This Week’s Torah Portion: Vayeitzei – וַיֵּצֵא (Genesis 28:10−32:3)
“Surely יהוה is present in this place, and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16). We can only learn and acquire knowledge when we realize we do not know. When we think we are smart and know it all, we are ignorant and not very smart.
This Week’s Torah Portion: Vayeitzei – וַיֵּצֵא (Genesis 28:10−32:3)
וַיִּיקַ֣ץ יַעֲקֹב֮ מִשְּׁנָתוֹ֒ וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אָכֵן֙ יֵ֣שׁ יְהֹוָ֔ה בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א יָדָֽעְתִּי׃
As Jacob awoke from his slumber he said, “Surely Adonai is in this place and I did not, I did not know.” (Genesis 28:16).
When Jacob flees to his uncle to escape his brother, he stops in a particular place to sleep. After having an awe-inspiring dream of angels ascending and descending on the mystical ladder and encountering God, Jacob wakes up to a startling revelation—God was with him all along; he just needed to pause to recognize it. This Shabbat, I pray we can all take a moment to pause and open ourselves to the possibility of experiencing the Divine in even, if not especially, the most unusual of places. Shabbat Shalom!
This Week’s Torah Portion: Vayeitzei – וַיֵּצֵא (Genesis 28:10−32:3)
Jacob dreams about the ladder with messengers of God going up and down on it. Jacob gets up and says, “Surely Adonai our God is present in this place, and I did not know it.”
To realize that God is present, we need to know it. To acquire knowledge, we need to realize we do not know it yet.
The path to any kind of knowing is realizing we do not know, and the path to having God in our lives is the quest for knowledge.
This Week’s Torah Portion: Vayeitzei – וַיֵּצֵא (Genesis 28:10−32:3)
During Jacob’s first night “on the run” from his brother Esau, he falls into an unusual dream. Jacob dreams of a sulam, a ladder extending from the ground to the sky, with Malachei Elohim- Angels of God ascending and descending the rungs. (Genesis 28:12) The Hebrew word for ladder, Sulam, means both “ladder” and “musical scale.” In teaching from his Guide for the Perplexed, Rambam explains that there was a class of Angels dedicated to singing songs before God. So, we might understand Jacob’s ladder as a kind of musical scale, with singing angels ascending and descending along with all of the prayers of humankind.
Rabbi Jacob ben Asher also posits that prayerful song is a ladder: “Sulam has the numerical equivalence of kol-voice-since the sound of the prayers of the righteous is a ladder for angels to ascend.” (Ba’al HaTurim on Genesis 28:12) Through our songs and our prayer-songs, music provides an anchor in the form of a sulam- ladder, that we might climb rung after rung to the heavens above. Just as Jacob ultimately discovers his best self in becoming Israel, the father of the Jewish people, may the music of our souls move us to our highest place; where we can discover our best selves, and emulate our spark of divine holiness in our daily lives.
This Week’s Torah Portion: Vayeitzei – וַיֵּצֵא (Genesis 28:10−32:3)
This is one of my favorite lessons on this week’s Torah Portion, Vayeitzei. It is a story called,
“Opening Your Eyes” from the Book of Miracles by Lawrence Kushner. It goes like this:
Reuven and Shimon hurried along among the crowd crossing through the Red Sea.
They never once looked up.
They noticed only that the ground under their feet was still a little muddy – like a beach at low tide.
“Yucch!” said Reuven, “there’s mud all over this place!”
“Blecch!” said Shimon, “I have muck all over my feet!”
“This is terrible,” answered Reuven.
“When we were slaves in Egypt, we had to make our bricks out of mud, just like this!”
“Yeah,” said Shimon. “There’s no difference between being a slave in Egypt and being free here.”
And so it went, Reuven and Shimon whining and complaining all the way to freedom.
For them the Sea did not part. There was no miracle, only mud.
Their eyes were closed. They might as well have been asleep.
Something like this once happened to Jacob, our father.
He dreamed of a ladder joining heaven and earth.
Upon it angels were climbing up and down.
Then God appeared and talked to Jacob.
When he awoke the next morning, Jacob said to himself,
“Wow! God was in this very place all along, and I didn’t even know it!”
The great Biblical commentator Rashi explained what Jacob meant:
“If I had known that God would be here, then I wouldn’t have gone to sleep!”
To be a Jew means to wake up and to keep your eyes open to the many beautiful, mysterious, and holy things that happen all around us every day.
This Week’s Torah Portion: Vayeitzei – וַיֵּצֵא (Genesis 28:10−32:3)
The story of Jacob’s Ladder is one of the most luminous spiritual moments in all of the Torah. Our wayward ancestor Jacob, having set forth on a journey he is totally unprepared to complete, lays his head down in the darkness of a desert night and dreams of a ladder that connects heaven to earth with God standing beside it, blessing Jacob on his journey. When Jacob awakens from his dream he says: “God was in this place and I, I did not know.”
What is the meaning of Jacob’s dream? Well, here is an interesting bit of gematria, mystical mathematics, based on the numerical value of the letters of each word of Torah. The Hebrew word for a ladder is sulam. The numerical value of the letters in that word (samech, lamed, mem) is 130. The value of the letters in the word Sinai (samech, yud, nun, yud) is also 130.
Jacob’s Ladder is a lesson on the presence of God in all of our lives. We expect to see God in the once upon a lifetime, Mount Sinai, miraculous moments of our lives. What Jacob discovers is that God is with us always and everywhere, in times of thanksgiving and in times of need.
“Where is God? Wherever we let God in.”
This Week’s Torah Portion: Vayeitzei (Genesis 28:10−32:3)
“Surely Adonai is in this place, and I did not know it” (Genesis 28:16)
True knowledge can be acquired only when we realize that we do not know. True encounter with the Divine can happen when we realize we do not know.
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)
“Surely Adonai is in this place, and I did not know it” (Genesis 28:16)
True knowledge can be acquired only when we realize that we do not know. True encounter with the Divine can happen when we realize we do not know.
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)
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