From Tents to a Stairway to Heaven

From Tents to a Stairway to Heaven
Thoughts on Torah Portion Vayeitzei 2024 (adapted from previous versions)

©Rabbi Mordecai Finley

I can imagine Jacob in our Torah portion justifiably bemoaning his fate as he trudged toward Paddan Aram, to escape the murderous wrath of his brother Esau. Their mother Rebecca had tricked her husband Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing that, by custom, was supposed to go to Jacob’s fraternal twin, Esau. Esau, we assume was also bemoaning his fate, perhaps more intensely than Jacob. Esau had vengeance on his mind.

Jacob-on-the-run, we remember, was known as the dweller-in-tents. Jacob perhaps assumed that he would get the birthright and then go back to his studies. Perhaps he thought that once he assumed the mantle of leadership when his father died, he would then just delegate most of his duties.

Life happened while he was making those others plans. Instead of going back to his studies and delegating his work, he found that he had to hit Highway 61 to escape his brother’s homicidal resentment. Back to the ancestral homeland in Paddan Aram he goes, to save his life – and to find a wife.

In this week’s Torah portion, Jacob finds himself on the road, a bit like Cain of the ancient stories, a “na-ve-nad” – a wanderer, a man on the trail, in exile. Cain was exiled because he had murdered his brother, Abel. Perhaps the similarity was not lost on Jacob – in some symbolic way, he did kill his brother Esau. The future that Esau imagined for himself was annihilated.

Jacob’s future, too, was annihilated. No more studying in tents. I think of Jacob on the road saying to himself, “Just a week ago, there I was, sitting in my tent, minding my own business . . .”

I can imagine that Jacob, as times goes on, rued his fate more and more. He rued even the blessing of his father and the blessing of God. What blessing? Instead of enjoying the birthright, he now had to struggle under the oppressive hand of that swindler, his uncle Laban. He fell in love, but did not get to marry his beloved Rachel at first – he was tricked into marrying Leah. He did finally get to marry Rachel, but she some years later tragically died birthing Benjamin just as Jacob returned to Canaan.

Jacob’s life does not go as planned. He thought he was a dweller in tents. He thought he would be happily married to his beloved. Jacob thought he would be dwelling by the calm waters of Psalm 23. It did not turn out that way. He found himself not by water springs, but in the vale of thorns.

How could Jacob not live a life of pain and resentment in this vale of thorns? At the beginning of his journey north, while on the road leaving Canaan, Jacob had a dream of a ladder rooted in the earth, the top reaching to the heavens, and angels ascending and descending the ladder. He awoke and knew: He had been in the house of God and at the gate of heaven. I don’t think the Bible is referring, or only referring, to that place where Jacob slept. I think the Bible was referring to Jacob himself. Jacob had planned to live in tents. Now he knew that the house of God and an entrance to heaven lived in him.  He traded a tent for a stairway to heaven.

Maybe somebody’s life goes as planned, but I have not met that somebody yet.

“Life” cares very little about our plans. But now what?

What many people do when life happens not according to plan, at least initially, is complain, grieve poorly, deny, fight the truth, anger at someone (or God), and eventually depress. Many people become bitter and check out. If life is a battle (as Psalms 144:1 seems to imply), we sometimes feel beaten into submission. If life is the dealer, we’ve lost the game, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen.

Another adage comes to mind: when some doors close, others open. More accurately, I think: When some doors close, we become aware of other doors, maybe obscured by our being fixated on the doors now locked.

As a counselor, I often find myself guiding people through the “now what?” One thing seems to be required: we must go deeper than the pain, deeper than the loss, deeper than the grief. The way through loss is depth. We live in a society that does not teach much about that depth, nor about the life of virtue that helps us retain our dignity when we suffer. Much of what I see is a “culture of complaint.”  When things don’t go our way, we have to blame someone, typically ensuring that life doesn’t go their way, either. We need to punish. We take our loss out on them.

The need to blame, to punish, to complain is, to hold resentment is, for me, an indication of immaturity, a state of character that has little to do with chronological age. The complaining character has decided that they do not have the capacity for resilience, to hold the line, to work things through with virtue and honor. Blaming instead of growing, resenting instead of making a plan, maybe even only a one day at a time plan, as an answer to the “now what?” The despairing person might exhibit addictive behavior, medicating the pain instead of going deeper than the pain. Despair seems to say, “Anything but dignity and depth.”

“Life is what happens while we are making other plans.”  Eventually, it seems, you have to make a new plan or that unruly force we euphemistically call “life” will make a plan for us.  Understanding that “life” might intrude again as well, one must come out of the blaming, complaining, unproductive grief, despair, resentment and loss into a life of depth and wisdom, perhaps even deep well-being, and perhaps moments of bliss.  A house of God can appear within, a stairway to heaven can open up. Staying attuned to depth is hard work, sometimes bitterly hard. We can plan a life, but more deeply, we have to plan who we will become no matter what life delivers to us. I wish I knew another way, but I don’t.

But just imagine – deep inside of you, there is a house of God and a stairway to heaven.