Reflections from Rabbi Ellis

With this week’s Parsha we enter into the second half of the book of Bereishit. Last week we finished with Yitzchak and for the rest of the book of Bereishit we are dealing with Yakov and his children. Our Parsha covers a twenty year period, all of it, except the first few days, take place in Babylon. Yakov starts off our Parsha poor and alone  by the end he is the head of a great household with four wives, 13 children, servants and cattle beyond number.

Until now we have known Yakov solely in the role of a child, either as the brother of Esau, or the son of Rivka. When our Parsha starts we see him for the first time as an individual. The first thing we discover is that he is a prophet. He sees angels and hears the voice of G!d. When he is in his family Yakov is scheming and opaque. When he is on his own his holiness is so great that the angels seek him out. Yakov is the essential Jewish man, a son, brother, husband and father yet he is able to interact with angels only  when he is alone.

Immediately after Yakov’s vision he meets the love of his life, Rachel. When he sees her the text states that Yakov lifted up his voice and wept. Yakov’s meeting with Rachel was a direct result of the vision that he experienced on the way there, and is the reason he wept when he met Rachel.

 The vision that Yakov had was a ladder connecting heaven and earth, with angels ascending and descending. The first message is that spiritual growth only occurs through ascents followed by descents.According to our tradition the ladder had two legs, the first representing the spiritual the second representing the physical. When he awoke in the morning Yakov understood that he had experienced a spiritual peak. That is why he says, “Surely G!d was in this place and I didn’t know it.” In his last few moments in Israel Yakov experienced a spiritual high and so the only way to go now was down.

When Yakov arrives in Haran the well there was covered by a large stone that none of the shepherds could move on their own. After seeing Rachel, Yakov is so stricken that he moves the rock on his own. When Yakov meets Rachel he realizes that he has been given a physical peak. Upon seeing Rachel, Yakov realizes that he set his eyes upon the woman for whom he was created.

Within a handful of verses Yakov experiences a spiritual and physical peak. He knows from his vision that after a peak there will be a fall. He weeps not because he fears for himself, he weeps because he has just met his wife, the woman who he will share his life with and now she will follow on his descent. He weeps because his love has bound him and his destiny now weighs down on both of them. Alone Yakov could achieve spiritual heights because he had no one else to worry about. As a husband and father, Yakov’s soul couldn’t fly as high because the dangers he now faced he shared with all of his family.

Shabbat Shalom!