Yakov is on the road and on the run. He has connived to deceive his father and disinherit his brother, because his mother the prophet knows that God wants him to be Yitzhak’s heir. Unmoored, uncertain, he arrives at…a place. Actually, the text says the place, repeating the phrase three times: “He arrived at the place, and he stayed there because the sun was setting, and he took a stone from the place and he set it down for his head, and he laid down in that place.” (Breishit 28:11)
Ha Makom, The Place, is, in our tradition, one of the names by which we refer to God Whose most intimate name is beyond our knowledge. In Midrash Rabbah, our Rabbis ponder: “Rabbi Yose ben Halafta said: We do not know whether God is the place of His world or whether His world is His place, but from the verse, “Behold, there is a place with Me” (Shmot 33:21), it follows that Adonai is the place of His world, but His world is not His place. Rabbi Isaac said: It is written, “The eternal God is a dwelling place” (Devarim 33:27): now we do not know whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is the dwelling-place of His world or whether His world is His dwelling-place. But from the text, “Adonai, You have been our dwelling-place” (Tehilim 90:1), it follows that Adonai is the dwelling-place of His world but His world is not His dwelling-place. Rabbi Abba ben Judah said: He is like a warrior riding a horse, his robes flowing over on both sides; the horse is subsidiary to the rider, but the rider is not subsidiary to the horse. Thus it says, “That You ride upon Your horses, upon Your chariots of victory.”(Habakkuk 3:8).
God is the Place of this world. Our Ground, but more than ground, Air and Height as well, shimmering Presence, just out of sight. As the Psalmist declares, “In Your eyes, a thousand years are like yesterday past and one night-watch.” (Psalm 90:4) On the road or on the run, God locates us and wraps us in meaning, and Yakov will be blessed with that knowledge, a rustle of that robe, just over his head.
In the place where he finds himself, Yakov has a wonderful dream. He sees a ladder to heaven and on it angels, messengers of God, going up and down. He hears the Voice of God promising him, as his father and grandfather were promised, that his descendants will be as numerous and widespread as the dust on the ground. And he is promised that God will be with him.
Yakov wakes up struck by wonder. “Oh yes,” he says, “there is God in this place, and I did not know.” Awe-struck but energized, he builds a monument around the stone that had been his pillow. And then—he makes a deal.
That’s right. As soon as he recovers his wits—and it is quite soon—Yakov tries to handle God as he had handled his brother, striking a bargain, although, to be fair, he at least seems to be proposing an honest transaction this time. “If God will be with me,” he says, “and guard me on this path where I am walking, and will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear and return me to my father’s house, then Adonai will be my God, and this stone which I have placed for a monument will be a house for God.” Having struck what seems to be a good agreement, Yakov goes on his way.
Eventually, Yakov the dealmaker appears to meet his match. He falls in love with his cousin Rachel, and his uncle Lavan agrees to let him marry her if he tends Lavan’s flocks for seven years. On the morning after his wedding night, Yakov learns that Lavan has put his older daughter, Leah, in the bride’s place. If he really wants to marry Rachel, Yakov will have to work for seven more years.
Returning to Midrash Rabbah, the Rabbis imagine that first morning’s confrontation between husband and wife. “The whole of that night he called her Rachel’, and she answered him. In the morning, however, “Behold, it was Leah!” (Breishit 29:25). He said to her: “You are a deceiver and the daughter of a deceiver!” “Is there a teacher without pupils?” she answered, “Did not your father call you ‘Esau’, and you answered him! So did you also call me and I answered you!”
Leah has a rough road ahead of her, and she starts trying to make deals of her own. She has a husband, but in her own prayers to God, she says that she feels “hated.” She names her first son Reuven, because God ra-ah, saw her pain, and she expresses her hope that, since she gave him a child, her husband will start to love her. Her second son is called Shimon, because God, having heard that she is “despised” gave her another son, and now maybe her husband will come around. Her third son is called Levi in the hope that Yakov will become attached to her.
Finally Leah begins to appreciate what she already has; four healthy sons. She names her fourth child Yehudah because, she says, “This time odeh et HaShem, I (simply) thank God.” Alan Morinis, a contemporary teacher of musar, a Jewish practice of spiritual development, reminds us that, “The name Jew derives from “Yehudi” the people of “Yehudah,” revealing that gratitude is intrinsic to being Jewish.”
Yakov will also, eventually, learn the lesson of gratitude. He will wrestle with human and celestial beings, stop trying to game the house and come to accept his limitations and the work cut out for him. Then he too will give a name to our people: Israel.
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