Rabbi's Derasha

There are no paragraph breaks in the Parasha.  It’s one long story of Yaakov leaving and then returning.  He journeys out on orders from his parents and then, 148 verses later, comes back home.  There are many episodes within this long story.  Normally, I would concentrate on one of these episodes -- on the angels on the ladder, on the birth of the children, on the confrontation with Lavan.  But sometimes the structure of the story as a whole reveals something beyond the episodes within.   

But there is one kind of break in the narrative.  It’s a pivot between the two parts of the story.  The Parasha divides easily into two halves of 74 verses each.  The pivot reveals the bigger plot that is playing out.  

The story is about how Yaakov, in fleeing one sworn enemy, his brother, runs into another, his uncle.  They represent two different challenges.  How different they are is seen in the lack of overlap between them.  Although last week’s Parasha ends with Esav’s hostility, and next week’s Parasha will resume that story, Esav is never mentioned even once this week.  

Esav represents a sort of hatred but Lavan brings a challenge that is perhaps the more common experience.  It is more common because it involves not just a cunning enemy but how that enemy messes with Yaakov’s head.  

What has happened to Yaakov becomes  clear in the structure of the story.  For precisely the first half, he has remained focused on the goal of his trip, which was to establish a family.  Thaa half ends just as Yosef is born, which is the climax of the story.  The woman for whom Yaakov travelled now has the child she has awaited.  

Predictably, Yaakov suggests that it’s time now to go home.  But….instead of that happening, Lavan offers to sweeten the deal enough to keep Yaakov around.  Thus begins the second half of the story, in which Yaakov loses his way.  He sees the chance to use his position in Lavan’s house for his own good, to do well for, as he calls it, Baytee, my household.  And he is successful beyond all measure.  But it goes on without any measure.  And it would have continued like that if Lavan’s discomfort, his jealousy, had not surfaced.  Suddenly, Yaakov realizes that Lavan is not behaving as he did in the days before.  And he is shocked back into the realization that this must end; it’s time to turn again toward home.

This drama, in which the accomplishments in exile can play with one’s head, is one of the most repeated stories, but it began here with Yaakov Avinu.  The story is clear: When there is a focus, and a goal, then exile can be crucial.  There is often a role to play.  Some of you will remember a visitor we had last year at this time, named Daniel Tamir.  He was hard to miss, as he is 6’ 10” tall.  He played basketball at a high level in Israel and then came here and played at a high level, pun intended, at YU.  But something else happened at YU, as the Rabbe’im cared for him and taught him, and he became observant.  On October 8th, after Yom Tov ended and he heard what had happened, he wanted to return to Israel immediately.  But his family told him, no, you should stay in the US.  There is so much you can do there as an ambassador for Israel.  

We got to know Daniel because he was acting as the chaperone a young survivor of the Nova Music Festival around the US.  She gave a presentation at Stanford and elsewhere in the area.  And then he took her to other cities.  

That’s one kind of focus.  The Talmud in Pesachim says that the Jews were exiled in order to add converts to the Jewish people.  As I explained this Gemora many years ago, if the Temple had never been destroyed, the Jewish people would have attracted converts to Israel like a magnet.  But the exile makes it that we must draw them out in closer proximity.  This community has often been successful in this goal, and can be proud of that role.  That too is a focus.  

But one must be careful about losing that focus, lest one need a jealous host to remind one when it is time to go home.