Vayetzei
This
portion tells the saddest story in the Torah.
It is the story of a man who has forgotten his dream. As Jacob begins his journey, God appears to
him…Jacob responds by committing himself to God’s mission…With Laban, he
accumulates wealth. And, forgetting his
mission and focusing on property, quickly becomes a slave rather than a seeker
of destiny…Jacob is in fact a slave, and not merely an employee in the house of
Laban…What is most striking, though, is that it is not just Laban who treats Jacob
as a slave, but as we shall, see, all the members of Jacob’s family treat each
other as nothing more than human property…this confusion has its roots in Jacob
himself. Jacob certainly is the first to
designate a person as wages.
Dvora
Steinmetz (Contemporary)
We
realize that Jacob’s life, just like our own lives, exists on two levels. There is the level of hardship, moral failure
and guilt; ordinarily we take the narrow view and are cognizant of that level
only. But there is also a deeper level,
a much broader perspective; from time to time we are able to attain it, and at
those times our ordinary concerns are transcended. On those occasions, from that deeper level,
illumination breaks through and floods our awareness; the significance of our
lives suddenly becomes clear; and we, together with Jacob, know the simple and
unconditional truth that we are accepted in spite of our endless shortcomings;
at such times we experience the truth of purpose in human life, and we feel a
determination to advance that purpose, in spite of impediments and hardship.
Richard Borkow (Contemporary)
Jacob
went out from his father’s house to go into exile. He left with the birthright
and the blessing which he had acquired by roundabout means…but beyond these…he
had nothing…Here we see that God does not show partiality even to His chosen
ones. On the contrary: one may even say
that it is specifically to His chosen ones that he does not show partiality. That is why Jacob underwent all these
terrible events. He suffered failures
because, on his way to attain him mission, he did not follow the straight path.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz (20th Century)
Perhaps
the most significant prayer I know is attributed to a child who left the
following petition in the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto: “Dear God, I do not ask you to make my life
easy; I do ask you to make me strong.”
Jacob experienced very little of Divine compassion in his life. He is hurt by the lack of a father’s love and
appreciation, he is forced to flee his homeland and escape from a vengeful
brother, he works two decades for a scoundrel uncle, he loses a young beloved
wife, and he is separated for 22 years from his favorite son, whom he thinks is
dead. Then, the end of his life is spent
in Egyptian exile. Nevertheless, an aged
Jacob blesses his grandchildren: “May the angel who has redeemed me from all
evil bless these children.”
Shlomo
Riskin (Contemporary)
(The word “place” can also mean
“God.”) Jacob “fell” upon “a place”
because the sun had set…He was so preoccupied with the immediacies of Esav’s threat that God had to intervene…God picked him up
and plunked him down. Still clueless,
Jacob missed the point…But when the “place” evokes his dream, Jacob awakens
with a start and puts two and two together…”Surely God is in this place and I
didn’t know it,” he concludes…We understand how Jacob could miss the obvious
when we see how often we do the same thing.
Sacred places look sacred only to a people with sacred intentions.