…And Rachel said to Leah, "Give me, pray,

some of the mandrakes of your son."

And she said, "Is it not enough that you have taken my husband

 and now you would take the mandrakes of my son?"

And Rachel said, "Then let him lie with you tonight

 in return for the mandrakes of your son."

And Jacob came from the field in the evening

and Leah went out to meet him and said,

"With me you will come to bed, for I have clearly hired you

 with the mandrakes of my son"

(Bereishit 30: 14-16)

 

"Is it not enough that you have taken my husband" For you should not have agreed to a second wife [Lit. "Tsarati" Tsarah means "a second wife", and also "trouble"], as is written,And you shall not take a woman to be a second wife to her sister"; "and now you would take the mandrakes of my son", increasing his love for you, and his hatred for me?

"Then let him lie with you tonight" So that the workings of the mandrakes and their supernatural cure benefit you before me and you will not be harmed by giving of them to me now, because whoever found these will find more, and especially because they are ownerless, as the Sages pointed out (Bereishit Raba 72:2).

            (Sforno, ibid., 16)

                                   

"With me you will come" - To my tent, for each had her own tent for herself.

                                                                                                                        (RaDaK 30:16)

 

"And Leah went out to meet him" Even though this was an act of impropriety, it was preferable for her to forgo her honor rather than to embarrass Rachel by having Yaakov leave her tent after he had already entered it.

(Haamek Davar, ibid., ibid.)

 

 

 

Tower, ladder, and house

Gil Nativ

In their book "That's Not What's Written in the Bible", Yair Zakowitz and Avigdor Shinan present an interesting argument regarding the beginning of 'Parashat Vayetzeh' - Yaakov's dream, which ends with Yaakov naming the place where he slept 'Beit El' [House of God] and setting up his stone pillow as a monument. They claim that the story is an anti-thesis, a mirror image, of the Tower of Babel narrative in Parashat Noah. Why?

The authors maintain that the Torah desired to mock the Babylonian belief that the city of Babel was the gate to heaven, the meeting place of heaven and earth, of gods and men. The original name of 'Babel' was 'Bab-Ilu' - Gate of the God'. The Biblical explanation is that the name was created from the root b'l'l' - 'confusion' - of peoples and tongues. According to the Biblical narrative, the tower was erected in the heart of the city at the initiative of men in order to ascend to heaven, abode of the gods. This version is authenticated by -  perhaps even based upon - the ancient Babylonian story of the city's founding; one year they burned bricks, the second year they built the tower to the height of the heavens…

The authors detail the contrasts through parallelisms. To note a few: In the 'Babel' story, the initiative to reach heaven is of human origin. God descends from heaven to observe the Babylonians' activities, and, as a result, He is angered, and punishes them. In the 'Jacob's Ladder' story, the initiative for the meeting is God's. Yaakov lies on the ground, on a low place, and God stands at the head of the ladder. He does not descend, but sends angels, and subsequently He blesses Jacob. This and yet more, the people of Babel used bricks which they created with their own hands; Yaakov takes a stone from nature, and transforms it into a monument.

Through the contrast between the two stories, our fathers wished to say that the beliefs and culture of the Babylonians constituted rebellion against God, arrogant conceit, as compared with the faith of Israel and its culture, the salient features of which are acceptance of the unbridgeable distance between God and man, and self-education to humility and modesty in man's standing before his creator.

The Babylonians' feeling that they were able to reach the habitat of the God in heaven had its origin primarily in the fact that Babel was the greatest technological power in the era of the Patriarchs, and its construction projects were among the wonders of the ancient world. I have no doubt that modern Babel's race to conquer the moon nurtures the contemporary belief that man has the ability to reach everywhere, and there is nothing he cannot accomplish. It is only a matter of time and financial investment in research and development, predict NASA (U.S. space agency) personnel, until man-made spaceships will be able to reach even stars beyond the solar system. On the other hand, approximately once a decade, a disaster occurs (such as the one in which the Israeli astronaught, Ilan Ramon, was killed), sending us a reminder that we are but human beings, and that even at the peak of our technological accomplishments we will not be immune to error. And more - even though we succeed in lengthening our life span, we shall still be mortal. Even more - even as we overcome tremendous technological challenges, we still have great difficulty communicating with each other because of humanity's profusion of languages, opinions, and cultures.

Yaakov is the antithesis of the Babylonians' (ancient and modern) self-confidence. He dedicates a simple unchiseled fieldstone to God who appeared to him in a dream. His modest requests "bread to eat and a garment to wear" show that he values and appreciates the simple gifts which God gives him daily and hourly, and that he will educate his progeny not to be swept away by the intoxication of those who boast "My strength and the power of my arm have produces this wealth."

Yaakov is a man searching for a place on earth, a tent-dweller and a wanderer who dreams about building a house for the Lord who appeared to him. The word makom [location, place] is a keyword in the first chapter of the parasha (Z. Falk: Divrei Torah ad Tumam, p. 66). From "And he came upon a certain place" through "How fearsome is this place! This can be but the house of God…" All of the three patriarchs encounter God in the open spaces of nature, in the field and on the mountain. The Talmud (Pesahim 88a) asks: Why will many nations say in the end of days "Come let us go up… to the house of the God of Yaakov"? Why do they not say to house of the God of Abraham or those of the God of Yitzchak? The reply is that Abraham is remembered by virtue of "on the mountain God will be revealed"; Yitzchak goes to converse with his God in the field, and smells "the fragrance of the filed which God has blessed"; only Yaakov vows to erect for his God a 'house' - to compress` the divine presence into a manmade building, which he will build with his own hands… this is his vow and this is his hope as he sets out on his journey to the unknown.

Gil Nativ is rabbi of Congregation Magen Avraham - a Masorti congregation - in Omer.

 

 

And here, messengers of God were going up and down on it… As Yaakov went on his way, messengers of God encountered him."

"Going up and down": First ascending, then descending. Angels who accompanied him in the land did not exit the land; they ascended to heaven, and angels of a foreign land descended to accompany him.

(Rashi, Bereishit 28:12)

 

"Messengers of God encountered him." Angels of Eretz Yisrael came towards him to accompany him to the land. (Rashi, Bereishit 32:2)

 

…the angels of God are the prophets, with reference to whom it is clearly said "And He sent an angel;" and "An angel of God came up from Gilgal to Bochim." How well put is the phrase ascending and descending, –the ascent before the descent. for after the ascent and the attaining of certain rungs on the ladder that may be known comes the descent with whatever decree the prophet has been informed of - with a clear view to governing and teaching the people of the earth.

 (Rambam, Guide to the Perplexed, 1:15)

 

"As Yaakov went on his way, messengers of God encountered him. Yaakov said when he saw them: This is a camp of God." This matter of angels being perceived with the physical eye can be explained either as a disguise of the angel - as in the case of Yosef, "and a man discovered him", meaning that he dressed in human garb - or as Yaakov having so sensitive an imagination as to experience actual encounter one with the other. If one approaches his friend, he is first discerned from afar, and only later is there physical contact. This not the case with the angel. A human cannot see him from afar; only when he is nearby is his capacity for (spiritual) perception sufficiently sharpened. Similarly, our ancients explained (Bereishit 16:13) "Have I actually gone on seeing here after his seeing me?" - since he (the heavenly messenger) had stopped talking to her, she could no longer 'see' him [Trans. note - her seeing was a spiritual experience, in effect as long the angel spoke to her]. Thus, with regard to our passage: Even though they (the angels) were coming from Eretz Yisrael to meet him, he did not see them from afar. Only they physically touched him, when they were actually with him - when he needed them - then he discerned them and his sight was purified. Therefore it says, "when he saw them" - after making contact, and not prior to contact, for "This is a camp of God!".

(Reb Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, Meshekh Hokhma, Bereishit 32:2-3)

 

…His is not an encounter between two humans, but a meeting between Yaakov the man and angels. This is not something which can be seen, because the angels which man sees are seen in his consciousness. This seeing of angels is a metaphoric expression of man's inner cognizance of God, and therefore man sees them only when they are within him, in his consciousness . . . it should be noted that these ideas are articulated by Reb Meir Simcha against the background of his knowledge of the Rambam's doctrine of prophecy, in which "angels" are perceptions of the imagination.

Leibowitz, Seven Years of Discussions of the Parasha of the Week)

 

very Journey Can Deteriorate, Therefore One Must Pray that it Persevere Towards its Original Destination

Rabbi Abahu said: If God remains with me, if He protects me baderekh [on this journey] that I am making - [this is protection] from evil speech. How do we know this? From the verse that says Vayidrekhu (they have trained) their tongues to speak falsely (Jeremiah 9) and gives me bread to eat - [this is protection from] illicit sex, as it is written and he [Potiphar] knew nothing accept the bread he ate - [bread,] this is a euphemism [for sex]. And if I return safe [literally: in peace] to my father's house - [this is protection] from bloodshed. The Lord shall be my God - [this is protection] from idolatry.

(Bereishit Rabbah 70)

 

That is to say, that Jacob does not ask that his own needs be seen to, rather he asks that God help him perform his duties, that he spare him from the sins of evil speech, blood-shed, illicit sex and idolatry. This vow is a very great religious commitment and is not connected with payment of rewards.

(Prof. Yishayahu Leibowitz of blessed memory, He'arot Leparshiyot Hashavua)

 

 

All Must Be Treated Justly

"It is still broad daylight" - The righteous despise injustice even when perpetrated against strangers, as it says, The unjust man is an abomination to the righteous, and he whose way is straight is an abomination to the wicked (Proverbs 29:27).

(Seforno 29:7)

 

...here is revealed an unshakable sense of justice and rectitude, similar to that of Moses, who also found his future by a well. He too will not put up with neglect and misappropriation... practical agility and love of work, that quickly sends forth a helping hand, even when it is none of his affair, a quality standing almost in contradiction to the character of a mild man who stayed in camp.

(R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, 29: 10-12)

 

...to let you know that contemplation and isolation, and the avoidance of life's crowds and clamor are not the signs of one close to God and of one to whom the divine presence has been revealed. Rather, such a person carries his banner among his fellows, performs deeds - even involving the most banal of everyday matters. He involves himself in everyday actions in order to promote justice.

(Nehamah Leibowitz, Studies in Bereishit [Hebrew edition], p. 219)

 

Give Me Leave - And I Will Go To My Place, to My Land"

Place, Land, Birthplace

Yitro said (Bemidbar 10:30): "To my land and to my birthplace I will go"; geographically speaking, this is the correct order; one cannot be in his dwelling place unless he is found in his land. But the situation was different with Yaakov; he had a dwelling place, but he had no land. The land was only a goal, it was a land of the future. Therefore, it seems, he said: ""u'lartsi" (connoting "for the sake of my land"), rather than "el artsi" - meaning only "to my land." The land, as it is today, does not attract him; upon his return he will be no closer to it than when he was Avram. But when he will build his home in his birthplace, he will live for the sake of the land of his future. He will raises his family in that place, which is destined to become the land of his grandchildren's birthplace.

(Hirsch, Bereishit 30:25)

 

 And He Fled, He with All that was His

He [Jacob] had not been promised this [that he would be able to take all of his possessions with him], and that is why he had to resort to this trick. Even though it was not easy to travel a long time without Laban finding out, he was sure that divine providence would keep him from knowing. However, human notions of providence are not those of God. Rather he did find out and gave chase and caught up with him, but in any event he was saved by God. Such are the ways of Israel; they are always sure that divine providence will be with them in the path they choose to follow, yet the Holy One Blessed Be He disrupts their plans in order to cause them distress and purify them, or for some other reason. In any case, he does save them and protect them in a different manner that they never thought of... However, it would have been preferable if he had not hidden himself from Laban and had not come to theft of the Terafim that caused Jacob great evil.

(Ha'Emek Davar 31:21)

 

 

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