Vayetze — The Journey into the Unknown

This evening, then, I propose that we reread this chapter of Vayetze — Yaakov’s departure from Beer Sheva. It has been pointed out to us that the letters of Beer Sheva are the letters of “Ever and Shem.” In other words: we have finished our studies, we have finished our years in yeshivah, and one way or another we must leave home. We leave it for family reasons, but we also leave it in order to build a home of our own. So Yaakov has two aims. And yet every departure from one’s parents’ home is in itself an exile. We do not know what life holds for us. We have left the cocoon, what was stable, what was fixed; we knew who we were, we were accepted as we were, we were looked after. And now we set out and advance into a world that never stops changing — and those changes, of course, concern us and frighten us. We have already spoken of this dispute between the fixed — what is stable, what is certain — and what is called to evolve. Well, a ben, a son — bera kar’a de-avuha, “a son is his father’s leg,” as it is said — is the one who carries his father’s walk forward, who carries it forward through time and beyond time. That is how life is. But is one able to do it?

Will one succeed in this walk? That is the reason for the conclusion of Yaakov’s prayer. That is to say: if G-d protects me, if G-d grants me success in all that I do, I will build my father’s house as it should be, and there will truly be shalom (peace). For as long as I have not given my father’s house this shelemut — this completeness — as long as I have not taken part in building that house, the house is liable to be destroyed, Heaven forbid! And then, what is the point of this exile? What is the point, even, of setting out to build, to establish a new home? It makes no sense. From the moment one cuts oneself off from one’s roots, one is truly an uprooted man.

One who has no past has no future. So in rereading this chapter, we are looking into the mirror of our own journey. We have these two identities, Yaakov and Israel. We are engaged in Yaakov’s daily struggle. And we reach our goals little by little — we do not reach them all at once; it is stone after stone. We spoke of the symbolism of the stone last week. […] These are the stones that one lays. And you know that three mitzvot were given to the Jewish people at its birth. For, in a sense, the crossing of the Red Sea is the breaking of the waters that brings the child into the world, is it not? At the end of a pregnancy, at the end of a preparation — this pregnancy, the pains of childbirth […].

Well, the people of Israel is born; first of all its early education must be secured. And in this first education He gives it three things, three fundamental laws. Dinim — laws, the rigor of the law. And that does not change: however far one advances through change, the laws are immutable; the Shulchan Aruch is there, it is the reference. Now, laws have no meaning if there is no goal, and the goal is the kedushah (holiness) of Shabbat. He gave them Shabbat. He initiated them into the holiness of Shabbat. That means rising above things and, indeed, not remaining chained by the world of nature — learning to tear oneself free of those natural conditions so as to dwell in a permanent nes, a miracle — that which alters the givens of nature. That, indeed, is Shabbat, the holiness of Shabbat. And He also gave them a third law. Which one?

That of the red heifer. The red heifer — we know very well that it purifies the impure and that it is able to render the pure impure. But who can truly draw the pure out of the impure, and decide what will be impure? And we know that the root of impurity, avi avot ha-tum’ah — the ultimate source of impurity — is death. It is when everything is confined, when nothing moves, when one is reduced to a closed and limited space, and a single stone stands there as the tziyun, the grave marker. That is sad. Yaakov is aware of this. So he takes all the stones, unites them into a single stone, and pours oil upon it. We do not pour oil; we light [a candle for] the neshamah (the soul), because he lives with us, he lives among us. That is Yaakov.

As he sets out on the road of exile, he tells us that there are three stages in the structure of a life, namely […]. The first of these words means youth […], and here we play a little with the words to see what we are. When we are small, we can show our strength and our mastery only over […]. But when we arrive at […], if we bind it in the direction of a constructive youth, then one can finally aspire to rise above […]. I will not dwell on this now; I will have occasion to develop it further another time — perhaps not next time, but after that — because it concerns […], all those things that call upon the forces of nature, which one would have to rise above, to tear oneself away from, in order to win one’s own freedom.

But the point is that, just as there are three stages in a negative evolution, there are three in a positive evolution, with the neshamah, the ruach and the nefesh — ruach, nefesh; olam, shanah, nefesh: space, time and soul. There is a way of unifying both space and time in the life of every being. And then, when one lives in symbiosis with one’s time and with one’s place, the evolution is positive. And that is vayifga ba-makom, “he encountered the place” — the place, vayifga ba-makom, which becomes a prayer. The place becomes a prayer. The place is joined to time. The time of night is a time — and note well that it is not negative: it is a time of dreaming, it is a time of awakening,

it is a time of inner reflection, it is a time that yearns for a new morning, a new day, a future. Arvit, the evening prayer, is not chovah, an obligation; it is reshut, optional. What does it mean, that it is reshut? It is in your hands; it is in your hands. On the other hand, one who wishes not to sleep is pursued, harried, dealt with harshly until he sleeps, because he cannot allow himself to refuse to enter into himself, and to content himself only with the machshavah of the morning — the thought of the morning, the joy of the morning — and with Minchah, the prayer of Yitzchak. No. Why? Because one day — yom le-yom yabia omer, “day unto day utters speech” — one day must prepare another day.

Life is not completed in a single day. Though the day offers a sea of possibilities to the next — yom le-yom yabia omer, ve-laylah le-laylah yechaveh da’at, “day unto day utters speech, and night unto night declares knowledge” — the night carries knowledge; night brings counsel, as the saying goes. And that is why exile in itself is not entirely negative. There is a positive side to this exile, insofar as it was preparing Yaakov to confront Esav later on, and not to run away from Esav — for at the moment he is fleeing him, of course. And I will tell you something: of course, when we flee in this way, we flee everything we cannot measure ourselves against, everything that displeases us.

But in truth, there are those who have dared to say that if Yaakov is condemned to exile, it is because he never tried to win over his brother Esav. He had the possibility, since he himself was emet, truth. And Esav — these are shreds of emet, because he is the shadow of emet. When we do not have a clearly defined goal, a clearly defined line, then we may well live with shreds of truth — but shreds of truth are not the truth; they do not add up to the truth. And so Yaakov indeed sought to unite these stones into a single stone, and to hold them together, because that is what represents a unity of life: a bayit, a house, with its twelve edges, with its twelve hours a day of life — of living and of reflecting, isn’t it so?

With these twelve constellations — all of this, man is capable of welding together. That is what humanity is. Man must be the unifying element; and if he succeeds in this for himself, then he must be able to impart it, to share it with others. Well — ki va ha-shemesh, “for the sun had set”: there is indeed a decline of the day, and we have said that this decline of the day is exile — but it is not entirely negative. And he takes of the stones: va-yasem mera’ashotav, va-yishkav ba-makom ha-hu, “he placed them at his head, and lay down in that place.” Do we need this detail? Yes, we need this detail, because someone who wants to deprive himself of food — that is his problem.

But to deprive oneself of sleep, to deprive oneself of entering the night and generating a new morning — that we do not allow. We isolate him, we excommunicate him. […] Va-yachalom, “and he dreamed.” Why? Because it is the time of the dream, because it is the moment when one must indeed rethink that goal which unites heaven and earth. That goal which unites heaven and earth may be my home, it may be the Sanctuary, it may be Yerushalayim; it may also be the space in which I live with the other. Sulam — the ladder — […] not as an acronym, no: its numerical value is that of Sinai; that is the Torah. And [sulam] has the numerical value of mamon. Mamon? What is that? Money?

What is the difference between kesef and mamon? Kesef comes from the verb kasof, to aspire, to long for. Mamon is what has been allotted to you, a fixed budget. You may well have money, but what is truly your money is what passed through your hands and what you invested. Mimun — financing! You financed, you helped, you gave: that is what remains in your hands. And that is what builds your sulam, your own ladder. Because Yaakov, whose beauty was that of Adam ha-Rishon, is the portrait of Adam ha-Rishon; and Adam ha-Rishon — his head reached from one end of the universe to the other. It thus covered all of space; and at that time it reached from earth to heaven.

So — va-yachalom ve-hinneh sulam, “he dreamed, and behold, a ladder.” Indeed, that is Yaakov; that is the vocation of his descendants, of his people, of everyone who recognizes himself in Yaakov. And these are the mal’achei Elokim olim ve-yordim bo, “the angels of Elokim ascending and descending on it.” Who are these mal’achei Elokim? We always speak of angels — always of angels. Well, when one consults the commentators, there are different approaches. […] Because mal’ach is the masculine of melachah. The melachah allows me to produce a work of art.

Between melachah and avodah: melachah is the work I produce; avodah is the labor it involves, the whole technique I employ. So the mal’ach is […]; but sometimes that is not enough, it is not enough, because […] — oseh mal’achav ruchot, mesharetav esh lohet, “He makes winds His messengers, flaming fire His servants” (Tehillim 104:4) — because the storms, the winds, the fires, everything that stirs the world, these are mal’achim. Nature, the laws of nature, are mal’achim. Whatever makes the world change around me when I would like to live in a bubble — all of that, those are mal’achim. But what I aspire to is that these mal’achim should first of all be aligned with a scale of values that I have set.

Having a scale of values in life is essential. Before undertaking, before doing something, before achieving something, one must have the criteria. And so Yaakov is aware that life needs a sulam. It needs a ladder of values, it needs criteria. Rosho magia ha-shamaymah, “its top reached toward heaven” — is there a point in the sky? No. Rosho magia ha-shamaymah: what matters is that it be set in a vertical thrust; what matters is that it be in a spiral of life, first ascending and then descending — that is to say, the criteria we have chosen, we will then carry out here below. These, then, are the goals that Yaakov Avinu sets before us when he leaves his parents’ home.

Yes — mal’achei Elokim are not mal’achei Hashem. Mal’achei Elokim are the world of nature; they are the veils of nature. They belong to the laws of causality — but they are mal’achim, because insofar as an object brings back to me the memory of a loved one, that object has a meaning, a movement; it is there, it reminds me of him, doesn’t it? It is my mal’ach, in a certain sense. That is because there are values; it reminds me […]. And when I am aware of this — ve-hinneh Hashem nitzav alav, “and behold, Hashem stood over him” — at that moment I learn to go beyond these mal’achei Elokim, and to communicate with, to become aware of the presence of a providence which, for its part, defies the laws of nature, and which makes me settle into a world of permanent miracles, because I consider every opportunity He gives me to live a miracle in itself.

And it is a possibility rich in things that I could accomplish and do. […] At that moment, what becomes fixed, what becomes stable, is the permanent miracle in which I live and move, because I have decided not to let myself be shut in by the laws of nature. And when I learn to rise and to reach Hashem — Hashem nitzav alav — that is, the very source of life, of existence, then the world becomes a backdrop. It is the text that says so; I am not leaving the field of the text: ve-hinneh Hashem nitzav alav va-yomar, “and behold, Hashem stood over him, and said” […]. One discovers another language; one discovers another language.

When one accomplishes this ascent from below to above — from the world of Asiyah, the world of action, to that of the origin of thought […] — Ani Hashem, Elokei Avraham avicha ve-Elokei Yitzchak, “I am Hashem, the G-d of Avraham your father and the G-d of Yitzchak” — then one cannot fail to bind oneself to the souls. I bind myself to the Avot, the Patriarchs, […] to my parents, my grandparents, my forebears. Elokei Avraham avicha ve-Elokei Yitzchak: the G-d of Avraham your father, the G-d of Yitzchak. And it has been noticed that only for Avraham is “your father” said. Why? Because Avraham was the first initiator […]. We generally trace back only three generations.

There is no need to say, “We are the descendants of so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so”; we are the descendants of the Avot. And we are the descendants of our parents, of our grandparents, whom we knew or whom, unfortunately, we did not know — but their story, we carry on. And also […]: it is true that Avraham attained a spirituality without limit. And that is a har — a mountain. Yitzchak too, in another sense — except that Avraham was the driving force. When we looked at Avraham’s life — you know, it is a life of action. He deployed all his energy, all his […]. Yitzchak is capable of offering himself on G-d’s altar, but he remains passive in everything he does.

He belongs to middat ha-din, the attribute of rigor; […] the rule, the law. He underwent it in a certain way, but he dedicated it to his Creator. That is very good. But that is what is called sadeh — a field. A field, yes: if you abandon it, it lies fallow and becomes strewn with thorns; but when you work it, you can indeed draw from it an abundant harvest — mi-tal ha-shamayim u-mishmannei ha-aretz, “of the dew of heaven and of the fat of the earth.” But unfortunately, what Avraham built and established, and what Yitzchak too achieved — the first was destroyed by Yishmael — yes, the First Temple — and what was said of it? Al har Tziyon she-shamem, shu’alim hillechu vo, “Mount Zion, which lies desolate, foxes prowl over it”: it had become a pasture for foxes.

The Second Temple was destroyed by Esav. How is it described? Tziyon sadeh techaresh, “Zion shall be ploughed like a field.” Zion is like a field that has been ploughed over […]. Yaakov, for his part, made this world habitable — it is he. It is through him that the Beit ha-Mikdash ha-Shelishi, the Third Temple, [will come], since mitato shelemah — his bed was complete: there is no Yishmael and no Esav among Yaakov’s descendants. So it is he who will build […] — Beit El, which will indeed be the house of G-d, and that is for ad, for eternity. That, then, is what the words Elokei Avraham avicha ve-Elokei Yitzchak recall — and then ha-aretz asher atah shochev aleha, “the land on which you are lying.” For all of this can indeed be realized only on this land, which is a sample of the Garden of Eden, where man should recover his true dimension as Adam, […] and where you can indeed rethink your function in the world, your mission in the world — and you will be able to do it. And our Sages say that [G-d] folded the whole Land of Israel [beneath him] — it took on his dimension. And today we live a little of that dimension: our body draws from the Land of Israel those vibrations which at one time were only a dream, but which today are lived intensely in people’s consciousness — as though the land had been laid down [beneath him], all folded up.

Now we know that this place is the Even Shetiyah, its navel, its […] — the foundation stone of the entire universe; it is from there that the whole world spread out and reproduced itself. And in the same way — lecha etnenah u-le-zar’echa, “to you I will give it, and to your descendants,” ve-hayah zar’acha ka-afar ha-aretz, “and your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth” — they will be like this land, with its […], its properties, its particularities. For let us not forget that the virtue of this land, and all its richness, as we have said, is that it is the one that turns blood into milk, and the one that draws honey from the bee — that is, the pure from the impure. That is what makes life […]. It is there that the people of Israel will find its inspiration, because in chutz la-aretz (outside the Land) one can only dream — dream of Israel, in prayer. All we can do in chutz la-aretz is to let others benefit. We leave them, we abandon them; we find ourselves led to hand them over to other cultures, to other […].

But what is good, what man hopes for, is to be able to share of his own free will what he has, what he has achieved by himself, without constantly having to resort to forces akin to avodah zarah, a foreign worship, because we are obliged to take into account the culture in which we live. It is in the Land of Israel that the Jewish people can realize its own dimension. And it is from there that it can spread out and bring about ve-nivrechu vecha kol mishpechot ha-adamah, “and through you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” And G-d tells him: if this is your goal — ve-hinneh anochi immach u-shemarticha, “behold, I am with you and I will protect you” — I will be with you, I will protect you, I will help you.

We are witnesses today of this divine assistance. There are many things that, without it, we do not understand at all. […] Ki lo e’ezovcha ad asher, “for I will not forsake you until…” — because, just as you commit yourself toward Me, I commit Myself toward you. We are in a berit, a covenant, in which, indeed, our two hands […]. I have chosen you to fulfill this mission; we must work together. And then Yaakov awakes: va-yikatz Yaakov mi-shenato, “Yaakov awoke from his sleep.” Al tikrei mi-shenato ela mi-mishnato — do not read “from his sleep” but “from his learning.” This is what ripened in him throughout his sleep; this is what occupied him all through his night. And that is how he now conceives of this departure toward Charan. We already said last time what is said about Charan. But he says: achen yesh Hashem ba-makom ha-zeh, “surely Hashem is in this place.”

And we must come to realize that at all times and in every place — since He is mekomo shel olam, “the Place of the world” — the Eternal is truly present everywhere in the world. Did he not know it? But somewhere we carry this nostalgia for our parents’ home, for what we once were. In every place we live, we have changed. The conditions are not the same. The times are not the same. The strengths are not the same. […] Yesh, “there is,” means that He is present. He is present all the time. It is in this sense […] that Miriam stands watch over her brother and does not sleep; and that the children of Israel take their stand at the foot of the mountain.

When they must cross the Red Sea […] — “Stand firm, hold your ground”: one awakens divine help […]. Achen yesh Hashem ba-makom ha-zeh ve-anochi lo yadati, “Surely Hashem is in this place, and I did not know it.” Va-yira va-yomar mah nora ha-makom ha-zeh, “He was afraid and said: How awesome is this place!” […] this place — the place of the future […] the Holy Ark […]. Our commentators want us to notice: ein zeh ki im beit Elokim ve-zeh sha’ar ha-shamayim, “this is none other than the house of G-d, and this is the gate of heaven.” There are two things here. This is the bayit, the house that one builds. And Yaakov also knows this inwardness — sha’ar ha-shamayim, the gate of heaven — in which man judges himself. One cannot help judging oneself. We are vulnerable, we are fragile — and that, moreover, is why Yaakov felt the need to make a vow, even though G-d had just declared to him: I am with you, I will protect you; you must not be afraid of exile. You can accomplish things; you can carry all of Israel with you and bring it back with you.

That is very good. You can fulfill a mission in exile, and G-d approves of it. This night-time is indispensable for man to move forward in life. There is Avraham, who went down to Egypt. There is Yitzchak, who was forbidden to leave the borders of the Land of Israel. There is Yaakov: he is in Charan, but he is also in Mitzrayim, Egypt. And so the Avot lived through this exile, but in a […] sense. So these are the scattered stones — this people fragmented and dispersed all over the world. They were made into a single even, a single stone; they become the stones of the breastplate worn by the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest — the precious stones, which there too were gathered into a single piece.

It became a single piece. What we truly retain from the course of a life is what remains — what is immutable, what does not move, what one leaves behind, what one bequeaths sooner or later: the stone one hands on so that others may go on building the same edifice one dreamed of. So va-yikra et shem ha-makom ha-hu Beit El, “he called the name of that place Beit El” — the house of G-d — ve-ulam Luz shem ha-ir la-rishonah, “but Luz was the name of the city at first.” Before, it was not called Beit El; it was called Luz. So what is luz? Luz — very good. In Arabic, it means almonds. […] And the luz is that little bone up at the top […], which we moisten a little with the wine of Motza’ei Shabbat (the close of Shabbat), to give it a vigor drawn from the very tail end of Shabbat, so that it keeps us in a renewed energy for the next Shabbat, for the next kedushah.

And these are kedushot, holinesses, that add up and do not repeat themselves. Careful: this is not photocopying. So the luz — this little stone, this little bone, this little thread that was insignificant — can take part in the building of Beit El. […] I am not like the others […], and people take no interest in it at all. Something insignificant, […] that was lost; people take no interest in it at all. But Yaakov is aware: I am not like the others. I was saying earlier that we are in transit; sin can indeed plunge us into total disarray. That is why I say it. And Yaakov said: ve-natan li lechem le-echol, “and He will give me bread to eat” — if G-d assists me, assists me here, it means that He spares me weaknesses, that He sometimes allows me to catch myself, to recover.

Ve-natan li lechem le-echol u-veged lilbosh, “and He will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear.” But “bread to eat and clothing to wear” — do we need to be told? We know perfectly well that bread is for eating and clothing is for wearing. No — careful: he is reaching back to the sin of Adam. There it was lechem, food — but food that was not the one G-d had approved for man; and the levush, the clothing, was […] — clothing to cover oneself with dignity. To eat bread with dignity, in its kashrut; to wear clothing with dignity […], isn’t it so? That is what he asks: he wants to be himself in all things. And he says: if I succeed in repairing this lechem and this beged that were lacking to Adam ha-Rishon, I will be at peace at home, with my father’s house — if I am at peace with my father’s house. If I am mashlim, if I perfect this house of my father, if I bring it to its fulfillment, and the Eternal judges it favorably — ve-hayah Hashem li le-Elokim, “then Hashem shall be my G-d.” It is not [merely] that the Eternal will be my G-d. No: the criterion is not that I am the one who determines whether it is good; […] Elokim.

No — and there is the name Elokim. […] Ve-ha-even ha-zot asher samti matzevah yihyeh beit Elokim, “and this stone, which I have set up as a pillar, shall be the house of G-d” […] the stone of […] Luz. […] Ve-chol asher titten li asser a’asrennu lach, “and of all that You give me, I will surely give a tenth to You”: everything that comes to me will indeed be consecrated to You. That will be the finishing touch. Because one gives the tithe: when one has set aside the tithe of the grain, it is the tithe one sets aside that consecrates all the rest. For if we have nine people, we will not be able to recite Kaddish.

We will not be able to proclaim solemnly our kedushah, our holiness. One more is needed. The tenth […] is the one who carries the whole, because — that is the number ten, which we have mentioned several times. And I believe we have come to the end of our shiur, just as we have come to the end of our perek, our chapter. And next week, Parashat Vayishlach, we will continue […]. There are still many teachings, and we will see one another again. If you have questions, […].