God, Who takes you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am Hashem your God” (cf. Numbers 15:41).

And one can say [the answer is] that, behold, it is brought in the Gemara that all dreams follow the thoughts of one's heart, which is that what one contemplates during the day comes to them in their dreams at night, for one has never dreamt of an elephant going through the eye of a needle for they never think about that since it's not something that happens in the world [and that is how Jacob knew his dream was true and God was there, ie he never had this contemplation during the day]...