Rabbi Neal's Weekly Commentary

Copyright 2017 Neal Joseph Loevinger

Torah Portion: Vayetzei

Yaakov went on his way, and angels of God encountered him.

When he saw them, Jacob said, “This is God’s camp.” So he named that place Machana’im. (Bereshit/Genesis 32:2-3)

Good afternoon!

In the beginning of this week’s portion, Yaakov is a single man on the run from his brother, and by the end of the portion, he’s got two wives, two concubines, many children and much wealth as he heads back to the land of Israel. As he approaches the Land of Israel, he sees angels (literally “messengers”) of God, and names the place “machana’im,” or “double-camps,” a foreshadowing of the two camps into which he will divide his family as his brother Esav approaches a few verses later (but in the next Torah portion.)

The phrase machana’im, or two-camps, is not immediately clear from the context. Some commentators say the two camps were one for the angels and one for Yaakov and his family, but Rashi says there were two camps of angels. According to Rashi, one camp was for the angels who minister outside the Land of Israel, and one camp for the angels who minister in the Land. These latter had come to meet Yaakov, hence, two camps.

Now, that is a nice way of emphasizing the special relationship that Yaakov- and all his descendants, who are the Jewish people- have with the Land of Israel, but I also think it’s more than that. For Yaakov, the Land of Israel is where is family and destiny are, a family he’s been avoiding for twenty years since he stole his brother’s birthright and blessing. He was worked hard and lived by his wits since leaving home, but facing his brother and providing for his large family is a different set of challenges than the ones he’s had while living with his father-in-law.

In other words, what has helped him survive and succeed up until now may not be what he needs going forward- he now needs different angels, a different sensibility and sense of responsibility. This time, he cannot outwit his brother, but must humble himself and give respect to the one he deceived so many years before. Again, that’s in next week’s portion but the two-camps allusion is unmistakable.

There’s a business book with the title “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There:” the idea is that a set of skills or talents that help you rise to a certain station won’t be enough over the long term. This is even more true of the spiritual side of life: Yaakov’s angels outside the land may have gotten him much wealth, but only the angels of humility and repentance can lead him to offer that wealth to his brother as a peace-offering. The different camps of angels can be understood as different orientations or spiritual qualities which are needed at different stages of life. Yaakov was lucky enough to see the two camps, but guidance towards new ways of being is often right in front of us, if we too will choose to see it.

The views expressed are my own and do not reflect that of Vassar Brothers Medical Center or Health-Quest.

Copyright 2014 Neal Joseph Loevinger

Torah Portion: Vayetzei

Leah had weak eyes . . . (Bereshit/ Genesis 29:17)

Good afternoon!

This week’s Torah portion is really the beginning of the story of the Jewish people: Yaakov flees to his uncle Lavan, marries two of his cousins (Rakhel and Leah), has lots of children with his wives and their maidservants (!), and by the end of the portion is headed back to the Land of Israel. Among the most famous stories in Vayetzei is Lavan’s trickery in getting Yaakov to marry his older daughter, Leah, before her younger sister, Rakhel, whom Yaakov loved and desired.

Rakhel is described as beautiful, but we only learn that einai Leah rakot, “Leah’s eyes were weak,” [alternatively “soft,” or “tender”]. A famous midrash quoted by Rashi explains that Leah’s eyes were weak or soft because she had been crying, assuming along with other folks that if Yaakov were going to marry her younger sister Rahkel, then she’d have to marry his older brother Esav, who was not thought of as a particularly admirable character by the ancient rabbis.

On the one hand, the midrash has a certain logic to it- two sisters for two brothers, and the Torah itself mentions that the elder should be married before the younger- but on the other hand, what a great example of the human tendency to create great imaginary dramas before all the facts are in. Taking this interpretation at face value, Leah was crying over something that not only didn’t happen, but might not have been planned by anybody!

We so often think we know what others are thinking, and sometimes react to something that is purely an assumption or projection. We so often make up our minds that disaster looms ahead- and it might, but it might not, or might not be as bad as we think, or we might be much stronger that we assume. What is so poignant about the image of Leah crying over her marriage to Esav is that the text gives us so little reason to assume this was her fate; I wish she had at least asked her father about his plans before crying her eyes out!

An aspect of the virtue of humility is knowing what we don’t know- and knowing that there is much that we don’t know can leave us much more open to what is, rather than what we want, fear, assume, project or imagine. If there is much I don’t know, then there is much to learn, and many questions to ask, and the possibilities are endless.

Shabbat Shalom,

RNJL

Copyright 2013 Neal Joseph Loevinger

Torah Portion: Vayetze

Yaakov left Beer-sheva, and set out for Haran. . . . (Bereshit/ Genesis 28:10)

Good afternoon! It’s been a tough week here in the Hudson Valley; we laid to rest not one but two noted survivors of the Shoah, both from Poland, both escapees from the ghetto as teens, and both Levi’im.

Before I reflect on the lives of Nachman Kamlot and Kuba Beck, let’s go back to our Torah portion for a moment. Last week Yaakov deceives his father and steals his brother’s birthright; Esav is furious (understandably) and their mother sends Yaakov away to avoid his brother’s wrath. This week we open our Torah portion with the verse above, which begs an obvious question: why does the text have to mention that Yaakov left Beer-sheva? Is it not obvious that he had to leave somewhere if we merely mention that he’s heading for Haran?

Our friend Rashi offers a beautiful homiletic interpretation, gleaned from an earlier text:

“But this tells [us] that the departure of a righteous man from a place makes an impression, for while the righteous man is in the city, he is its beauty, he is its splendor, he is its majesty. When he departs from there, its beauty has departed, its radiance has departed, its majesty has departed. . . ”

Note well what constitutes beauty, radiance and majesty (hod, ziv and hadar, in that order): it’s not physical beauty, or style or riches, but moral standing. The irony, of course, is that Yaakov is on the run precisely because he did something deceptive, but the rabbis see him as a tzadik, a righteous man, perhaps on the basis of his overall life and not only his deeds at that moment.

Extrapolating Rashi’s point from its immediate context, we see a larger Jewish idea: that communities are deeply affected by the best of their people, whose loss affects us in ways that are not always obvious or immediate. Beauty is a quality of the spirit, not only of the body; majesty is not in power or politics, but in living every day with honor, courage and kindness.

Here in Poughkeepsie, one of the men we just buried, Kuba Beck, spent the last decades of his life telling his story of rescue by Oskar Schindler to any person or group who would listen, so the dead would not be forgotten but also so that the world would know that there were decent men even among the German occupiers. He was committed to a world without hate or bigotry, precisely because he knew that collective judgments lead to evil; condemning all Germans meant condemning the man who saved his life at risk to his own. His gentle ways and love of his community, synagogue and people inspired all who met him.

We also buried Nachman Kamlot, our long-time Torah reader and a scholar of Jewish history, texts, language and literature. Nachman didn’t tell his story all over the country like Kuba did; rather, he simply lived out his commitment to Jewish life: both the Jewish life destroyed in his youth but also the Jewish life very much alive in Poughkeepsie. He taught Hebrew to younger students and Yiddish at Vassar College; he read Torah and led our daily minyan; he made jokes with Yiddish punchlines (some of which I understood) and merely by being present evoked a glorious Jewish world in prewar Europe.

Our high school students did persuade Nachman to tell his story to the camera and I was amazed to learn of his courage and resilience while evading the enemy for as long as he could. When asked what the students should take from his story of escape and survival and resettlement, he had a one-word answer: read. Read Jewish history and Jewish literature- know where you came from!

These men, with their dignity, piety and quiet heroism, were the beauty, the radiance and the majesty of our community. We grieve not only for their deaths but for the opportunity to hear again the names and stories from the Jewish world of their childhoods, so different from and yet so deeply connected to our own, and why our duty of remembrance is a a sacred task.

Shabbat Shalom,

RNJL

Copyright 2012 Neal Joseph Loevinger

Torah Portion: Vayetzei

“Yaakov left Beersheeva, and set out for Haran. He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set . . . . .” (Bereshit/ Genesis 28:10-11)

Good afternoon!

I hope everybody is finding something for which to be thankful this weekend. As for me, I am grateful to be staying far away from malls and shopping today!

Last week we left our our forefather Yaakov in a bit of a pickle. He had stolen his brother’s blessing from their father and as you can imagine, that brother, Esav, was not very happy, and in fact threatened to kill Yaakov, prompting their mother, Rivka, to send Yaakov back to her hometown for a while till things calmed down. Yaakov sets out for Haran, where Rivka’s brother lives, and has a tremendous spiritual experience in the middle of the desert, where he has stopped to sleep with a stone for a pillow.

Our friend Rashi notices something unusual about the verse above: first the verse says that Yaakov stopped to sleep for the night, and then it says that the sun had gone down. It’s a bit clearer in the Hebrew than in the JPS translation above, but you still get the idea: it might have made more chronological sense to say, “the sun went down, so Yaakov stopped for the night.”

Rashi, basing himself on earlier texts, teaches that this unusual ordering shows that the sun itself went down in an unusual way- not at its ordinary time but suddenly, so that Yaakov would have to stop for the night. This may be connected to the tradition that the particular place Yaakov stopped was Mount Moriah- the site of the binding of Yitzhak and the future Temple of Jerusalem- about which we’ll say more in the future. To me, the image of the sun suddenly setting, so that Yaakov was forced to stop his flight, suggests not an astronomical miracle but an internal realization that he could not outrun his own brokenness.

Judaism teaches a profound path of the deepest joy, but no life escapes its periods of darkness and the need for introspection. Yaakov took his brother’s birthright and their father’s blessing, either because he wasn’t thinking of the consequences or was willing to live with them, but it could hardly have been less than devastating to be forced from the family home at precisely the moment he’d set himself up as the family’s honored heir. I read Rashi’s comment as a metaphor for the darkness of spirit that must have come upon Yaakov when he realized the consequences of his actions; being forced to lie there for the night is a way of expressing the necessity for contemplation of one’s broken places precisely at the moment when we’re whipping ourselves into a frenzy in order to avoid them.

Of course, confronting and inhabiting the inevitability of “night”- that is, being brought to the place of soul-accounting and admission that life has become unmanageable- also brought Yaakov a profound religious experience, complete with a vision of a ladder reaching to the heavens and angels going up and down. Not all of us are so fortunate as to have such a revelation, but the it’s universal experience that we sometimes need  to stop our frenetic motion in order to open ourselves up morally, emotionally and spiritually. This might take the form of meditation, contemplation, Torah study, prayer, spiritual direction or just sitting quietly with our own souls, but like Yaakov, sometimes you just have to stop running to sense the Divine Presence and discern a new direction.

Shabbat Shalom,

RNJL

Copyright 2010 Neal Joseph Loevinger

Torah Portion: Vayetzei

Dear Friends:

This week we’re reading the Torah portion Vayetzei, in which Ya’akov runs away from his brother and goes back to his mother’s hometown, Haran, to seek out his uncle Lavan and find a bride. As you probably remember- Yaakov falls in love with Rachel, and serves his uncle seven years in order to marry her, but is tricked into marrying Leah, her older sister. Uncle Lavan then promises Ya’akov he can marry Rachel too:

“Wait until the bridal week of this one is over and we will give you that one too, provided you serve me another seven years.” (Bereshit/ Genesis 29:27)

Well, that sounds like a complicated family situation- being married to two cousins at once with a deceitful uncle for a father-in-law- but let’s leave Ya’akov’s personal life aside for the moment and instead focus on the verse above, in which Lavan says that Ya’akov must wait until the “bridal week” of festivities for Leah’s wedding is over before he can then marry Rachel. At least one commentator says that this the Biblical source of the rabbinic principle of ein me’arvin simcha b’simcha, [don’t mix one joy with another], which usually means we don’t (typically) schedule a simcha, a happy occasion, like a wedding or bat mitzvah, on another happy occasion, like a major Jewish festival. (Note: sometimes there are special circumstances; this is a general principle, with exceptions to be determined locally.)

At first consideration, this might seem counter-intuitive: why not add joy to joy, and have a wedding on Sukkot, for example? You’d have two happy and fun occasions and the themes from one might make the other even more meaningful. Yes, but. . . . . . ein me’arvin simcha b’simcha teaches us to be fully present in the unique joy of each occasion. To put it back into our Torah portion: how could Ya’akov, and Lavan, and the other family and townsfolk, really focus on rejoicing over Leah if they were also rejoicing over Rachel’s bridal week, and vice versa?

Each of our major Biblical holidays- Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot (leaving aside Yom Kippur, for obvious reasons)- has a set of spiritual and ethical concepts, as well as specific mitzvot or spiritual practices, such as building a Sukkah, blowing the Shofar, etc. Each year, Judaism challenges us to experience the unique teachings of each holiday, and move ourselves into the kavannah, or intentionality/focus/consciousness of the season.

Just as important- at each simcha or happy event, our task is to focus on the family: honoring the bat mitzvah by attentively hearing her read and teach Torah; gladdening the bride and groom; giving support and congratulations to the parents and grandparents. If we’re focused on having a meaningful holiday experience- we’re not focused on the life-event, and vice versa, and never mind the gazillions of practical tasks for a wedding or bar mitzvah that would distract from the holy day.

So that’s the traditional application of ein me’arvin simcha b’simcha, but I also think it can be broadened to mean: create opportunities in your life to be fully present on the experience at hand, which may not be possible doing two, or three, or many tasks at once. You can’t multi-task spirituality; it takes focus, simplicity, attention, clarity.

It’s not just about Leah and Rachel; it’s about all of us, choosing to be fully present in both our spiritual practices and in our relationships with friends and family, which may sometimes mean creating unique times for our joys, in order to experience them fully.

Shabbat Shalom,

RNJL

Good morning!

It was a beautiful holiday in Poughkeepsie- a glorious fall day for feasting or hiking and all kinds of merriment. So if you’re recovering from too much Thanksgiving (the meal, not the spiritual practice of giving thanks- can’t have too much of that), well, perhaps a good walk would be in order, because in addition to the exercise, you never know what you’ll encounter out on the trail.

Which brings us, of course, to the Torah portion Vayeitze, which begins with our forefather Yaakov out in the wilderness, on the lam after stealing his brother’s blessing, asleep at night while a miraculous ladder or ziggurat appears in a vision:

“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.  And the Lord was standing beside him. . . . Yaakov awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it!’  Shaken, he said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.’ ” (Bereshit 28:12, 16-17)

Our friend Rashi brings many interesting midrashim and interpretations to this story, of which two in particular resonate with our theme this year of connecting the parsha to prayer and liturgy. First, Rashi notes that when Yaakov arrived at the place of his vision, the sun had set, and the peculiar verb used for “to arrive” is connected to a verse in Jeremiah that speaks of prayer. Thus, the ancient sages say that Yaakov prayed the evening prayer- ma’ariv– out in this place, all alone in the night.

Then he falls asleep and has his vision of the ladder or stairway to heaven, and now things get really interesting. Rashi comments on the verse quoted above, that the place of Yaakov’s vision was “the abode of God,” and concludes that the center part of the ladder was opposite Jerusalem, which housed (generations after Yaakov) the Temple, the “house of God.” Rashi brings an earlier text that the foot of the ladder was in Beersheva (where Yaakov came from) and the top was in Beit-El, north of Jerusalem- so the middle part was right opposite the Temple itself.

Now, this is a fun midrash and it connects the “abode of God” in Yaakov’s vision with the “house of God” of later Biblical history, but there’s a problem: Yaakov may call the place Beit-El, the “house of God,” but the Torah tells us it used to be called Luz, which is not Jerusalem at all! (Cf. verse 19.)  So now Rashi says something astounding: he says the ladder was opposite the Temple Mount because the Mount itself was “uprooted” from its place to the wilderness where he slept!

As I read it, the point is not that mountains move while we sleep, but that the “house of God” is a portable concept, limited not by geography but by our openness and perception. In other words- if Yaakov’s bed of rocks in the desert and the earthly Temple were both described as the “house of God,” it implies that anywhere we have radical openness to the Sacred is like the Temple Mount, holy not because of geography but because of theophany. That is, a sacred place is not where we stand, but how we see.

This, to me, is also why Rashi goes out on a midrashic limb to connect the setting sun to ma’ariv, the evening prayer- because what better way to imagine Yaakov opening himself up to a vision of the heavens than through the humility of petition and thanksgiving?

Unfortunately, I can’t promise that praying ma’ariv will lead to vision of the Divine like Yaakov’s. However, I do believe that prayer, which is the choice to open ourselves to the Presence, deepens our spiritual perception, so that we are better able to see the connection between heaven and earth, between the sacred aspect of life and the reality of our improbable journeys. To put it another way, with an open heart, anywhere you are can be the gate of Heaven.

Shabbat Shalom,

RNJL

P.S.- To see the text of the Torah portion and haftarah, go here.
—

Copyright 2011 Neal Joseph Loevinger

Torah Portion: Vayeitze

This week we’re reading the Torah portion Vayeutze, which tells the
story of Ya’akov after he journeyed from Beersheva towards Haran,
leaving his family home after stealing the blessing belonging to his
brother. Ya’akov gets married- twice- and has a large family while
working for his father in law, Lavan. Yet the story is full of tension
and drama: Ya’akov, the deceiver, is in turn deceived by his father in
law, who substitutes Leah for Rachel on the wedding night, and the two
men spend many years seemingly wary of each other before Ya’akov
decides to go home again.

This narrative background helps us understand the haftarah for this
week, which comes from the book of Hosea. Ashkenazim read Hosea
12:13-14:10, but the Sephardic tradition is to read the preceding
chapters: 11:7 – 12:14. This week we’ll look at the opening of the
Ashkenazi version:

Then Ya’akov had to flee to the land of Aram;
There Yisrael served for a wife,
For a wife he had to guard [sheep].
But when the Lord
Brought Yisrael up from Egypt,
It was through a prophet;
Through a prophet they were guarded. (Hosea 12:13-14)

The text goes on to describe the rebuke and defeat of “Ephraim,” or
the northern kingdom of Israel, as well as its eventual salvation and
return to God. You’ll see above the obvious connection to our Torah
portion: just as Ya’akov had to “flee” his hometown, so too would his
descendants, the nation of Israel, have to one day leave their land
and go down to Egypt, where they would someday be redeemed. The
further implication seems clear to me: as God sent a prophet to the
Israelites in Egypt (Moshe), God sends one to them in Hosea’s time,
with the task of lifting them up out of sin.

By linking Ya’akov’s flight from Beersheva to Haran- a personal exile-
with the exile of the nation in Egypt, the text allows us to connect
the stories of our ancestors with the stories of our nation, and vice
versa. What happened to Ya’akov is prologue to what happened to our
people as a whole- but even more importantly, the reverse is also
true. That is, the stories of our people – of exile to Egypt, of
turning away from the covenant in prophetic times, of eventual return
and triumph- are also stories about individuals, who – like Ya’akov-
go on personal journeys of exile and return, of conflict and
reconciliation, of despair and renewal.

If Ya’akov’s journey- from exile to home again to his final years with
his sons in Egypt- is a foreshadowing of our journey as a people, then
the journey of our people is can also been seen as symbolic of a
person’s lifetime as well. Just as God promises in this haftarah to
take the people back if they return, so are we- as individuals-
promised that t’shuvah, returning, is always possible. Even Ya’akov,
after twenty some years, returned home. Exile and estrangement, as an
inner condtion of the soul, are not permanent destinies, not for
Ya’akov, not for the Israelites in Egypit, and not for us.

Shabbat shalom,

RNJL

Copyright 2011 Neal Joseph Loevinger

Torah Portion: Vayeitze

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitze, Yaakov is on the run from his brother, who is quite
understandably angry with him. He goes back to his mother’s hometown,
in search of his uncle Lavan and his family. Yaakov ends up marrying
two of Lavan’s daughters, but before he even meets them, he has an
interesting encounter at the well outside of town:

“Yaakov resumed his journey and came to the land of the Easterners.
There before his eyes was a well in the open. Three flocks of sheep
were lying there beside it, for the flocks were watered from that
well. The stone on the mouth of the well was large. When all the
flocks were gathered there, the stone would be rolled from the mouth
of the well and the sheep watered. . .

Yaakov said to them, ‘My friends, where are you from?’ And they said,
‘We are from Haran.’ He said to them, ‘Do you know Lavan the son of
Nahor?’ . . . [Yaakov] said, ‘It is still broad daylight, too early to
round up the animals; water the flock and take them to pasture.’ But
they said, ‘We cannot, until all the flocks are rounded up; then the
stone is rolled off the mouth of the well and we water the sheep.’
(Bereshit/ Genesis 29:1-9, edited)

Rashi, along with other commentators, interprets this interaction as a
gentle rebuke by Yaakov to the herders he sees resting by the well.
Here’s Rashi’s comment:

“Since he saw them lying down, he thought that they wished to gather
the livestock to return home and that they would no longer graze. So
he said to them, ‘It’s still day’ i.e., if you have been hired for
the day, you have not completed the day’s work, and if the animals are
yours, it is, nevertheless, not the time to take in the livestock.”

Now, as it turns out, Yaakov didn’t understand what he saw- he thought
the herders were slacking off, when really, they were waiting for
enough men to gather to roll the big stone off the top of the well,
which Yaakov then does for them. One could also reasonably point out
that it’s none of Yaakov’s business whether or not the shepherds are
resting or working- he didn’t hire them. Yet Rashi implies- and others
say explicitly- that Yaakov was justified in rebuking the shepherds,
because it appeared to him that they weren’t doing the job for which
they were hired.

It’s a gentle chiding, to be sure; Yaakov prefaces his questions by
calling the men “achai,” literally “my brothers.” Some commentators
see Yaakov’s comment as a fulfillment of the mitzvah of “tochecha,” or
“rebuke,” which the Chafetz Chaim explains as a universal obligation
to point out to others when they are violating a Torah law. (Cf.
Vayikra/Leviticus 19:17) The Chafetz Chaim goes on to say that one
must never shame another person or humiliate them, and one is not
obligated to keep saying anything past the point at which one’s words
are rejected. Furthermore, as Yaakov’s interaction with the herders
illustrates, we often don’t have all the facts, and hasty judgments
could lead to highly problematic interactions.

Yet will all those caveats- and many more in the commentary on this
mitzvah- it’s still true that Judaism teaches the ethical duty to
speak up when one sees others engaged in wrongdoing. We have to be
careful, we have to be gentle, we have to be thoughtful, we have to be
humble, but we must also have the courage of our convictions. Yaakov
was wrong when he thought the shepherds were cheating their employer-
but imagine a world in which honest employees of Enron or Worldcom
spoke out when they saw violations of corporate ethics.

Imagine a world in which honest people routinely spoke out when they
saw dishonesty or cruelty, and you understand why this mitzvah is
crucial to religious ethics. “Tochecha,” or “rebuke,” isn’t about
setting oneself up as the judge of others- it’s about having the
courage to speak when the situation calls for it. It’s a very tough
mitzvah to do – in fact, there are some who say it’s almost
impossible- but it’s also a mitzvah which teaches us about moral
courage, which the world needs now more than ever.

Shabbat Shalom,

RNJL

Copyright 2011 Neal Joseph Loevinger

Torah Portion: Vayeitze

Greetings! In this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitze, our ancestor Yaakov
is on the run from his (quite understandably) angry brother, and
headed toward his uncle’s home in Haran, a place connected to both
Rivka and Avraham. While on the way, Yaakov lays down in the desert
and has his famous dream of a ladder going up to the heavens and
angels going up and down the ladder. He awakes and admits his surprise:

“Yaakov awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is present in
this place, and I did not know it!’ ” ( Bereshit/Genesis 28:16)

The last phrase of this verse is difficult to translate elegantly, but
one could also read it as: “There is God in this place, and I, I did
not know”. The doubling of “I” comes from the fact that in Hebrew, a
verb is often enough to indicate who is speaking- so “anochi lo
yadati” is a bit redundant, because “anochi” means “I” (like “ani” in
modern Hebrew) and “lo yadati” means “I didn’t know.” So, of course,
when a verse is unusual, it attracts a great deal of attention from
the commentators, who in this case, derive a profound lesson from the
addition of “anochi” to “lo yadati,” a lesson about the nature of
spirituality itself.

In several Hassidic commentaries, the extra “I” of “anochi” is equated
with Yaakov’s ego or sense of selfhood. Thus, during a time when he is
on the run, presumably in fear and regret after stealing his brother’s
birthright and blessing, all alone in the desert, he is open to a
profound sense of the Divine Presence precisely because his ego, his
conception of “Yaakov,” has been cracked apart and opened up. So when
the text says “I, I did not know,” the Hassidic masters see this as
teaching that the “I” part of Yaakov- his pride, ego and illusion of
wholeness- is what “didn’t know” that God was in this (and every)
place, able to reach through to a deeper part of him and send him
further along his life’s journey.

This teaching is very real to me, both in my personal and rabbinic
experience. It is precisely the times when I’ve had no choice but to
let go of previous conceptions of myself- when I had no alternative
but spiritual openness- that my ability to move forward into new
journeys has been strengthened and renewed. Yaakov’s previous
relationships, with his brother and father, were broken and shattered-
but new relationships, with wives and children, were just around the
corner, if he could sense the possibility of purpose and meaning in
life, despite its pain and trouble. That’s where God comes in- to give
us a broader vision than our solipsistic sense of self, stuck in its
pain and habits, may allow.

Faith, in this sense, is not about what you believe with your
intellect, but about one’s ability to grow despite the natural human
fear of change. It’s the ego, our “comfort zone” of self-conception,
which resists change and often wants to keep things just as they are-
and that part of ourselves is what “doesn’t know” and holds us back
from the growth in awareness, compassion, and service which is every
person’s spiritual potential.

Yaakov, like all of us, has moments of profound change in his life,
and one such liminal moment is when he realizes that the Yaakov who
left Beersheva- the Yaakov who deceived his father and humiliated his
brother- is no longer somebody he can be. “I, I did not know”- I, the
person I was, is now seen as a barrier to the person I can be if I
journey with awareness of my spiritual potential. Such a realization
is painful, but part of every seeker’s journey.

Shabbat Shalom,

RNJL