Vayetze
Genesis 28:10-32:3
Hosea 12:13-14:10
Every time I study it, I find something new in this week’s classic story of spiritual awakening. This year was no exception.
The outlines of the narrative are as familiar as our own life stories. Jacob, fleeing from his brother’s rage, on his way to an uncertain future far from home, lies down in the middle of the wilderness to sleep. He dreams of a ladder standing on the earth and reaching up to the sky, with angels descending and ascending on it. God appears, and promises to bless Jacob with endless progeny and personal protection. “Jacob awoke with a start and cried out, ‘Surely God is present in this place, and I did not know it!’ Awestruck, he said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gateway to heaven'” (Genesis 28:16-17).
This is the paradigmatic Jewish story of awakening to the presence of the divine. A person in the midst of a life crisis, thinking that he has only his own resources to rely on, is suddenly startled to encounter the Divine on his path. He is amazed and grateful.
Commenting on Jacob’s words “And I did not know,” Rashi makes the following comment: “Had I known, I would not have gone to sleep in this holy place.” To understand this comment, we must remember that Rashi, the master of peshat/plain-meaning commentary, is always concerned when the biblical text appears to contain a redundancy. In a text of Divine origin, every word must be deeply explored for meaning. So, having already said, “God was in this place!” why would the text need to add the superfluous words “And I did not know?” Driven by the need to find particular meaning in these words, Rashi imagines Jacob expressing his embarrassment, even remorse. Jacob awakens, as it were, guilty that he had been caught sleeping when he should have been paying close attention. “Had I known that this was a place of such holiness, I would certainly not have gone to sleep here.”
But how are we to understand Rashi’s comment? Are we to imagine Jacob saying that had he understood that this particular spot in the wilderness was a sacred site, then he would have gone to sleep somewhere else? Or that, in the presence of such holiness, he would surely have made sure to stay awake, wanting to savor the sanctity of the experience, waiting for what revelation might come? By this logic, though, how could Jacob, a person of faith, ever allow himself to go to sleep? Surely Jacob understood that God’s presence pervades every place, every moment, through which one might travel. From this perspective, how could there ever be a time when Jacob could decide that he could close his eyes to the possibility that holiness would emerge?
One tradition of Chassidic commentary reads “And I did not know” in a very different way. For the Chassidic masters, this verse contains a teaching for all of us about developing our own ability to recognize sacred moments, and to stay spiritually awake for them. Reading the verse with this goal in mind, another apparent redundancy in the text gives rise to a rich teaching. The Hebrew, “Va’anochi lo yadati,” actually means, “And I — I did not know.” Several Chassidic teachers take this to mean, “Surely God is present in this place. How did I come to know that? Because my ‘I’ [my ego, my self-absorption, my own small needs] — I did not know.”
When are we able to “wake up” and recognize the sense of the Holy that can appear in any place, in any moment? When we are able to step beyond our own individual thought patterns, our own particular perspective, our own assumption that the reality in our own heads is the Ultimate.
The power of this timeless story lies precisely in this point. How often do we experience such moments of awakening, large or small, in the midst of our lives? How frequently do we suddenly notice, with a start, that we have missed something important — failed to listen to a loved one’s cry of pain or delight or failed to notice the wonder all around us? Those startling moments tend to have this characteristic in common: They are the moments when we suddenly emerge from the small box containing our own small thoughts, feelings and concerns, and open our eyes and our hearts to what is before us or all around us. Again and again we taste the richness of the moments that come when we can let go of ego and self-absorption, and participate in the much larger reality of which we are a part.
May this sacred teaching once again inspire us to awaken to the many holy places in which we find ourselves, and, like Jacob our father, may we be grateful.