Vayetze: Learning from Jacob's dream

Everyone remembers the story of Jacob’s dream, with which this week’s Torah portion, Vayetze, begins. In accord with Isaac’s instructions, Jacob is on the way to Haran to seek a wife from among the daughters of Laban. He stops for the night at “a certain place” and has a dream in which he sees a stairway—or a ramp or ladder—between earth and heaven, on which angels ascend and descend.

This is an easy story to teach because it invites such ready visualization, even though we have no indication from the Torah of what the angels (“messengers of God,” malakhei Elohim) really look like. Beyond that, however, what lessons should we draw from it?

Some modern scholars detach it from the rest of Jacob’s story and focuses on his naming the place Bethel, “house of God.” They read it as a later writer’s attempt to identify Bethel with the God of the patriarchs instead of with a Canaanite god called El with which it might previously have been associated.

Jewish tradition, especially mystical tradition, is more interested in Jacob’s experience of God. His response, “Surely the Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it!” (28:17) has become a touchstone for the possibility of encountering God in our own lives and a reminder to seek the presence of God everywhere.

The rest of Jacob’s response suggests another interpretation. Jacob proceeds to a highly improper prayer: he vows that if God protects him, gives him food and clothing, and if he returns home safely, then he will worship God (28:20).

In contrast, God’s promise to him, in the dream, was unconditional. It is possible to criticize Jacob for a lack of faith, and we can hardly imagine a similarly conditional vow on the part of Abraham. Rabbi Plaut notes that the vow is a realistic one, coming from his experience rather than from philosophy.

The rest of the parashah reminds us that Jacob’s experience is one of deception, previously as the perpetrator (with his mother Rebekah) and now as the victim, at the hands of Laban. With his own experience as a trickster, he cannot, even in the face of a direct experience of God, believe in the certainty of the covenant that God offers, and thus his acceptance of it is contingent on God’s performance.

The “bed trick” in which Leah is substituted for Rachel is the stuff of high drama. Jewish tradition has generally not accepted Laban’s reasoning, and most traditional texts retaliate by placing the name of Rachel, the younger but preferred sister, before that of Leah. Some Reform prayerbooks are an exception: when they list the matriarchs, Leah is named first.

The parashah ends with the departure of Jacob, Rachel, Leah, and all their children, servants, and flocks from Haran. Their hasty, secretive departure is brought about by a second appearance of God in a dream, saying to Jacob, “I am the God of Beth-el… now arise and leave this land and return to your native land” (31:13).

It entails yet another deception. Rachel steals her father’s household gods (we know that these teraphim existed in Israel into the period of the kings; when David flees from Saul in I Samuel 19, Michal, his wife and Saul’s daughter, places such an idol in the bed to delay the detection of his escape). Jacob thoughtlessly vows to kill the culprit, but Rachel’s deception isn’t detected and this vow, unlike his earlier conditional promise or God’s unconditional promises, is not fulfilled.