Parashat Vayetze, Genesis 28:10-32:3

The delight of being "heard and understood" is something essential to humanity.

You know how you sometimes realize just a moment too late that a mistake has been made? We experienced that in my family this past week. We finally broke down and bought a "smartphone," one of those contraptions that allow you to access the web 24/7. Such devices should come with a warning attached, similar to the warning about the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. For the individual who mainly communicates by email, the smartphone can turn a tool of convenience into a source of addiction.

It is most astonishing how the internet, a form of communication less than 30 years old, is so much a part of our lives. The same observation was probably made about the telephone at one time. On that fateful March day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell could not even begin to imagine how his successful experiment would transform the way we live. He did make a note in his journal that in hindsight reveals much, not about the invention itself, but about the inventors. In a journal entry dated March 10, 1876 Bell wrote: "I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: 'Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you.' To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said."

The delight of being "heard and understood" is something essential to humanity. We all want to be heard, we all want to be understood. We send a message into the void, eagerly anticipating a reply. Over time, our eagerness has turned into impatience, as our modes of communication have become increasingly sophisticated. Responses need to be virtually instantaneous.

Being "heard and understood" is as old as the lessons in the Torah. Our patriarchs communicated with those around them but also had a special relationship with God. Rabbinic tradition (Berachot 26b) takes this relationship and develops it into a revolutionary form of communication with the Divine: the daily prayer services that replaced the sacrifices. The prooftext for Jacob's having instituted the Ma'ariv (evening) service is found at the very beginning of this week's parasha: He came upon (va-yifga) a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. (Genesis 28:11) The Talmud connects va-yifga to a variation of the same root in Jeremiah 7:16, where the word tifga, to intercede, is related to prayer.

If we learn about the establishment of the prayer service from the patriarchs, we can also learn much about the essence of prayer from the matriarchs, and specifically from Leah and Rachel. These two sisters, both married to Jacob, appear to be in competition to see who can provide Jacob with the most offspring. Rachel even admits to this rivalry when she names one of the sons of her handmaiden, Bilhah: "A fateful contest I waged with my sister; yes, and I have prevailed." So she named him Naphtali. (Genesis 30:8)

Their prayers and the efficacy of those prayers come through in their desire to bear children. With Leah we are told that God heeded (va-yishma) Leah, and she conceived and bore him a fifth son. (Genesis 30:17) Similarly with Rachel we find out that…God remembered Rachel; God heeded (va-yishma) her and opened her womb. (Genesis 30:22)

Apparently God does a lot of listening with the matriarchs, especially as far as babies are concerned. First we have Sarah's laughter as a reaction to the news that she will bear a son. She denies laughing to herself, but God responds "You did laugh." (Genesis 18:14) Then Rebecca encounters difficulty in her pregnancy and turns to God: But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, "If so, why do I exist?" She went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord answered her… (Genesis 25:22-3) Finally, we have the two sisters, whose private petitions we do not know, but we have the end result. In both cases God heard them, though we must bear in mind that the response was not instantaneous, neither for Leah nor certainly for Rachel.

There are other examples in the Torah of God heeding (va-yishma) human beings. God listens to Moses' plea not to destroy the people after the incident of the Golden Calf. (Deuteronomy 9:19 and 10:10) Later on, in the book of Judges (13:9), God listens to Manoah and provides him with a son, Samson.

How fortunate these individuals are to know that their prayers are heard and answered! In the Bible it is taken for granted that people have conversations with God. In rabbinic times our sages, struggling with the issue of having our prayers heard and answered, concluded that "One's prayer is heard if God is approached with heart in hand." (Ta'anit 8a) Certainly, in the instances quoted above, the fervency on the part of the person praying is evident. Yet we can all point to instances of deeply felt prayers that have had heartbreaking results. Too often, our attempts at dialogue with the Divine seem to end up as soliloquies.

Only inside can we feel if there is any reply. No activity in the world can conclusively demonstrate dialogue. Perhaps in the subjective chambers of the individual soul one may conclude that there was communication, but it is highly personal and ever uncertain. Everyone who prays struggles with the deep fear that this time, the only answer will be absence, silence.

Rabbi David Wolpe, The Healer of Shattered Hearts: A Jewish View of God

Is there a problem with us, with our mode of communication, or our expectations?

It is incorrect to describe prayer by analogy with human conversation; we do not communicate with God. We only make ourselves communicable to Him. …

Prayer is an answer to God: "Here am I. And this is the record of my days. Look in to my heart, into my hopes and my regrets." …

The purpose of prayer is to be brought to His attention, to be listened to, to be understood by Him; not to know Him but to be known to Him. To pray is to behold life not only as a result of His power, but as a concern of His will, or to strive to make our life a divine concern.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel , Man's Quest for God, as quoted in 

Modern Thinkers Reflect on Jewish Prayer , myjewishlearning.com

 To paraphrase the old telephone commercial: "Reach out and touch some One." We may not always get the response we seek; we may not even sense the acknowledgment. Then why bother to connect? Because this very act of yearning imbues our life with holy purpose.

Will you hear my voice, my distant one, 

will you hear my voice, wherever you are —

a voice calling strong, a voice crying silently 

and above time, commanding blessing?

…I shall wait for you until my life dims,

As Rachel awaited her lover.

Rachel, Sorrow Song (trans. Wendy Zierler), 

in The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p. 182

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Michal Shekel

Parashat Vayetze, Genesis 28:10-32:3

Sponsored by Marsha Swirsky and her loving family, in memory of Joel Michael Swirsky.

Sometimes we are busy looking towards our goal, be it material or spiritual; at other times we focus intently on what we've achieved.

Walk into any department store this time of year and you will be overwhelmed by the latest technological gizmo that is meant as a teaching tool for your children: toddlers to teens. Despite the fact that there are yearly lists of the "hottest" toys and games, there is nothing new under the sun. We didn't know it at the time, but the games we played as children were also meant to be instructional. My friends and I spent hours playing Chutes and Ladders. It was meant to help us learn to count from one to one hundred. What we didn't realize at the time was that it was also meant to teach us how to be decent human beings. If you landed on a square with a ladder, there was a picture of a child doing something good, and so you were rewarded by climbing up a few rows. Land on a square with a chute, illustrated with a child behaving inappropriately, and you slid down several rows.

Some of you might be more familiar with this game by a slightly different name: Snakes and Ladders. This is what the game was called when it was first introduced in Victorian England. The British brought it home from India. There it was a game to educate young Hindus. If you behaved well, you ascended to a higher level of life; inappropriate behaviour resulted in reincarnation on a lower level.

The ladder leading you to a higher state is found in many cultures, in which the ladder oftentimes symbolizes the path between our world and the godly abode. At first glance, this seems to be the case in Parashat VaYetze. After tricking his father into giving him the birthright, Jacob has run off, to escape his elder brother Esau's wrath. 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 angels of God were going up and down on it. (Genesis 28:10-12).

Ever since Jacob had this dream, his first vision, we have been trying to understand what it means. The sulam that leads to heaven is most often translated as ladder. You don't have to be a Led Zeppelin fan to come up with another translation: "stairway" to heaven. Nonetheless, sulam could also mean a ramp or a series of steps.

Of greater interest is the movement of the angels, who were going up and down on it. Why up and down, ask the commentators, why not down and up? Midrash Genesis Rabbah explains that the angels who were to accompany Jacob on his journey were descending while those who were remaining in the Promised Land were ascending. (Think of the term aliyah "going up" to the land of Israel.) A second midrash views the ladder as representing different kingdoms to which Israel would be exiled, and the divine figures represent the princes of these lands: Babylonia, Media, Greece and Rome.

Yet another midrash (Leviticus Rabbah 8:1) views God as being involved in construction. A Roman woman asks what God been up to since the six days of creation, Rabbi Jose ben Halafta answers that God has been building ladders for some people to ascend and others to descend. A Hassidic interpretation takes a different view entirely, focusing on the end of the verse ascending and descending on it (bo). Bo can also be taken to mean within it or within him. In this interpretation, the ascending and descending is dependent on humanity's prayers and actions. If a person behaves in a certain way, then the entire world is elevated, if not, the world is degraded. Or again, think of Chutes and Ladders.

The symbolism of the ladder is also found in the writings of Maimonides. While he had many philosophical interpretations of the meaning of Jacob's ladder (nicely summarized by Dr. Shaul Regev of Bar-Ilan University), I am thinking more of his simple eight rungs of tsedakah.

The relationship between our deeds and Jacob's "Stairway to Heaven" was picked up by Alan Morinis in his explanation of Mussar.

This appears to me as a good image for the spiritual life. Our feet touch the earth because we are undeniably human and should have no illusions that our spirituality will separate us from all beauty and suffering our humanity brings. But, without negating for an instant the realities of our humanness, each of us is endowed with the gift of spirit, so that we can climb the ladder of the soul to reach its heavenly heights.

"How holy is this place," says Jacob. "The Lord is here and I didn't realize. This is surely the gate of heaven."

Jacob wasn't referring to some special faraway place or an exalted shrine when he recognized that he was standing at the gate of heaven. It's right here, he said, in this totally unremarkable place, now that I realize it. When consciousness awakens to the realization that life is a journey of the soul, and embraces life just as it is, right here, then we discover that, right now, we ourselves are standing at the foot of Jacob's ladder. The steps are there before us, waiting to be climbed.

Climbing Jacob's Ladder pp. 24-5

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps with the Hassidic symbolism in mind, views humanity itself as being the ladder:

Prayer is our attachment to the utmost. Without God in sight, we are like the scattered rungs of a broken ladder. To pray is to become a ladder on which thoughts mount to God to join the movement toward God which surges unnoticed throughout the entire universe.

Man's Quest for God, p. 7

Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (aka the Kotzker Rebbe) also contemplated the sulam and arrives at a spiritual theory of relativity. He asked his students, who was higher on the ladder? The person at the top or the one at the bottom? The answer is not the obvious one - the person at the top. It depends on where one is going, on whether an individual is ascending or descending. The person at the top might seem higher, but if he is spiritually on the chute, he is actually lower than the person on the spiritual ladder.

If all this up-and-down has you dizzy, then sit back, relax and look at Genesis 28:13. While the divine messengers are busy ascending and descending the ladder in Jacob's dream, the Lord was standing beside him.

Sometimes we are busy looking towards our goal, be it material or spiritual; at other times we focus intently on what we've achieved. In both cases we forget about where we are, and more importantly, where we can find God. As we climb the ladder rung by rung, or even if we slip down the chute, God is standing next to us, always. The opportunity to experience holiness is not in the distant future, nor is it in the past. Rather, it is here at every moment. In the words of the Kotzker Rebbe: Where is God? Wherever God is allowed to enter.

Shabbat shalom,
MS