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Parshat Vayetze (Genesis 28:10-32:3)
For Shabbat 12 Kislev 5761

Sometimes a story, or a sentence, or even a word, just jumps out when reading a text. I remember, for example, the first time I encountered the word "visage" in a high school English class reading Shelley's poem "Ozymandias".

Sometimes a text will throw up a phrase or a word at us, hoping to draw our attention, to fix us on some point. The second verse of this week's parsha, Vayetze, does that. Yaakov went out of (or left) Beer-Sheba, and arrived at (or set out for) Haran (28:10). He came upon (meet, encountered) a certain place, and he resided (rested, slept, lodged) there because the sun had gone, and he took from the stones of the place, and he put it for his head and he lied down in that very place. (Everett Fox reads the verses as: Yaakov went out from Be'er-Sheva and went toward Haran, and encountered a certain place./He had to spend the night there, for the sun had come in./Now he took one of the stones of the place/and set it at his head/and lay down in that place.)

These verse open the series of stories where Yaakov, who was previously described as a mild man, develops his own character. Running now, at his mother Rebecca behest, from Esau's anger and anguish (Yaakov having deceitfully taken the blessing Yitzhak had intend to bestow on Esau), Yaakov encounters the place.

How does one encounter a place, meet a place? One goes to a place, arrives at a place, passes by a place. Rashi, following the rabbis of old, notes that the Hebrew verb used here was used elsewhere in the Tanach to indicate some sort of geographic arrival or demarcation. But the very fact that Rashi asks why this word is used here demonstrates that the verb p-g-' is problematic.

Rashi again, quoting the talmudic tractate Berachot, notes that the use of this particular verb-encounter, meet-is a proof-text that Yaakov instituted the evening pray. How is that the case? Because of which particular place this place is: Mount Moriah, the mount of Yitzhak's binding, the place where the Temples were to be built.

In Sefer Ha-Aggadah (The Book of Legends) edited by Hayim N. Bialik and Yehosua H. Ravnitsky (translated by William G. Braude), the talmudic sources are redacted: "'And he got to Haran' (28:10). After Yaakov reached Haran, he asked himself: Is it possible that I passed by (Moriah), the place where my fathers prayed, and I did not pray? As he was deciding to return, the earth contracted [bringing Moriah to Haran], so the he "encountered the place" (28:11) [as it came up to meet him]. After he finished praying, he wanted to return to Haran. But the Holy One said: This righteous man has come to My dwelling place-shall he depart without a night's lodging there? Immediately the sun set."

The assumption here is that Yaakov knew what that particular place was. But, in the manner of modern creative midrash, we don't have to read the text only that way. How shall we struggle with the text if we assume instead that Yaakov did not know where he had arrived, and that the verb "encounter" is prefiguring of the balance of the story?

Take a look at what follows: and he put them around his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamt, and behold, a ladder was set earthward and its top reached heavenward, and behold, angels of G-d ascending and descending on it. And, behold, Ha-Shem was standing over him, and He said, "I am Ha-Shem, G-d of Abraham, your father and G-d of Yitzhak; the ground upon which you are lying, to you will I give it and to your descendants. Your offspring shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall burst forth westward, eastward, northward, and southward, and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and by your offspring. Behold, I am with you; and I will guard you, wherever you go, and I will return you to this soil; for I will not forsake you until I will have done what I have spoken for you." Yaakov awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely Ha-Shem was in this place and I did not know!" And he became frightened and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of G-d and this is the gate of the heavens!" Yaakov arose early in the morning and took the stone that he had placed around his head and set it as a pillar, and he poured out on its top. And he called the name of the place Beth-el; however, Luz was the city's name originally. (28:11-28:19, Artscroll translation)

Places can surprise us, the effect that places can have can surprise us. Think of the places we can go that overwhelm us with the wonder of nature: The Grand Canyon, Yosemite. The places that strike us with human history: Gettysburg, Arlington National Cemetery. The places that remind us of human grandeur: The White House, the Capitol Building, the Empire State Building.

Wrap that all up in one, add a triple dose of wonderment at the improbable infinities of Divine interaction with poor, fallen, mistaken, fragile human beings and perhaps we can divine a sense of Yaakov's awe. At this place, at this encounter, G-d lays bear to Yaakov the future and promise of his descendants, descendants to be the bearers of G-d's name in the world. It is at that site, on Mount Moriah, in Jerusalem, the still unsettled center of the world, that Divine destiny unfolds for the children of Yaakov.

Sometimes we are taken by surprise by a sentence or a phrase or a word we read. Sometimes we are astounded by a place. Jerusalem is that place for Jews. Can we just visit Jerusalem? Not likely, I think. We encounter it, we see in Jerusalem, for all our religious and political discomfort there, a never-ending dream of what should be, of how the angels should be ascending and descending, and carrying to the One the messages of human life and longing. We moderns, or post-moderns, or whatever kind of modern we may think of ourselves, wander into the Jerusalem of this world, and dream of the Jerusalem above, an always-better Jerusalem, a Jerusalem the way it should be. But we can never not think of, dream of, long for both Jerusalems. She takes us by surprise, and never lets us go, just as we can never let her go. It is a place called also the House of G-d (Beth-el), but it is also the house of man, and the place where Jews encounter G-d. This is not to say that we cannot encounter G-d elsewhere: in places of great natural wonder, in modest sanctuaries full of the Jews in worship. It is a place however where we can especially sense the holiness in which G-d envelops Jewish people.

May G-d grant peace, glory and honor to the beloved city, and the holy land, speedily and in our days.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dennis