Va-yetse' (Genesis 28:10-32:3) and Haftarah (Hosea 12:13-14:10): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
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Va-yetse' (Genesis 28:10-32:3) and Haftarah (Hosea 12:13-14:10): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
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Overview
The complete set of weekly portions is available in Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin’s book The JPS B’nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary (JPS, 2017).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780827614871 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Jewish Publication Society |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2018 |
| Series: | JPS Study Bible |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 24 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Torah
Va-yetse': Genesis 28:10–32:3
Jacob is not only a little sneaky — disguising himself so that he can steal his father's blessing from Esau. He is also now scared, because Esau has threatened to kill him for doing so. And, so, Jacob runs away — back to his extended family in Haran. On the way, he has a strange dream — of angels ascending and descending a stairway (or ladder). It is one of the most famous dreams in all literature and art (not to mention "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, which might be the most-played song in the history of radio).
When he gets to Haran (or Paddan-aram, or Aram-naharaim — the place has several names), he meets and falls in love with his cousin, Rachel. But Jacob's uncle Laban is no less sneaky than Jacob (in fact, you might say that the extended Abraham family has the "sneaky gene"). He tricks Jacob by switching the older "average-looking" sister, Leah, for the beautiful Rachel. Jacob winds up working seven more years in order to marry Rachel. Rachel, Leah, and their handmaidens, Bilhah and Zilpah, give birth to the children who will ultimately become the ancestors of the tribes of Israel.
Summary
• On his way to Haran, Jacob dreams about a stairway reaching up to the heavens, with angels going up and down. God speaks to Jacob and blesses him and his descendants. (28:10–22)
• Jacob meets Rachel and her father, Laban, who is also Jacob's uncle. Jacob falls in love with Rachel, but Laban has other ideas; he wants his older daughter, Leah, to marry first. (29:1–35)
• Just as there was a rivalry between Jacob and Esau, there is a rivalry between Rachel, who is childless, and her sister Leah, who has many children. (30:1–24)
• Jacob tries an experiment in breeding goats and sheep, with interesting results. (30:25–43)
• Jacob and his family flee from Laban. (31:1–54; 32:1–3)
The Big Ideas
• Dreams have meaning. Jews have always been fascinated by dreams and dream interpretation. From ancient times, Jews have sensed that sometimes dreams can reveal a person's destiny. We should pay attention to our dreams; they often have something very important to tell us.
• The Jews are a wandering people. Jewish history is the story of Jews moving from place to place — exiled from the Land of Israel, from England, Spain, Germany, Russia, and elsewhere. That is why the story of Jacob is so important. He wanders a lot. He often has to escape from uncomfortable places. Jacob is a model for the Jewish people throughout history.
• What goes around, comes around. Just as Jacob deceived his brother and his father, he is deceived by his uncle and father-in-law, Laban. Be careful of what you do — it could come back to haunt you, or, even better, reward you!
• Jews knows what it's like to be slaves. Jacob's years of servitude to Laban are a sort of dress rehearsal for what it was like for the Israelites as slaves in Egypt. And the way that Jacob and his family escape from Laban reminds us of the Exodus.
Divrei Torah
Who Were Those Angels, and What Were They Doing on the Ladder?
Jacob saw angels in a dream. Assume for a moment that angels exist — symbolically if not literally — as messengers of some kind. The Torah tells us that angels of God were "going up and down on it [the stairway]." If we further assume that angels came from heaven, why did they start by going up the stairway?
The first possibility: The angels symbolize Jacob's transition from childhood to entering adulthood. As Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof writes: "The first group of angels were the angels that had accompanied him from home. But a new group of angels was descending to accompany him further on his journey. Jacob is now going on the journey of life, to be self-reliant and an adult." Jacob's dream, therefore, is a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood — an ancient "bar mitzvah!"
The second possibility: The angels represent Jewish history. An ancient tradition says that Jacob saw angels representing every ancient nation that would conquer the Jews — Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome — going up and coming down again. God invited Jacob, as the ancestor of the Jewish people, to climb up the stairway. God was saying to Jacob: dare to become a world empire! But Jacob refused; he didn't want to risk it. He didn't want the Jewish people to simply become an empire like all the other ancient empires. He didn't want the Jews to be famous just for having military power. He knew that the power of the Jews was in words and what words could teach. He was also afraid that if he went up the ladder, someday his descendants would have to come down the ladder — that his people's future success might only be temporary.
The third possibility: The angels represent Jacob himself — a life filled with ups and downs. The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo said: "Life is comparable to a ladder because of its irregular course. A single day can carry the person who is set on high downward, and someone else upward. None of us remains in the same circumstances." It's like the old board game Chutes and Ladders — you never know when you are going to climb up, or fall down.
Life is, indeed, like a ladder. Our job is to learn how to live with those ups and downs, and to make the best of those opportunities for growth.
Living with Laban
Sometimes, the way that the text appears in the Torah scroll itself tells its own story. Every other Torah portion, except this one, appears in the Torah with spaces and "paragraphs." Not this one; it's one large, closed block of text. Why?
The layout of the Torah text is like Jacob himself — and then his family — who became "closed up" and basically imprisoned within the household of his uncle and father-in-law, Laban. Jacob first met Rachel and he immediately fell in love with her. He thought that he was marrying Rachel, but on their wedding night, under the cover of darkness, Laban switched her sister, Leah, for Rachel. Jacob loved Rachel so much that he worked another seven years in order to win her hand in marriage too. Laban made Jacob miserable, changing his wages several times, essentially keeping him as a slave. Finally, in the middle of the night, Jacob and his wives escape from Laban, with Laban chasing after them.
For this reason, Laban is considered one of the villains of the Bible. Here's how he comes off in the Passover Haggadah: "Go out and learn what Laban wanted to do to Jacob our father. Pharaoh wanted to kill only the boys, but Laban sought to destroy Jacob's entire family."
Why is there so much drama between Jacob and Laban? Perhaps because it serves as a sort of "coming attractions" for Jacob's descendants, who will be enslaved in Egypt. We can see Laban as an earlier version of Pharaoh. And the way that Jacob and his family left Laban — in the middle of the night, with Laban chasing them — is exactly the way that the Israelites would leave Egypt, generations later.
But there is more. Jacob had deceived his father, Isaac, by stealing the blessing reserved for his brother, Esau — and Jacob was able to do that because Isaac was blind. In exactly the same way, Laban took advantage of Jacob's "blindness" in the darkness of his wedding night, and he switched Leah for Rachel. The ancient Rabbis called this middah k'neged middah, "measure for measure." We would say: what goes around, comes around. It's all payback.
Or, maybe it's not just revenge, and not just payback. Maybe there's a purpose behind it all. Perhaps it's to teach Jacob a lesson — to make him a better person. In the words of Israeli statesman Avraham Burg: "Jacob is the ultimate proof of our claim that the entire Torah is, among other things, the improvement manual for our forefathers' character flaws. It's an improvement process that obligates each and every one of us, all day, every day. Happy is the person who is always improving."
Connections
• Which interpretation of the identity of the angels on the stairway do you like the most? Why? Do you have any other interpretations?
• If you could imagine the angels of adulthood speaking to Jacob, what do you think they would say? What would your "angels" say to you?
• Do you agree with Jacob's fear to go up on the stairway? Why was he afraid to take the risk? What risks have you been willing, or unwilling, to take?
• Jacob's experience with Laban forced him to confront some of the flaws in his character. Everyone has flaws; which of your flaws or weaknesses do you want to work on? What are you particularly good at doing? How do you want to strengthen your skills and your positive points?
• What historical figures have had lives like Jacob — filled with ups and downs? Some examples: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Oprah Winfrey. Do you have friends or family members who have had ups and downs? What lessons can you learn from their stories goes on today. It is about people who don't take Judaism seriously, and kind of sleepwalk through the service. They lack kavanah — the ability to spiritually connect with what is going on.
CHAPTER 2The Haftarah
Va-yetse': Hosea 12:13–14:10
Imagine yourself in a hot-air balloon, sailing across all of biblical history. That would be a good way of understanding this haftarah. The prophet Hosea lived in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which was also called Ephraim (after one of Joseph's sons). Hosea reminds the People of Israel that Jacob fled back to Aram and guarded the sheep of his father-in-law, Laban (the link to the Torah portion). As a parallel, it was another prophet — Moses — who guarded the Jewish people on their way out of Egypt.
Hosea then takes us on a whirlwind tour: through the wilderness experience, when the Israelites worshiped the idol Baal and suffered a plague as punishment; through the people's desire for a king in the time of the prophet Samuel (Hosea 13:10–11) — all the way to the idolatrous, Baal-worshiping practices of the Northern Kingdom. When Hosea mentions how the Israelites died in the wilderness because they worshiped Baal, he means this as a warning to the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom, who were doing the same thing.
Hosea's words are stern, and yet he believes that it is both possible and necessary for the people of the Northern Kingdom to repent (in fact, part of this haftarah is also read on Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Repentance, which comes between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). Hosea concludes his words with the hope that the wise will consider his words and heed them.
Human Life
Here's a question: You and your family are in the middle of a terrible storm. Your neighborhood is flooded, and you have a rowboat. You see your dog, Dexter. Then you also see your down-the-street neighbor Mr. Green. You only have room in your boat for one more passenger. You can save either your dog, Dexter, whom you love, or Mr. Green, whom you barely know. What do you do?
While you're thinking about that, let's go back to the haftarah. The prophet Hosea lived and preached in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. During his time many Israelites still worshiped the Canaanite god Baal in the form of an idol of a calf (this is similar to the sin of the Golden Calf, Exodus 32). Hosea criticizes his countrymen for "kissing calves" and adds a very strange statement: "they appoint men to sacrifice" (13:2). While the Hebrew is uncertain, some scholars see this as a reference (likely a warning) about human sacrifice that may have still been carried out by the neighboring Canaanites.
Hosea was horrified at the thought that any society could think about worshiping animals while sacrificing people. Awful.
Back to Dexter and Mr. Green and the raging flood waters. Whom are you going to save?
In a famous study, Professor Richard Topolski asked his students a similar question and discovered: "Everyone would save a sibling, grandparent or close friend rather than a strange dog. But when people considered their own dog versus people less connected with them — a distant cousin or a hometown stranger — votes in favor of saving the dog came rolling in!"
There you go: people who kiss calves (or, love their dogs) might, in a difficult situation, choose to save an animal over a human. It's not "Who do we love more — Dexter or Mr. Green?" Obviously, Dexter will win. But Dexter should not win. Mr. Green should win.
Judaism's point is: People are made in God's image, and animals (even though we love them) are not. And being made in God's image trumps everything else. Every human being is sacred in a way that animals are not. While animals are living beings, and Judaism has laws against cruelty to animals, let's remember that humans come first. Saving a human life, even at the expense of an animal's, is the greatest good. The Talmud teaches that when we save a human life we have saved an entire world.
So, save Mr. Green. It's the right thing to do.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Va-yetse' (Genesis 28:10-32:3) and Haftarah (Hosea 12:13-14:10): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Introduction,
What Is Torah?,
And What Else? The Haftarah,
Your Mission — To Teach Torah to the Congregation,
How Do I Write a Devar Torah?,
How To Keep It from Being Boring (and You from Being Bored),
The Very Last Thing You Need to Know at This Point,
The Torah: Va-yetse': Genesis 28:10–32:3,
Summary,
The Big Ideas,
Divrei Torah,
Connections,
The Haftarah: Va-yetse': Hosea 12:13–14:10,
Human Life,