Weekly Parsha-Va-Yetzei
This week’s Parsha “Paga’s” me. I write this because it is the word used in the beginning of Va-Yetzei. There are many translations for it and the one I understand it to be this year is “strike”. In the verse Gen.28:11, the text reads “he came upon a certain place”. It could also read “he encountered a certain place.” I prefer this year to read it as “God struck him in a certain place”. I am reading it this way because many years ago, when I was studying this Parsha with Avi Reichental, he translated it as wounded. I have played with this way of understanding this verse ever since. Thank you Avi.
The Hebrew is “Va-Yifgah B’Makom”. “Makom” is another name for God as well as place. I was studying this verse with Rabbi Brandon Bernstein this week and we discussed this verse in relation to a Spiritual Awakening. Even as I am writing this, I am bombarded by different ways to understand the text.
Jacob is stuck in a certain place by God. The certain place could be a foreshadowing to next week’s Parsha. It could be another physical wound that is not permanent, causing the need for a permanent wound in next week’s Parsha. It also could be understood as “God struck him (Jacob) in God’s Place, ie the soul. After all, a spiritual awakening begins in the soul and comes up to the mind. God tried to get Jacob to begin to think and act from his soul and create “soul to soul” relationships, as my wife, Harriet Rossetto, teaches us to do. Jacob was so far out of control: lying to his father, stealing from his brother, colluding with his mother only worrying about punishment-not that what he was doing was wrong; that he needed to be struck in his soul to remind him that he had one! As a recovering Alcoholic, I know that I needed to be soul struck by God in order to change. Most people in recovery know the moment of that spiritual awakening and can recite it from memory with precision. I had many other spiritual awakenings prior to December of 1986, yet none of them stuck. In reading this week’s Parsha, I realize why they didn’t. I did not allow my soul to be struck by the words of God, family, friends, etc. Much like Jacob in this opening chapter, my soul was struck and, in the words of Rabbi Heschel, they were “like shooting stars, passing and unremembered.” Jacob has his dream and when he wakes up, he says “There is God in this place and I, I did not know.” Rabbi Lawrence Kushner wrote a book based on this verse that everyone should read. I understand the reason for two forms of I to remind us we have an earthly I (self-centered and protective) and a divine I (joined with God to live life on God’s terms).
A spiritual awakening is when the divine I (soul/spirit) is awakened and we are reminded of our partnership with God and that we are not God. This is what Jacob realizes in verses 16-19 of Chapter 28. By verse 20, he is making a deal with God wanting God to give him things and then he will believe and donate 10% of what he has. Still a trickster and we can all understand him. How many times I would agree to something in order to get the heat off. How many times have I and you had an insight that we did not follow through with because we forgot and/or we thought we could get away without acting on the insight. The most important part of a spiritual awakening is what we do with it. Jacob did not follow through on being struck by God in God’s place, his soul. Instead, he met Rachel, found Laban, and went on a journey of being conned and deceived and betrayed by everyone in his life in Haran. Jacob gets mad at Laban for deceiving him, yet he doesn’t blame Rachel at all. For the deception to have worked, she had to be a part of it, as was Leah. Yet, Jacob cannot bring himself to see this about Rachel, he certainly took out his anger on Leah by withholding his love from her. And, Jacob cannot see how he did the same betrayal to his father, Isaac and his brother, Esau! Talk about denial! How often have any of us wanted to make someone we love, care about, need, etc. out to be good even though they have participated in a betrayal of us? How often have we made it okay and try to convince ourselves and others that it wasn’t “personal, just business”. How often have we denied our own betrayals of others, ourselves and God so that we can continue to wrap ourselves in self-righteousness?
Leah also has a spiritual awakening in this Parsha and doesn’t follow through with it. When she names her fourth son, Yehudah, she is grateful and gives thanks to God for bearing children realizing “Praise the Lord” is more important than trying to get her husband to love her like he loves her sister, Rachel. Leah is struck in her soul and knows it-for a minute. Soon afterward, Leah gets back into competition with Rachel over giving birth and giving maid-servants to Jacob, etc. Her “Praise the Lord” moment was fleeting and her internal pain and suffering come back with a vengeance. Here is another lesson I am learning this year from this Parsha. When God has struck our soul and we stay “loyal to the event and loyal to our response” as Rabbi Heschel teaches, the hurts and betrayals by others don’t change us in our core. They serve as reminders of how blessed we are to say “Praise the Lord”. In fact, I realize the custom of saying this, in Hebrew and in English is to remind us that with God, with a spiritual awakening that we follow through with/on and keep growing we can and will weather all storms and grow from each encounter. As I look back over the past 34 years, I know that my resolve to not revert to old ways of being and to not need to ‘get even’ has diminished so greatly and I now ‘go to war with a heart of peace’ as I learned in a book, Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute.
As we leave this Parsha this year, I hope all of us will look back on the ways God has struck you in your soul and consider how you have followed through with the insight you were given. I also want to do T’Shuvah to my family, living and deceased, friends and others who, over the years reached out to me and were Divine Instruments to strike my soul and whom I ignored for all those years. I am so sorry and my commitment is to continue to grow the spiritual awakening I had 34 years ago. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Mark