Vayeitzei

And (Jacob) Left 28:10 - 32:3

* Jacob dreams of angels going up and down a ladder. God blesses him. Jacob names the place Bethel. (28:10-22)

* Jacob works seven years in order to marry Rachel, but Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah, Rachel's older sister. (29:16-25)

* Jacob marries Rachel but only after having to commit himself to seven more years of working for Laban. (29:26-30)

* Leah, Rachel, and their maidservants, Bilhah and Zilpah, give birth to eleven sons and one daughter. (29:31-30:24)

* Jacob and his family leave Laban's household with great wealth. (31:1-32:3)

1. A path on Jacob’s step to spiritual maturity

Where is this place? We don’t know. Nondescript on purpose.

Takes ordinary rock from ordinary place and makes it into a holy shrine. We sanctify the ordinary.

There is no place devoid of God’s presence.

Heschel - You live one of two ways - either everything is amazing or nothing is amazing.

It invites the question where is God?

God is everywhere. God is nowhere.

God was in this place but i did not know it.

God is wherever you let God in.

Angels going up ladder. Humans are the agents of change.

Italian rabbi - watching fisherman pulling boat to shore with tethered rope. If you know nothing of physics it could appear fisherman pulling shore to boat. This is mistake people. Think of prayer. We are not bringing God closer to us, we are bring ourselves closer to God.

Talmud saying - We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.

2. Another interpretation - an inner struggle within Jacob between evil and good inclination.

The line is not between good and evil. The line is within all of us. Solenitzen.

3. Ladder as a metaphor for Jewish history. There are nations that rise and oppress us but they all eventually descend as the power at the top of the ladder is God.

4. 28:20 this is first vow in the Torah. If - then conditional. Most read this as Jacob doubting God. But it’s really Jacob doubting Jacob. God if you will give me the possibilities to server you, then i will do that. Jacob’s self-doubt. Will i be worthy? Jacob doubted his own ability to be faithful, (if sin intervenes.) Doubted his capacity to withstand temptation.

Midrash written when Jews being tempted by Greek culture.

All interpretations place the responsibility on us, not God.

Though archaeological evidence indicates that Bethel had been a cultic site for the Canaanites centuries before the patriarchs, this pagan background, as Nahum Sarna argues, is entirely occluded: the site is no more than an anonymous “place” where Jacob decides to spend the night. Repetition of a term is usually a thematic marker in biblical narrative, and it is noteworthy that “place” (maqom) occurs six times in this brief story. In part, this is the tale of the transformation of an anonymous place through vision into Bethel, a “house of God.

“Surely Adonai is present in this place, and I did not know it!” is a reminder that each of us walks sightless through miracles every day. No matter where in the world we are, if we open our eyes and souls, like Jacob we just might see God.”

“In effect, any place can be God’s place if we are open to seeing God’s presence there. Our task is to be ready to discover godliness wherever we are.”

“The way to find God wherever we are, Kaplan taught, is to wittingly demonstrate the qualities we identify as godly. We may find God in the compassion we show to someone who is hurting. We may find God in the support we extend to someone who is hungry. We may find God when we stand up for those who need it most.

Notably, Kaplan also wrote, “Man’s discovery of God is God’s self-revelation to man.”5 In other words, through the very act of seeking to understand the place of God in our lives, we may in fact discover the holiness within ourselves that reflects the godliness we seek. Salvation is possible at any moment, in any place—yet another reason Jewish tradition calls God’s name “The Place.”

Excerpt From

A Year with Mordecai Kaplan

Steven Carr Reuben

“Jacob’s struggle tells us that before we can meet the other, reconcile with our enemy, find peace and acceptance, we must separate, find that space apart from others to come to know ourselves better. Fearful of his brother’s anger and jealousy, Jacob had to flee from Esau, build a life apart from him in Haran, while Rachel and Leah build their lives in the same tent, alongside each other. Rachel’s struggle teaches us that reconciliation is not a process apart from other people, but with them, and that we come to better know ourselves through the eyes of another human being. Jacob tells us that the spiritual search demands solitude. Rachel and Leah tell us that it demands engagement. In between, in the encounters of one with the other, the soul is nourished.

“Rachel and Leah teach us that reconciliation involves struggle, not only with the external enemy but also with ourselves. It asks that we see what we hate in the other as part of us. Jacob teaches us about the need for solitude, for detachment from the encumbrance of relationships and responsibilities in order to nourish the soul. Rachel reminds us that we also embark on the spiritual journey with others, that our character is formed in the midst of the demands and trials of daily life. She teaches us to find within all encounters the presence of God, and to wrest from that presence a blessing. We need both sides of the river after all. How good it is to abide for a while with Rachel and Leah, across the river Jabbok.”

Excerpt From

The Women's Torah Commentary

Rabbi Elyse Goldstein

“And he lighted upon a certain place [vayifga bamakom] and stayed 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 to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder resting on the earth, with its top reaching heaven. God’s angels were ascending and descending on it. And there above it stood God…

Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “God is truly in this place, and I knew it not.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven.” (28:11–17).

On the basis of this passage the sages assert that “Jacob instituted the evening prayer.”1 The inference is based on the word vayifga which denotes not only, “he came to, encountered, happened upon” but also “he prayed, entreated, pleaded” as in Jeremiah 7:16, “Neither lift up cry nor prayer for them nor make intercession to Me [ve’al tifga bi].” The sages also understood the word bamakom, “the place” to mean “God,” for God is the “place” of the universe.2”

“Thus Jacob completed the cycle of daily prayers. Abraham instituted shaḥarit, the morning prayer; Isaac minḥa, the afternoon prayer; and Jacob ma’ariv, the prayer of night time.”

“Abraham is morning: the dawn of a new faith. It was he who broke his father’s idols, recognizing the inner contradictions of polytheism and paganism. His religious career began with a journey away from home, birthplace and his father’s house to a new and unknown destination. Abraham represents beginning – a new chapter in the religious history of mankind.”

Isaac is afternoon. There is nothing spectacular about the afternoon, no qualitative change from dark to light or day to night. Instead there is a slow transition, an almost imperceptible shift. Isaac is the bridge between day and night, between Abraham and Jacob, two lives fraught with drama. His own life is relatively uneventful and passive. He is not the prime mover of events. Yet without a bridge we cannot cross from one domain to another. If Abraham is the iconoclast, Isaac represents the courage of continuity, without which the entire project of the covenant would die.

Jacob is night. He sees his great vision of the ladder and angels at night. He struggles with an unknown adversary at night. He ends his days in exile, at the beginning of the long, dark night of slavery. Jacob’s great strength is that he does not let go. He is born holding his brother’s heel. He refuses to let go of the stranger wrestling with him. If Abraham is originality and Isaac continuity, then Jacob represents tenacity.”

“There is, however, a more profound explanation. Note that a different linguistic construction is used for each of the three occasions that the sages site as the basis of prayer. Abraham “rose early in the morning to the place where he had stood before God” (19:27). Isaac “went out to meditate [lasuah] in the field towards evening” (24:63). Jacob “met, encountered, came across” God (vayifga bamakom). These are different kinds of religious experience.”

“Abraham initiated the quest for God. He was a creative religious personality – the father of all those who set out on a journey of the spirit to an unknown destination, armed only with the trust that those who seek, find. Abraham sought God before God sought him.

Isaac’s prayer is described as a siḥa, literally, a conversation or dialogue. There are two parties to a dialogue – one who speaks and one who listens, and having listened, responds. Isaac represents the religious experience as conversation between the word of God and the word of mankind.

Jacob’s prayer is very different. He does not initiate it. His thoughts are elsewhere – on Esau from whom he is escaping, and on Laban to whom he is journeying. Into this troubled mind comes a vision of God and the angels and a stairway connecting earth and heaven. He has done nothing to prepare for it. It is unexpected. Jacob literally “encounters” God as we can sometimes encounter a familiar face among a crowd of strangers. This is a meeting brought about by God, not man. That is why Jacob’s prayer could not be made the basis of a regular obligation. None of us knows[…]”

“If the first stage is the climb, and the second standing in heaven, then the third is bringing a fragment of heaven down to earth. For what Jacob realized when he woke from his vision is that God is in this place. Heaven is not somewhere else, but is here – even if we are alone and afraid – if only we realized it. And we can become angels, God’s agents and emissaries; we can ultimately even struggle “with God and with men” (32:28), if, like Jacob, we have the ability to pray and the strength to dream, and the openness to see the transformations that can happen in the difficult spaces between.”

“There is, though, one nuance in the text that is lost in translation, and it took the Hassidic masters to remind us of it. Hebrew verbs carry with them, in their declensions, an indication of their subject. Thus the word yadati means “I knew,” and lo yadati, “I did not know.” When Jacob wakes from his sleep, however, he says, “Surely the Lord is in this place ve’anokhi lo yadati.” Anokhi means “I,” which in this sentence is superfluous. To translate it literally we would have to say, “And I, I knew it not.” Why the double “I”?

To this, Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz (Panim Yafot) gave a magnificent answer. How, he asks, do we come to know that “God is in this place”? “By ve’anokhi lo yadati – not knowing the I.” We know God when we forget the self. We sense the “Thou” of the Divine Presence when we move beyond the “I” of egocentricity. Only when we stop thinking about ourselves do we become truly open to the world and the Creator.”

“We notice the sharp contrast with the earlier scene at which Abraham’s servant sought a wife for his master’s son at a well. Here it is Jacob, not the woman, who is active. Rolling the stone off the well is a feat of considerable strength, as well as a daring defiance of local custom, not attributes we have hitherto associated with the quiet son of Isaac. Evidently, Jacob is seized with strong emotion. He kisses Rachel; he weeps. The text at least raises the possibility that he has performed his act of bravado to impress her with both his strength and his kindness. It may be love at first sight.”

“Besides which, had Laban in fact promised Rachel? His answer, seven years earlier, when Jacob had first asked for Rachel, was curiously evasive and oblique: “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to another man: stay with me” (29:19). It may be that he had already formed the intention to deceive.”

“If we listen carefully to the text another possibility presents itself. The word Jacob uses to Laban, “Why did you deceive me [rimitani]?” is the very word Isaac used to describe Jacob’s behaviour in taking Esau’s blessing: “Your brother came in deceit [mirma]” (27:35).

The word Laban uses to describe the younger sibling is tze’ira, the word that appears in Rebecca’s oracle about Jacob and Esau: “the elder will serve the younger [tza’ir]” (25:23).

Even the sentence Laban uses to justify the deception – “It is not done in our place, to give the younger before the firstborn” – is deeply ironic. Did Laban know that this, in effect, was what Jacob had done in another place? The irony may be unintentional. Laban may not have known, but we, the readers, do. And so surely did Jacob himself.”

“What the story of Jacob, his wives and their children tells us is that love alone is not enough. There must be justice, fairness, a regard for how your sentiments impact on others. In the end it was Leah, the less loved, who gave Israel its holy tribe, Levi, and its kings, descendants of Judah.

Weaving together these two strands of love (Jacob’s intense feelings for Rachel) and justice (the deceiver deceived), the story of Jacob, Rachel and Leah turns out to be an essential prelude to the book of Exodus and the covenant between God and Israel, based on love and justice. For without justice, love is blind; and without love, justice is impersonal and cold. Jacob’s family needed both, and so do we.”

“I began by pointing out that the Torah was a text intended to be read aloud and listened to. It is the single greatest expression of faith in a God we cannot see, but only hear. Judaism is supremely a religion of the ear, unlike all other ancient civilizations, which were cultures of the eye. This is more than a metaphysical fact. It is a moral one as well. In Judaism the highest spiritual gift is the ability to listen – not only to the voice of God, but also to the cry of other people, the sigh of the poor, the weak, the lonely, the neglected and, yes, sometimes the un- or less-loved. That is one of the meanings of the great command Shema Yisrael, “Listen, O Israel.” Jacob’s other name, we recall, was Israel.

Jacob wrestles with this throughout his life. It is not that he has a moral failing. To the contrary, he is the most tenacious of all the patriarchs – and the only one whose children all become part of the covenant. It is rather that every virtue has a corresponding danger. Those who are courageous are often unaware of the fears of ordinary people[…]”

Excerpt From

Covenant & Conversation: Genesis

Jonathan Sacks