Jacob lay down his
head to sleep. Now, most of the time when we go to sleep, we don't expect to have
a memorable dream, we simply go through the motions of falling asleep, to then
awaken the next morning. Here too, we assume that Jacob was no exception. Yet,
as we know, Jacob will become the father of the Jewish people. As active
readers, we see that this particular dream, found at the beginning of this
week’s Parsha, vayeitzei, begets that legacy that created who we are today.
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| God is in... |
God appears before
Jacob in Gen 28:13-14, at the top of the ladder, telling him [hebrew];
"...the land on which you are lying I will give to you and to your
descendants. And your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth."
God continues speaking, telling Jacob that his descendants will spread out
through all directions of the earth, that God will help Jacob and his descendants
find blessings. Oddly enough, the Torah does not speak of Jacob's descendants
as simply being blessings, but that they will FIND blessing. God continues to
say that God will watch over Jacob, in fact, ושמרתיך, God will protect him and
guard him. When Jacob awakens, he says in Genesis 28:16, אכן יש ה׳ במקום הזה
ואנוכי לא ידעתי. "God was in this place and I did not know."
We see in Jacob a
promise of the future, of both what the future will bring and what it entails.
This promise comes before Jacob falls in love with Rachel, working for Laban
for fourteen years and first marrying Leah. This promise comes before Jacob has
his 13 children, from four women. This comes before Jacob takes more than half
of Laban's sheep and does magic in order to increase his own stock. This comes
before Jacob has yet another dream where it is requested that he return to his
native land.
In spite of all
this, Jacob is called to be a blessing for all of us. He is the past, the
present and the future. He is the great one whose descendants eventually became
the Jewish people. However, he is also the individual who did not notice God's
presence. Rashi commentates that Jacob would not have slept in the place he
chose, because God was present in that place. Jacob is unaware that the place
where he is about to sleep is holy, that indeed every place is holy. If he knew
this tidbit, at least before he lay down to sleep, he likely would have
refrained from sleeping there. Regardless, he slept on holy ground. However,
the p’shat, or simple, way of
discovering the parsha is seeing
that God is in everyplace, as Julie Silver’s popular camp song refrains, I
am all around, in every day dream. I am all you are, and all you know. It then flows into the Hebrew that we heard above: achein
yeish adonai, b’makom ha zeh, vanochi lo yadati. The I in the song is God, and God is referred to as being constantly
around us, surrounding us. Jacob feels God’s presence, just as strongly the
next morning as he did in the midst of his dream.
The blessing in
all of this is that we CAN find God and the presence of God everywhere we go
and within everything we do. God is truly all around us, supporting us, helping
us. Even here, in the middle of this desert, God surrounds us. Some of our
people’s most profound experiences took place in the desert. Every time we are
in search of God, sanctity, connection we as Jews end up in the desert. We may
not feel God, but we know God exists, that God is here. God told Jacob he would
spread out, yama, tzafona, vkedma, vnegba; West,
North, East, and South. We are in negba, the Negev, named after that Biblical direction, the Southern part of
the land of Israel.
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| The sun, bursting through the seams of cloud |
Here, in the
middle of the desert, we find serenity from the attacks and hatred that usually
greet us on the news or in the streets. We are surrounded by majesty instead of
hatred, by magnificence instead of despair. This place, hanegev, is the escape of our people, from Biblical time to
now. A few weeks from now we will read the 40 year wandering saga, most of
which took place in and around this desert, away from other peoples. Only there
did we unanimously answer na’aseh
and join in a covenant with God, and did the people begin to converse with God.
Our ancestors often ventured into the desert to converse with God, for
connection or sanctity.
So the question
then becomes, why are we here now? The connection we create to this place
through the story is stronger than time. By being here, we see ourselves
relative to the larger world. We are re-connecting and re-committing to both
who we are and what we want to become. We are like Jacob, laying down wherever
we find a place and then commenting on it in the next moment. However, we must
rise above Jacob’s example and ask what we want to take out of this experience.
We go through our lives, doing the necessary work to receive what we desire.
Again, instead of simply doing the work, we must ask who we will represent in
this world, what we will stand for. We are even more like Jacob when sit today
as the continuation and part of the fulfillment of the legacy he was promised.
Here, in the
desert, we are part of the reality of the covenant, but it is still just us,
together, now. We must decide to accept the yoke of the covenant that God made
with Jacob, to recognize that if God is all around, the way we act in business
or relationships or daily life matters. We cannot simply dismiss negative
behavior or actions. Rather, we must continue to engage in a conversation. We
must actively decide to be better, to pursue honest and just work practices and
relationships. Today, I take Jacob’s promise to heart and, here in the majesty
of the desert, recognizing my insignificance, I pledge to continue to work for
the realization of that covenant. To work for the compassion and honesty and
Godliness that should be in the world. Do you?
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