Vayetzei - וַיֵּצֵא - Genesis B'reisheet 28:10 - 32:3 Making Torah Personal ~ Savlanut

Studying selected verses of the parsha through the lens of Mussar---exploring the character trait of Savlanut / סבלנות / Patience

The middah of Savlanut/סבלנות/ Patience/

Although classically, the parsha might be related to patience regarding how long Jacob needed to wait before being able to marry Rachel, patience is related to the quality of noticing, of being present, which Jacob discovers through his encounter with God.

Bullet Points /key concepts:

• Jacob embarks on a journey, and on the way, has a dream with a ladder and angels---one of the most spiritual dreams in Western religions. [28:10-22]

• Through this dream we confront our own pre-occupation with self, and our inability to experience a concealed HaShem.

• Jacob becomes a member of Laban's family and works for Laban for 7 years to gain the ability to marry Rachel, "is tricked" and marries Leah first.[29:16-25] He must work 7 more years in order to marry Rachel.[29:26-30]

• Leah, Rachel, and their maidservants [Bilhah and Zilpah], give birth to 11 sons and one daughter [Dinah].

• Jacob flees Laban's home with great wealth. [31:1-32:3]

Noticing, Having Patience: The invisible

The root word of Savlanut is Sevel סבל: suffering, pain, hardship. The root word in Hebrew (S-B-L: samech, bet, lamed) is shared by sabal (meaning a porter--someone who carries), sevolet (tolerance), sovel (burden or load). How do these terms relate to patience? What is the connection between carrying your own burden or others?

What do we notice and not notice? How much is our attention taken away by mundane tasks that we need to do? What do we need to do in order to experience HaShem, even in the ordinary?

Patience is the root of all positive middot and developed character… "Take time, be exact, unclutter the mind."

~Rabbi Simcha Zissel, the Alter of Kelm

Do not be hasty in your actions ~Orchot Chaim, Rabbeinu Asher

Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention on the present. When you're mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to experience.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/mindfulness

What is patience? The patient person is exactly like someone who is carrying a heavy package. Even though it weighs upon him, he continues to go upon his way and doesn't take a break from carrying it. The same is true in all the relationships that are between people: we see and hear many things that are not according to our will and still we continue to be friends. ~Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe

It is well known that King Solomon used to wear a ring with three Jewish letters, ‘gimmel,’ ‘zayen’ and ‘yud.’ These three letters are an abbreviation of three words “Gam Zeh Yaavor” – גם זה יעבור this too shall pass.....[even]King Solomon needed to be reminded during his difficulties that “this too shall pass” and trust that we will overcome! ~Rabbi Levi Volovik

How did Rabbi Akiva start out? They said: he was forty years old and had never studied anything. Once he stood at a well. He said, "Who engraved this stone?" They told him, "[It was] the water, which drips upon it every day." And they said to him, "Akiva, are you not familiar [with the verse,] 'As the waters wear away the stones'?" On the spot, Rabbi Akiva made the following deduction: If something soft [like water] could chisel its way through something hard [like stone], then surely the words of Torah, which are as hard as iron, can penetrate my heart, which is flesh and blood!" Immediately, he returned to studying Torah. ~Avot d'Rebbe Natan, chapter 6

Commentators disagree on where "the Makom" is...some say Beersheva, some say Mount Moriah, some say Mount Sinai. What do you think? What might the exact location of a geographic place infer? What is the teaching if we don't really know the place?

נָצַב (v) heb

1. • to stand, take one's stand, stand upright, be set (over), establish

What conditions do you need in order to notice, pay attention, be present? How does being patient or impatient affect your ability to be in the present? What hinders your ability to be present or notice?

This interpretation of Yaacov's spiritual awakening issues both a deep challenge and an invitation. It forces us to contend with the paradoxical truth that sometimes thinking too much about God can get in the way of having a relationship with God; that Torah can actually be an obstacle to tefilla. And it charges us to find a way to pray, to render God intensely real. Awakening to the divine, it turns out, sometimes requires going to sleep a bit, quieting our vigilant minds so that our hearts might open to a new, surprising dream. ~ Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler

The verse literally reads, "Surely God was in this place and I, i did not know." The sense is "...and me, I didn't know." But the "I" (in Hebrew, Anochi, אנוכי) seems to be redundant. Unless, of course, you assume, as Jews have done for millennia, that God does not waste words.

The simple "extra I" (which the school of Kotzk identifies as ego or conceit) leads Pinchas Horowitz...to an important insight. "It is only possible for a person to attain that high rung of being able to say, 'Surely God is in this place,' when he or she has utterly eradicated all trace of ego from his or her personality, from his or her sense of self, and from his or her being. The phrase, 'I, i did not know,' must mean, 'my I - i did not know....God was here all along, and the reason I didn't know it is because I was too busy paying attention to myself."

Religious life demands constant vigilance against the schemes of our egos (the little is) to supplant the Divine.

~God Was In This Place & I, i Did Not Know by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

There is a midrash [in Genesis Rabbah 69:7] that says that Jacob awoke not from his sleep (mishnato) but from his Mishnayot (mimishnato). From this we learn that the essence of a person's worship is to come to perfect service of God and to grasp the meaning of God through both Torah and tefilla. There cannot be one without the other, because an ignoramus does not become a pious Hasid; and conversely, one who says, “there is nothing in the world for me except Torah” does not have even Torah. It is true that by studying Torah for the sake of heaven and cleaving one’s soul and one’s very being to the letters of the Torah, a person can achieve great holiness; but a person can only truly fear and love and yearn for God through prayer, and through the surrendering of the self that prayer entails, as we know from all our holy books. Our sages of blessed memory taught that when Jacob had his dream at Beit El, he established the evening prayer, Arvit. Until this point, Jacob had not known the secret of prayer. God did not reveal Himself to him until he became aware of its tremendous power. And this is the meaning of the midrash that says that Jacob awoke from his Mishnayot...upon awakening, he realized that Torah alone would not bring him to a full awareness of God. Jacob said, “Surely the Lord is present” – meaning that through prayer, he was able to better understand God than he ever could through Torah alone. “And I did not know it” – meaning that I did not know the tremendous power of prayer, which enables us to come to know God in full fervor, and brings us, therefore, to the gates of heaven.

~Maor VeShemesh, Vayetze, "And he dreamt", Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Cracow,

What about the content of Jacob's prayer might have bothered commentators?

Bible scholar Nechama Leibowitz z"l writes that Jacob was 'not making a deal with God'. Rather, Jacob meant that if God did not allow him to return to his father's house, how could he erect a temple on that spot? Jacob's vow instead implied that he was asking to serve God.

“When something happens to you and you did not have the power to control it, do not aggravate the situation further through wasted anxiety or grief.”

~Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Satanov