Parshas Vayeitzei presents us with an account of another patriarch and yet another struggle. Ya’akov’s struggle is striking. For twenty years he works for his uncle, Laban – seven years so he can marry Rachel after which time he is tricked and marries Leah, seven years to marry Rachel, and six years for the material wealth with which he leaves Paddan-aram. In today’s world of conveniences where we haggle over every minute, such a length of time of sacrifice seems incomprehensible. Imagine Ya’akov’s deep frustration – an almost uncontrollable urge to take what he wants NOW. Standing amongst the goats in the field, “by day heat consumed me, and snow by night,”1 with nothing to do but wait...and wait...and wait. Imagine his relief when he finally marries the woman for which he toiled, only to turn over in the morning and see Leah lying there. He erupts towards Laban, “why have you deceived me?”2 and then works for another seven years. Rav Steinsaltz points out that this experience changes Ya’akov from a timid boy who spends his days in the yeshiva into Yisrael, the father of Bnei Yisrael. Even his name Ya’akov means “to go around, to follow” akov [לַעֲקוֹב]. His name is a testament to the way he avoided conflict with Esau and Laban. Yet it is this waiting, his patience, that builds him into a man capable of leading a family of tzaddikim.
Rebbe Nachman teaches us that at times we simply have to wait for Hashem.3 In our lives, we can only build vessels – vessels for the type of person we want to be, the kind of life we want to lead, the connection to Hashem we want. It is up to Hashem to fill them. He fills these vessels according to the volume we’ve developed them to hold. At times, we might feel that our vessels aren’t developing quickly enough. Or we might think that we’ve developed them enough and yet they’re not being filled. We run into the stagnation of spiritual growth. This is when we have emunah. As we say in Psalm 92:3, “to tell of your kindness in the morning and have faith in you at night” [לְהַגִּ֣יד בַּבֹּ֣קֶר חַסְדֶּ֑ךָ וֶֽ֜אֱמוּנָֽתְךָ֗ בַּלֵּילֽוֹת]. In the morning, we have no need of faith – in the light we experience Hashem. We see our vessels being filled. But at times, darkness comes. In those moments of doubt and fear, we must remember our values and what we know to be true. Additionally, implicit in this psalm is our desire that we may recognize when we are in darkness; that we not let it masquerade as truth. As Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein teaches, the greatest darkness is when we confuse dark with light. We pray that we might at least recognize when we are blind. In these moments, we try to emulate Ya’akov as he waited. We have emunah and continue building our vessels. Eventually, the light will come back and those too will be filled.
Kislev is the shortest and darkest month of the year. It is a time for sleep. Sleep itself is an act of emunah — the Midrash says that sleep is one sixtieth of death.4 One sixtieth is the ratio at which objects become contaminated with the “state” of the added amount (the critical mass at which the minority begins to impact the majority). We trust that we can experience this sliver of death and that Hashem will return us our souls in the morning. We have patience and faith when we sleep – why are such mentalities so much more difficult in life? Why can’t we effortlessly have patience in life, flowing like we do when we sleep? The reality is that it is because this world feels much more real than our dream world. We have egos here. We have free-will here. However, this world is still only a dream world for the world to come (Olam Habah). We read in the same Midsrash that Shabbat is one sixtieth of the Olam Habah. On Shabbat we enjoy what we prepared during the week. We do not wait for the Shabbat, rather we live for the Shabbat. So too, we don’t wait for the Olam Habah. Rather, we spend our days building our vessels. It is no coincidence that Hashem comes to Ya’akov in a dream before his trials with Laban. He reminds him that there is purpose to his journey. Ya’akov finds emunah in this promise even when night comes.
When we practice patience, we come to recognize that in order to receive what we want, we must only develop the proper vessels. Hashem gives us our ratzon (will); he doesn’t bestow it simply so we can deny it. Rather, it serves as a powerful tool, allowing us to decide whether to use it to come close to Hashem or to distance ourselves. Do we use it to pursue immediately gratifying pleasures that only reinforce our sense of ourselves as isolated parts of the world? Or do we use our ratzon to understand what vessels we must develop so that Hashem can give us what we want? When we do this, pleasures become a way of transcending and connecting to something outside of ourselves – to the oneness of it all. Hashem wants us to have what we desire. He is simply waiting for us to build the proper vessels to receive it. Shortcuts to what we want only reinforce our ego and our disconnection from that oneness. As Soren Kierkegaard said, “most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”
May we never be tested like Ya’akov and have to spend twenty years toiling through trickery for what we want. But if we do, may we approach them like Ya’akov, with strength and emunah, and may those years seem to us as they seemed to him – as “but a few days.”5
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- Bereishis 31:40
- Bereishis 29:25
- Likutei Moharan 6:2
- Talmud Tractate Berachot 57b
- Bereishis 29:20