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

Studying selected verses of the parsha through the lens of Mussar---exploring the character trait of Hishtadlut / השתדלות / Maximum Effort

השתדלות endeavor, intercession; striving; attempt

להשתדל - to strive for, to exert oneself, to lobby

“Good, better, best. Never let it rest till the good is better and the better is best.” Source unknown.

Bullet Point Summary:

• Jacob leaves his home of Be'er Sheva / Seven Wells (the city Isaac names and lived) and journeys to Charan.

• On the way, he encounters HaMakom /The Place, arranges stones, and sleeps there, envisioning in a dream a ladder that connects heaven and earth, with angels climbing up and descending from it. Suddenly, he sees God. [28:10-22]

• God promises that the land where he lies will be given to his descendants.

• In the morning, Jacob raises the stone (where his head was) to an altar and pledges that it will be Beit El, The House of God.

• Jacob makes a vow and sets up a tithe.

• Jacob meets Rachel (his uncle Laban's daughter) at the well, removes the stone for her to water her sheep (she's a shepherdess).

• Jacob stays to work for Laban for a month, and offers him compensation, Jacob says that he will work for 7 years in order to marry Rachel, the younger daughter.

• On the wedding night, Laban gives Jacob Leah instead, which Jacob discovers in the morning. [29:16-25]

• Jacob marries Rachel a week later, after agreeing to work another 7 years. [29:26-30]

• Leah gives birth to 6 sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun and a daughter, Dinah.

• Rachel is not able to conceive and gives Jacob Bilhah, her handmaid, to bear children...and she gives birth to Dan and Naphtali. Leah also gives Jacob her handmaid Zilpah, who gives birth to Gad and Asher.

• Rachel's prayers are answers and she gives birth to Joseph.

• After 14 years, Jacob wants to return home but Laban persuades him to remain and offers him sheep and repeatedly tries to cheat him.

• Six more years pass, and Jacob leaves Haran secretly with great wealth [31:1-32:3]. Laban pursues him but is warned by God in a dream not to harm Jacob.

• They both make a pact of Mount Gal-Ed (stones as witnesses).

• Jacob proceeds to the Holy Land.

What might be apparent about Hishtadlut / effort from the simple narrative of this parsha? How might things have changed without this trait? What clues are there in the Torah about this trait and the relationship to HaShem?

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

Even if there is no one like you in that [whole] generation, see yourself as [if you were] in the generation of the sages of the Talmud and you are with them in one place. Even if you acquire their level, think as if you are standing with the prophets, up until Moshe, our teacher - peace be upon him. And when will you reach their level and their wisdom? And in this [way], you will never slack from learning Torah and you will improve your traits each and every day - as you will add to your wisdom and you will be like a flowing spring. ~Rabbeinu Yonah on Pirkei Avot

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

Our Rabbis explained it in the sense of “praying”, just as (Jeremiah 7:16) “Neither make intercession (תפגע) to me”. Thus we may learn that Jacob originated the custom of Evening Prayer. Scripture purposely changed the usual word for “praying”, not writing יתפלל, “And he prayed” (which would have been the more appropriate word, but ויפגע which means to hit upon a place unexpectedly).

Why do we call G‑d Hamakom, “The Place”? Said Rabbi Yosei ben Chalafta: We do not know whether G‑d is the place of His world or whether His world is His place. But when the verse (Exodus 33:21) states, “Behold, there is a place with Me,” it follows that G‑d is the place of His world, but His world is not His place. ~Midrash Rabbah

The story of Jacob’s journey to Charan is the story of every soul’s descent to the physical world.

The soul, too, leaves behind the spiritual idyll of Be’er Sheva (literally, “Well of the Seven”—a reference to the supernal source of the seven divine attributes, or sefirot, from which the soul derives) and journeys to Charan (literally, “Wrath”): a place of lies, deceptions, struggle and hardship; a place in which material concerns consume one’s days and nights, sapping one’s energy, confusing one’s priorities, and all but obscuring the purpose for which one has come there in the first place.

Yet it is in Charan, in the employ of Laban the Deceiver, not in the Holy Land and its “tents of learning,” that Jacob founds the nation of Israel. It is here that he marries and fathers eleven of the twelve sons who will become the twelve tribes of Israel. Had Jacob remained in the Holy Land, the life of this pious scholar who lived 3,500 years ago would have been of no significance to us today.

The soul, too, achieves its enduring significance only upon its descent into “Charan.” Only as a physical being, invested within a physical body and inhabiting a physical environment, can it fulfill the purpose of its creation, which is to build “a dwelling for G‑d in the physical world.” ~From the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe

Hishtadlut is a partnership between God and us...God provides opportunities, but it's up to us to recognize and act upon them.

Commentators disagree on where "the Makom" is...some say Beersheva, some say Mount Moriah, some say Mount Sinai. What is the teaching if we don't really know the place?

A ladder stood on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven (28:12). This is prayer. ~Zohar

נָצַב (v) heb

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

Upon awakening, Yaakov notes the awesomeness of the site, declaring, "אֵין זֶה כִּי אִם בֵּית אֱ-לֹהִים וְזֶה שַׁעַר הַשָּׁמָיִם", and he then erects a monument. What makes Yaakov react so passionately? When others receive a prophecy or dream, we do not usually find any equivalent response or declaration. Is Yaakov's statement somehow related to the message imparted to him through the dream, or is it simply a reaction to revelation? www.alhatorah.org

This . . . shall be the house of G‑d (28:22)

Not like Abraham, with whom it is called a “mountain” (Genesis 22:14); not like Isaac, with whom it is called a “field” (Genesis 24:63); but like Jacob, who called it a “house.” ~Talmud, Pesachim 88a

What conditions do you need in order to notice, pay attention, be present? How does this affect your prayer or connection with God? In what way does Hishtadlut play a part?

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