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TORAH PORTION: VAYETZE

Parashat Vayetze

November 25, 2023 | 12 Kislev 5784

Torah: Genesis 28:10-32:3 Triennial: Genesis 30:14-31:16

Haftarah: Hosea 12:13-14:10

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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Torah portion by Bex Stern-Rosenblatt called "Returning Home", Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein asks shares insights from Hassidut in a video titled "The Ladder of Money", and Ilana Kurshan reflects on the parashah through poetry in a piece called "Ladder of Angels".

D'VAR TORAH

Returning Home

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt

Parashah

Even after all the promises, even after all of his success, even after a lifetime in a place, Abraham is still a Jew of the diaspora. He heeded God’s call. He got up, he went, he left his land, his birthplace, the house of his father, to go to the land that God would show him. He made a life for himself there, built altars, got rich, had sons. But at the end of the day, as an old man considering his legacy, Abraham reveals that his heart has never left the land of his youth. 

When instructing his servant to find a wife for his son, Abraham sends him back to the old country. His language echoes the language with which God had called him. He says, “Go to my land and to my birthplace,” explaining that God had taken him “from the house of my father, the land of my birth.” There is tremendous pain revealed in Abraham’s words. His story is bookended by leaving his birthplace and longing to go back to it. God has promised him this new home, this new land. Abraham has buried his beloved wife in this land. And yet, for him, his home will always be his place of his birth. 

His grandson, Jacob, will experience something similar. But for him, Israel is home. In our parashah, we read another echo of God’s call to Abraham. We read God’s words to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your birthplace and I will be with you.” He repeats it again, saying, “Get up and go from this land and return to the land of your birthplace.” Jacob will go so far as to repeat it back to God, to hold God to his word. This language is powerful, showing a complete switch. Jacob is in Padan Aram, in the land of Abraham’s birth, with Abraham’s family, when he is told to return home. Home for Jacob, the land of his fathers, his birthplace, is Israel. It is only fitting that he will be given the name Israel, becoming the first native of our land. He can return home to the land which his parents and grandparents made for him. 

This is the man who will be so reluctant to let his children leave the land, to go down to Egypt. This is the man who will reclaim his grandsons, Ephraim and Mannaseh, born in Egypt, as his own, making their birthplace and home symbolically Israel rather than Egypt. This is the man who will insist that he be buried at home, that he be brought back to Israel. This is the man who teaches his son to do the same, to have his bones brought back with the Exodus from Egypt, the return home. 

It is from this tradition that for all of us, our birthplace, our home, is Israel. We read twice in Megillat Esther of Esther’s care not to reveal who her nation is and what her birthplace is. Esther was not literally born in Israel, in Canaan. She was born in exile. But starting with Jacob, our homeland, the land of our ancestors, our birthplace is Israel. It is the home to which we return.

HASSIDUT

The Ladder of Money

Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein

Insights from Hassidut

Rabbi Daniel Silverstein teaches Hassidut at the CY and directs Applied Jewish Spirituality (www.appliedjewishspirituality.org). In these weekly videos, he shares Hassidic insights on the parashah or calendar.

WHITE FIRE: POETRY ON THE PARASHAH

Ladder of Angels

llana Kurshan

Jacob rarely slept straight through the night

He often woke with vivid, startling dreams. 

His mother would come running to his tent

Awoken by his tremors and his screams.

But then he left and set out for Haran.

With neither tent to pitch nor mother near. 

Alone at night he slept beneath the stars

Enveloped in the darkness, and his fear. 

A mild man who stayed inside his tent,

As he was known, now Jacob felt the chill

Of outdoor air, and vast wide open space. 

And—gasp—a wind. The night was hardly still. 

The wind of angels beating wings atop

A ladder to the dark skies, up and down

Ascend, descend. For God is in this place

The heavens linked to firm and solid ground. 

“I’m here with you,” said God. “And I will be,

Alongside when you head back on your way.”

Then Jacob woke, becalmed, his rest assured,

He knew now something new. And so he prayed. 

We all are Jacob, sleeping through our lives

We’re swept up in time’s tide, its rise and fall

We think: That’s just a ladder, just the sky. 

For most it happens rarely, if at all:

We wake up, stunned, bestirred -- For God is here!

Life takes us far, but God is always near.

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The Talmud teaches that the Torah was given in black fire on white fire (Y. Shekalim 6:1). The black fire is the letters of the Torah scroll, and the white fire is the parchment background. In this column, consisting of a poem on each parashah, I will try to illuminate the white fire of Torah – the midrashim, stories, and interpretations that carve out the negative space of the letters and give them shape.

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