רפואה מן התורה
Healing from the Torah
Last week we met Jacob for the first
time, a young kid who was a crafty opportunist, clearly needing to grow up. Still, it is most interesting that for our Rabbi’s the short comings of Jacob did not take away from his righteousness
given his desire for God and Torah. Toldot
ended with Jacob’s father (Isaac) and his mother (Rebekah) encouraging him to
flee his home. Now the stated reasons
were two-fold. First, Esau was going to
kill him, and second, they wanted to make sure that Jacob selected a good wife. On a practical level we are reading a story
about a young boy who is trying to find himself now as a young man, a development
that will occupy the next few Torah readings. As such, this week we are in Parashat Vayetze, Genesis 28:10-32:3,
as we continue to encounter the person and voice of Jacob.
Vayetze are the
first words we read, ויצא
יעקע מבאר שבע, “And
Jacob left Beersheba …” I
guess we can take it at face value “why” he left, but let’s develop it a bit
more. Both Abraham and his grandson
Jacob would leave their places of birth.
God commanded Abraham to better himself by leaving his homeland with no idea where he
was going, while Jacob left at his parents beckoning given the reasons above with
a clear destination in store (his uncles home to the North). Likewise, both Abraham and Jacob would visit
Mt Moriah, the place where Abraham took
his son Isaac and the place where Jacob would dream a very important dream. But
the differences are just as worthy to note. Abraham left his home as a married man, with
an established family in toe, as a pioneer for the future. Jacob was raised in a home of Torah (tradition), single and unburdened with possessions and/or expectations, not on a
mission ordained by God but by his own choice.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg would say that for Rashi Jacob’s leaving was to
find the right mate, in connection with Genesis 2:24, where Rashi previously taught that the right mate was opposed to those who come from
idolatrous homes. Maimonides differed
slightly from Rashi simply because animals also procreate with their partners,
thus it was a deeper connection of soul. Whatever the case, Sforno notes that the
“place that Jacob encountered” after he left Beersheba was not a “planned
on destination.” It was there Jacob’s
travels would take a new turn.
This place, Mt Moriah, would be the place
where Jacob had a very significant well known dream. Here, ladders went from the
heavens to the ground with angels descending and ascending upon them. Rashi says that the angels descended to
escort Jacob upon his journey and ascended to connect Jacob to God. Sfrono in
the end said that God will “stand guard” over Israel. But this dream is also significant
for Jacob personally and his “expectation” of God. After the dream where God affirms the Covenant with Jacob as he did before hand, we read, “And, behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you
go, and will bring you back into this land; for I will not leave you, until I
have done that which I have spoken to you of.” In response Jacob
is recorded as saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way
that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and clothing to put on, so that I
come back to my father's house in peace, then shall the LORD be my God and this
stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house; and of all that
Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto You.” Jacob is saying; Okay God, you’re going to
watch over me and that is a deal maker, so I will make the journey as your partner for the
sake of the future promises of Israel and the repair of our world.
That is one heck of a dream with a pretty hefty meaning, one that for Sforno meant that Jacob believed God would “remove from him (i.e. Jacob) all oppression and obstacles [that] bring [mankind] to transgress the Will of [their] Maker,” thus we read in the Talmud, “Three matters cause a person to act against his own will and the will of his Maker, and they are: idolaters, and an evil spirit, and the depths of extreme poverty” (BT Eruvin 41b). In modern day language maybe we can better say; bad people, a lack of morals and ethics and financial burdens. How can Jacob be protected from life? How can we be protected from life? Those life challenges are here to stay, and really it is what do we do with such encounters. That being the case, the first thing Jacob faces after that dream is 20 years of labor for his uncle that included broken promises and deception. Now don’t hear that wrong, Jacob got a lot too, the woman he loved (in fact 4 wives), a bunch of children and wealth. But it did not go the way that he expected and/or wanted.
I have more than once in my life been faced with challenges that called for rebuilding, and it was during those times I had to take a step back and admit I had expectations of how God should have intervened based on how my view of things. A life of faith is not about expectation but the openness to let life teach us how faith operates. There is great story I learned from my Rabbi, Ed Feinstein, about a little boy who wanted to know the secrets of God. This young boy goes to study with a Rabbi who asks him to find a place to live, secure a profession, find a wife, have children, and to address life after the loss of a loved one. In the end the student appeared before his Rabbi who tells his disciple that the differing stages of life taught him the mysteries of God, thus God does not exist in what you study alone but what you learn from life's experience. As we continue to look at Jacob we will see how his perceived expectations of God, and life itself, became two very important teachers. Call it God, or call it spirituality, but I suspect we all learn to varying degrees from those same teachers.
That is one heck of a dream with a pretty hefty meaning, one that for Sforno meant that Jacob believed God would “remove from him (i.e. Jacob) all oppression and obstacles [that] bring [mankind] to transgress the Will of [their] Maker,” thus we read in the Talmud, “Three matters cause a person to act against his own will and the will of his Maker, and they are: idolaters, and an evil spirit, and the depths of extreme poverty” (BT Eruvin 41b). In modern day language maybe we can better say; bad people, a lack of morals and ethics and financial burdens. How can Jacob be protected from life? How can we be protected from life? Those life challenges are here to stay, and really it is what do we do with such encounters. That being the case, the first thing Jacob faces after that dream is 20 years of labor for his uncle that included broken promises and deception. Now don’t hear that wrong, Jacob got a lot too, the woman he loved (in fact 4 wives), a bunch of children and wealth. But it did not go the way that he expected and/or wanted.
I have more than once in my life been faced with challenges that called for rebuilding, and it was during those times I had to take a step back and admit I had expectations of how God should have intervened based on how my view of things. A life of faith is not about expectation but the openness to let life teach us how faith operates. There is great story I learned from my Rabbi, Ed Feinstein, about a little boy who wanted to know the secrets of God. This young boy goes to study with a Rabbi who asks him to find a place to live, secure a profession, find a wife, have children, and to address life after the loss of a loved one. In the end the student appeared before his Rabbi who tells his disciple that the differing stages of life taught him the mysteries of God, thus God does not exist in what you study alone but what you learn from life's experience. As we continue to look at Jacob we will see how his perceived expectations of God, and life itself, became two very important teachers. Call it God, or call it spirituality, but I suspect we all learn to varying degrees from those same teachers.
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