Encountering God - Yayetze
24 November 2012 - 10 Kislev 5773
It is one of the great visions of the Torah. Jacob, alone at
night, fleeing from the wrath of Esau, lies down to rest, and sees not a
nightmare of fear but an epiphany:
He came to a certain place [vayifga bamakom] and stopped for
the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it
under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream. He saw a ladder resting
on the earth, with its top reaching heaven. G-d’s angels were going up and down
on it. There above it stood G-d . . .
Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “G-d is truly in this place, but I did not
know it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none
other than the house of G-d; this is the gate of heaven.” (28:11-17)
On the basis of this passage the sages said that “Jacob
instituted the evening prayer.” The inference is based on the word vayifga which
can mean not only, “he came to, encountered, happened upon” but also “he
prayed, entreated, pleaded” as in Jeremiah 7: 16, “Neither lift up cry nor
prayer for them nor make intercession to Me [ve-al tifga bi].”
The sages also understood the word bamakom, “the place”
to mean “G-d” (the “place” of the universe). Thus Jacob completed the cycle of
daily prayers. Abraham instituted shacharit, the morning prayer, Isaac minchah,
the afternoon prayer, and Jacob arvit, the prayer of nighttimes.
This is a striking idea. Though each of the weekday prayers
is identical in wording, each bears the character of one of the patriarchs.
Abraham represents morning. He is the initiator, the one who introduced a new
religious consciousness to the world. With him a day begins. Isaac represents
afternoon. There is nothing new about Isaac – no major transition from darkness
to light or light to darkness. Many of the incidents in Isaac’s life
recapitulate those of his father. Famine forces him, as it did Abraham, to go
to the land of the Philistines. He re-digs his father’s wells. Isaac’s is the
quiet heroism of continuity. He is a link in the chain of the covenant. He
joins one generation to the next. He introduces nothing new into the life of
faith, but his life has its own nobility. Isaac is steadfastness, loyalty, the
determination to continue. Jacob represents night. He is the man of fear and
flight, the man who wrestles with G-d, with others and with himself. Jacob is
one who knows the darkness of this world.
There is, however, a difficulty with the idea that Jacob
introduced the evening prayer. In a famous episode in the Talmud, Rabbi Joshua
takes the view that, unlike shacharit or minchah, the evening
prayer is not obligatory (though, as the commentators note, it has become
obligatory through the acceptance of generations of Jews). Why, if it was
instituted by Jacob, was it not held to carry the same obligation as the
prayers of Abraham and Isaac? Tradition offers three answers.
The first is that the view that arvit is
non-obligatory according to those who hold that our daily prayers are based,
not on the patriarchs but on the sacrifices that were offered in the Temple.
There was a morning and afternoon offering but no evening sacrifice. The two
views differ precisely on this, that for those who trace prayer to sacrifice,
the evening prayer is voluntary, whereas for those who base it on the
patriarchs, it is obligatory.
The second is that there is a law that those on a journey
(and for three days thereafter) are exempt from prayer. In the days when
journeys were hazardous – when travellers were in constant fear of attack by
raiders – it was impossible to concentrate. Prayer requires concentration (kavanah).
Therefore Jacob was exempt from prayer, and offered up his entreaty not as an
obligation but as a voluntary act – and so it remained.
The third is that there is a tradition that, as Jacob was
travelling, “the sun set suddenly” – not at its normal time. Jacob had intended
to say the afternoon prayer, but found, to his surprise, that night had fallen. Arvit did
not become an obligation, since Jacob had not meant to say an evening prayer at
all.
There is, however, a more profound explanation. A different
linguistic construction is used for each of the three occasions that the sages
saw as the basis of prayer. Abraham “rose early in the morning to the place
where he had stood before G-d” (19:27). Isaac “went out to meditate [lasuach]
in the field towards evening” (24:63). Jacob “met, encountered, came across”
G-d [vayifga bamakom]. These are different kinds of religious experience.
Abraham initiated the quest for G-d. He was a creative
religious personality – the father of all those who set out on a journey of the
spirit to an unknown destination, armed only with the trust that those who
seek, find. Abraham sought G-d before G-d sought him.
Isaac’s prayer is described as a sichah, literally, a conversation or
dialogue. There are two parties to a dialogue – one who speaks and one who
listens, and having listened, responds. Isaac represents the religious
experience as conversation between the word of G-d and the word of
mankind.
Jacob’s prayer is very different. He does not initiate it.
His thoughts are elsewhere – on Esau from whom he is escaping, and on Laban to
whom he is travelling. Into this troubled mind comes a vision of G-d and the
angels and a stairway connecting earth and heaven. He has done nothing to
prepare for it. It is unexpected. Jacob literally “encounters” G-d as we can
sometimes encounter a familiar face among a crowd of strangers. This is a
meeting brought about by G-d, not man. That is why Jacob’s prayer could not be
made the basis of a regular obligation. None of us knows when the presence of
G-d will suddenly intrude into our lives.
There is an element of the religious life that is beyond
conscious control. It comes out of nowhere, when we are least expecting it. If
Abraham represents our journey towards G-d, and Isaac our dialogue with G-d,
Jacob signifies G-d’s encounter with us – unplanned, unscheduled, unexpected;
the vision, the voice, the call we can never know in advance but which leaves
us transformed. As for Jacob so for us, it feels as if we are waking from a
sleep and realising as if for the first time that “G-d was in this place and I
did not know it.” The place has not changed, but we have. Such an experience
can never be made the subject of an obligation. It is not something we do. It
is something that happens to us. Vayfiga bamakom means that, thinking
of other things, we find that we have walked into the presence of G-d.
Such experiences take place, literally or metaphorically, at
night. They happen when we are alone, afraid, vulnerable, close to despair. It
is then that, when we least expect it, we can find our lives flooded by the
radiance of the divine. Suddenly, with a certainty that is unmistakable, we
know that we are not alone, that G-d is there and has been all along but that
we were too preoccupied by our own concerns to notice Him. That is how Jacob
found G-d – not by his own efforts, like Abraham; not through continuous
dialogue, like Isaac; but in the midst of fear and isolation. Jacob, in flight,
trips and falls – and finds he has fallen into the waiting arms of G-d. No one
who has had this experience, ever forgets it. “Now I know that You were with me
all the time but I was looking elsewhere.”
That was Jacob’s prayer. There are times when we speak and
times when we are spoken to. Prayer is not always predictable, a matter of
fixed times and daily obligation. It is also an openness, a vulnerability. G-d
can take us by surprise, waking us from our sleep, catching us as we fall.
Shabbat Shalom,
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This
article was published with permission of the Office of the Chief Rabbi.
