ספר בראשית

The words: ‎וילך חרנה‎, according to this ‎method of interpretation allude to the future when G’d would ‎become angry with His people. The words: ‎ויצא יעקב‎, would ‎contrast this with his leaving the domain from which G’d ‎dispenses all His goodness for His creatures, especially the Jewish ‎people. All this caused him great anguish and when the Torah ‎describes his ‎ויפגע במקום וילן שם כי בא השמש‎, “that he met ‎‎hamakom and had to spend the night there as the sun had ‎set,” this is a simile for Yaakov foreseeing how the fortunes of the ‎Jewish people would turn from having enjoyed G’d’s bounty to ‎not only becoming persecuted but also causing G’d to share the ‎pain that He had been forced to inflict upon His people. The ‎darkness alluded to in this verse describes that his vision became ‎so clouded worrying about how G’d must suffer when His favorite ‎people stray so far from the path of Torah that they must ‎undergo harsh punishments in order to bring them back to the ‎right path.‎When the Torah describes Yaakov as ‎ויקח מאבני המקום‎, “he ‎took from the stones of hamakom,” this describes Yaakov’s ‎sharing G’d’s pain and wishing to be able to compensate G’d for ‎this in same way. (Alluded to by the word ‎ויפגע‎). The words ‎מאבני ‏המקום וישם מראשותיו‎, “from the stones of hamakom and he ‎placed them under his head,” suggest how Yaakov tried to share ‎G’d’s “pain” at what both He and His people would have to ‎endure in exile. His whole thinking was preoccupied with how he ‎could somehow if not forestall these happenings at least ensure ‎that his descendants would survive these experiences. This is the ‎key to his dream of the ladder that follows. It portrays that ‎Yaakov had found a means to deal with the physical implications ‎of exile and persecutions because of Whom He saw on the top of ‎the ladder. This helped him console himself that all of these harsh ‎experiences would be confined to Israel’s existence in the “lower” ‎regions of the universe. The words: ‎וראשו מגיע השמימה‎, “the ‎ladder’s top reached into heaven,” reminds Yaakov that exile ‎also touches the celestial spheres, so much so that its impact ‎affects those regions negatively. Its most direct impact on the ‎celestial regions is that it interferes with the dispensation of G’d’s ‎largesse to mankind, and the forces of nature upon which man ‎depends.The line: ‎והנה מלאכי אלוקים עולים ויורדים בו‎, “and behold ‎G’d’s angels were ascending and descending on that ladder,” ‎is the message that even exile has its positive aspects, as it ‎enables numerous “sparks” that had previously “fallen” from the ‎tree that we perceive as the Shechinah, to find their way ‎back to their holy origin. At the same time, regretfully, the ‎descent of the Jewish people into exile brings with it a parallel ‎descent of some other “sparks” from the Shechinah into the ‎ritually contaminated part of the universe. In our verse these ‎‎“sparks” are referred to as ‎מלאכי אלוקים‎, “Angels of the Divine.” ‎Presiding over all these happenings is G’d, ‎והנה ה' נצב עליו‎, “and ‎behold the Lord is standing above it;” this line also reassures ‎Yaakov that wherever he may find himself he will not be alone, as ‎G’d Himself accompanies him even in exile. Moses confirms this in ‎psalms 91,15 when he says (quoting G’d) “I will be with him in ‎distress.” Seeing that the Lord is with us, our real “pain” or ‎sorrow is really G’d’s pain and sorrow.‎‎As soon as G’d saw that Yaakov’s concern was with His pain ‎and sorrow, and how all this would impact on the foundation of ‎the Jewish people and its development, He reassured him that he ‎was the same G’d Who had looked after Avraham and Yitzchok, ‎his respective grandfather and father. He assured him that this ‎same piece of earth on which he was lying at this time, i.e. that ‎he is so worried about, He, the Lord will give to him and to his ‎descendants and that his descendants will spread out to all the ‎corners of the earth. He continues to reassure Yaakov that during ‎all the vicissitudes of history that his descendants would endure, ‎He would always keep a benevolent eye on them. They will, in due ‎course, return from exile to a brighter future.‎Genesis 28,16. “Yaakov awakened from his dream, ‎etc;” the word ‎משנתו‎, here is a reference to the mental state ‎of depression under which Yaakov had laboured when ‎contemplating the exile his descendants would experience in the ‎future. When he says: ‎אכן יש ה' במקום הזה ואנכי לא ידעתי‎, “indeed ‎the Lord is even in this place and I did not know it,” is an ‎acknowledgment that he had unnecessarily despaired of the ‎future of his people thinking that G’d would forsake them in ‎exile. Having realized now that he had been wrong, filled him ‎with such gratitude that he determined to build a Temple on the ‎site where this insight had been revealed to him. The words: ‎בית ‏אלוקים‎, as something already in place, allegorically speaking, ‎refers to his realization that once there is a Jewish people G’d will ‎never again withdraw from the lower regions of the universe as ‎He had done previously when man’s conduct had become too ‎offensive.‎‎[I believe the principal lesson Yaakov learned in this ‎dream (as portrayed by the author) was that even when Moses ‎speaks clearly in the Torah about G’d “hiding His face,” (Deut. ‎‎31,18) this does not refer to His withdrawing from our part of the ‎world; it only means that we will be under the impression that He ‎has done so as we see no evidence of His Presence overtly or ‎covertly. Ed.] If this is the lesson of exile, exile itself ‎becomes a truly positive experience.‎At this stage Yaakov reverts to his original intention of taking ‎the “stones” or “stone” i.e. the foundation stone of the Jewish ‎people and converts it from a potential tool into an actual by ‎consecrating it with oil. [The Jewish people no less than ‎the Temple are perceived as “Temples,” the former as a living ‎entity, the latter as an inert structure always on a sacred site. ‎Ed.] [The significance of oil for consecration, and the ‎miracle of Chanukah being the miracle of the cruse of holy oil as ‎having been foreshadowed in Yaakov’s dream signaling the end of ‎desecration of the Holy Temple, has thus been established. ‎Although some of the words are mine, I trust that I have ‎conveyed our author’s meaning. Ed.]‎ This is the first time in the Torah that “oil” is portrayed as ‎possessing spiritually elevating potential. Normally, we are ‎familiar with this only from when the priests who were anointed ‎with oil, or when a King, first in a dynasty, was consecrated with ‎it. Yaakov understood the mystical properties contained in such ‎oil (holy oil) and used it here for the first time as such.‎‎[One wonders at the fact that although Yaakov appears to ‎have been stripped of all valuables prior to this night, he still had ‎some such oil on his person; this makes the connection the ‎author establishes between Chanukah and Yaakov’s dream of the ‎ladder a great deal more plausible. Ed.]‎‎ Reshit Chochma, shaar ahavah section 5,39, ‎שמן‎, oil, i.e. the resin found in trees, is a euphemism for wisdom ‎originating in the celestial regions. By means of this wisdom G’d ‎used a combination of this wisdom and sanctity to produce a ‎unique product, the foundation stone of the Jewish people ‎preparing from this an entire building containing many “rooms” ‎one of which was reserved for G’d to manifest Himself therein to ‎His people exclusively. When speaking of “His people,” we refer ‎to the spiritualized concept of the Jewish people, described by our ‎sages as ‎כנסת ישראל‎, “the collective soul of the Jewish people.” ‎This is what the Torah had in mind when it reports Yaakov as ‎saying: ‎ויקרא את שם המקום ההוא ביתאל‎, “he called the name ‎of this site Betel;” the Torah adds that ‎ואולם לוז שם העיר ‏לראשונה‎, “originally the name of the town had been Looz.” ‎‎(Verse 20) By mentioning this detail, the Torah wishes to inform ‎the reader that even before Yaakov spent a night at this location ‎all the basic ingredients for the site to be elevated to one of ‎sanctity had already existed as a potential. This was so because ‎the concept of a Jewish nation, as mentioned previously, was not ‎new, in fact it had been in G’ds mind before He even began to ‎create the universe. This concept did not only include the ‎formation of a Jewish nation, but envisaged its history right to ‎the point when the Messiah would redeem this people from its ‎last exile. According to tradition (Bereshit Rabbah 69, ‎discussed at length) the human body contains a bone known as ‎לוז‎, which is indestructible, the angel of death having no power ‎over it, and conversely, it is also the bone from which all other ‎parts of the human body develop. [Not necessarily a ‎‎“bone” as we understand it, but possibly what we call a stem cell ‎in our time. Ed.] The “stem cell” ‎לוז‎, is for man what the ‎expression ‎היולי‎ is meant to convey when we speak of the origin ‎of the universe, the primordial raw material. Yaakov’s ‎contribution was to make out of a potential Jewish nation one ‎that had materialized.‎