VAYETSE_GENESIS XXVIII,10 – XXXII,3

Yaacov must leave his father’s home when told that his brother Esav decided to kill him because he had stripped him of his birthright and obtained the father’s blessing by a ruse. Rivkah, their mother, upon learning of Esav’s intentions, urges Yaacov to go to Charan, to her brother Lavan’s house. The Torah says, “Vayifga baMakom,” and Yaacov encountered the place. The place in which he lay on a stone and dreamt. For our Chachamim, Makom, place, is also a reference to God, because He gives room to everything. God is the “place par excellence” because without Him there is no room for existence. They also point out that the word Vayifga can also be interpreted in the sense of prayer, that is, Vayifga baMakom, which implies that Yaacov prayed to God in that place.

Our Chachamim believed the Torah was not given in a vacuum. Prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai, there were exceptional people who guided their lives according to many of the principles listed later in the Torah. They suggest, for example, that the patriarchs complied with all these precepts that were enunciated centuries later, thanks to their prophetic sensibility.

According to the above, our Chachamim claim that Avraham established the norm of reciting Shacharit, the morning prayer. Yitzchak was the one who gave rise to the prayer of Minchah in the evenings, and Yaacov, in the mentioned account, established the prayer of Arvit or Ma’ariv, the evening prayer.

Yaacov is an individual of great sensitivity; as our text indicates, he is a dreamer. This time he dreams of a ladder that connects heaven and earth and observes how angels of God go up and down the rungs. This image is important because it confirms that heaven and earth are not two incompatible and separate entities, such as spirit and body according to some traditions. Indeed, one can climb rung by rung, and thus ascend from the mundane to the heavenly. There is, in fact, no absolute dichotomy between the material and the spiritual. They are different manifestations of a single whole.

In the same dream, Yaacov hears the Divine promise that the land on which he is lying, with one stone per pillow, will be given to him and his descendants who will be as numerous as the dust of the earth. Ufaratsta,” and you will spread” through all the cardinal points and you will be a source of blessing for all, affirms the text. The Lubavitch Hasidic movement has taken this word Ufaratsta  as a motto, considering it an imperative to search for our brothers in all parts of the globe and to bring to them the message of our millenary tradition.

Yaacov wakes up and recognizes that he is in a sacred place and makes a solemn promise. “If God were with me and took care of me on the path I took and gave me bread to eat and clothing to wear when I return to my father’s home in peace, then HaShem (a word that also means God) will be my God”. The verse seems to be a condition on Yaacov’s part. It is as if I say, “I will be faithful to you God, as long as You provide me with clothing and food”. Our Parshanim, the expositors, have difficulty with this affirmation and, according to some, it is Yaacov’s promise to remain faithful to the one God, even though he is far from the paternal home, in this, the beginning of his exile.

Let us remember that we are at the dawn of our faith and many of the principles that are part of our education, today, were novel discoveries at that time. In subsequent chapters, we will read about Yaacov’s fear of coming to his son Yosef’s call to reside in Egypt. Yaacov fears “going down” to Egypt. God comforts him by saying, Al tira merdah mitsraimah…, Anochi ered imcha; “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt…, I will go down with you”.  Yaacov learns that the Deity is not confined to a geographical place. God is not the God of a specific locality only. God is everywhere. Indeed, one cannot hide or run away from God.  Melo chol ha’arets kevodo: “His glory completely fills the universe”.

There are those who emphasize Yaacov’s expression, Lechem le’echol uveged lilbosh, “bread to eat and garment to dress”, alluding that it is obvious that clothing is for dressing and bread is for eating. It is therefore worth asking, given that the Bible is especially frugal with words: why the redundancy? Some respond by saying that there are times in life when one can enjoy material abundance, but the state of health does not allow one to eat. Therefore, Yaacov’s request was twofold: to have the bread and at the same time to have the possibility and the opportunity to consume and taste it.

Because that’s not always the case. What value did Jewish mansions have in Nazi Germany in the forties? What was the consideration given to the Jewish scholars who contributed so much to their remarkable universities and, consequently, to German culture? Neither material goods nor intellectual achievements were valid at the time when there was a total eclipse of reason and humanism, the darkness that permitted the genocide of just decades ago.

Arriving at his uncle Lavan’s house, Yaacov falls in love with his daughter Rachel and, to marry her, offers to work for free for seven years. Both sides agree, but at dawn after their wedding night, Yaacov discovers, Vehine hi Le’ah, the woman next to him, in his bed, is Le’ah, Rachel’s older sister. Recall that Rivkah, Yaacov’s mother, had placed a veil over her face the first time she saw Yitzchak, thereby hiding her face.

We already pointed out that this is where the tradition comes from that every bride covers her face during the wedding ceremony. Was the veil of Le’ah, perhaps, so thick as to hide the bride’s face? Our Chachamim, aware of the difficulty of explaining the deception that Yaacov suffers, suggest that Rachel and Yaacov had agreed on certain secret signs with each other, and it was Rachel herself who revealed to Le’ah the signs agreed with Yaacov, so that, being the eldest of the sisters, she could marry first, as tradition points out. Today we would think, perhaps, that Rachel’s altruism was excessive. Filial fidelity must also know certain limits. In the darkness of the night, Yaacov is satisfied that Rachel is the one next to him, hearing the secret words they had agreed upon.

Yaacov decides to add another seven years to his servitude so that he can also marry Rachel. Yaacov loves Rachel and rejects Le’ah. God cannot contemplate hatred of a wife and allows only Le’ah to be fruitful and conceive. Her firstborn, Leah names Re’uven, re’u ben, “look, a son” concluding that now, having given birth to a future heir, her husband will love her. The births are successive, and the fourth child is called Yehudah, as an expression of her gratitude to God.

And why have waited for thanksgiving until this birth? Moreover, each additional birth was less vital to their marital relationship. It may be a question of teaching that every birth is an extraordinary event. If we were to ask parents who have half a dozen children if they miss the one who is not there when they sit at the table, we will confirm that this is so. Conception and pregnancy, giving birth, and seeing a human being grow, with his intellectual and spiritual capacity to perceive the world (it is our intellect and our human conception of the universe, which gives existence and reality to it) is a transcendental fact. Our personal obligation is to develop, to the best of our ability, the multiple talents, and aptitudes with which we have been endowed by the Almighty.