MY DAILY LIFE TORAH COACH:
Parshat Vayetze n.07

Parashat Vayetze ranks as one of the most inspirational and referenced Torah portions. It chronicles Jacob’s life as he flees his home and travels to Charan, where he labors and grows his family for twenty years, eventually returning to his home a blessed man with great wealth and many children, including the twelve sons from whom the Jewish people will emanate. This summary does not reflect the complexity of this week parashat. On this journey, Jacob struggles with the realities of existence, his human weakness, and his relationship with G-d. He dreams, he wrestles with the Divine, he suffers and he builds. This journey is both corporal and spiritual.

Being half way through Genesis what sets this week’s portion apart is Jacob’s ladder dream with celestial beings climbing up and down. G-d placed a ladder in Jacob’s dream to show him and us that just living life in a way where you just go with the flow is not what is expected from us.

My research on Vayetze led me to a famous XIth century poet and Torah commentator Rabbi Solomon ibn Gabirol. For him the ladder and the angels represent “the spiritual aspect of the human condition and the wisdom we acquire through spiritual living. The ladder is the connection between heaven and Earth, which we travel in life, as contemporary Jews, with the wisdom we garner from personal experience to act in an ethical and moral fashion”.

Today we may have better technology, more comfortable lives, and more transparency in society but at our core our dilemmas are no different than those faced by Jacob. The ancient world is no more or less savage than the one today. The easy way is to just stay where you’re comfortable at. Taking a step in either direction is hard work. Jacob achieves success under difficult circumstances. His efforts provide the strength, faith, and wisdom to prosper and succeed, and to heal broken family relationships.

For me the biggest challenge I had to take was getting out of my comfort zone, my homeland. I chose a foreign land. Like all of us Jews at some point of time, willingly or not. I climbed an unknown ladder full of uncertainties. The challenges, liabilities, and benefits of leaving home and living in foreign lands are recurring themes in Torah Teaching and, consequently Jewish history.

What was your biggest challenge? Write us in the comments.

Text By Beatrice Boban