Genesis Cycle Two Vayetze 28:10 to 32:03

Vayetze


God is in this place and I didn’t know it. Achen yesh adonay b’makom hinei v’anochi lo yadati.

This is a profound statement. And how clear. Not surprising. Words perform alchemy. They place the ephemeral into our hands. The more astounding the vision, the more we need to touch it, see it, feel the solid texture. Therefore, words can be exquisite in their concealment. Here, we are all given the opportunity to hold Jacob’s hand and to be transformed with him…to listen to the essence of our own statements as they fly out of our mouths. How do we listen? By understanding what’s in front of us first. So, let's begin. There are three parts to this sentence, the beginning, the vuv and the end.

God is in this place….It all begins with God. We are all God-beings, angels. Like words, we also conceal our light as we go out into the world. In the end though what we want to see is that concealment is not pretense, it is an empowerment. It isn't easy. The more we fold into the radiance of God the more intense the love becomes. The closer we are to God the harder He is to see or to know in this place. I would imagine that for God it is the same. The closer God is to us the harder it is for Him to know us in this place.

What is this place, though? In Micah (4:2) we read…Come, let us go up to the Mount of the Lord to the House of God of Jacob. Here, we are reminded that for Abraham the holy place is a mountain. For Isaac it’s a field. And for Jacob, it’s the Heavenly Temple which is directed exactly towards the Earthly Temple (Gen Rabbah 69:7). And yet, it’s all the same. It's all around the well where Jacob meets Rachel, where the great stone lies near the mouth until it is pushed back to its makom. This rock fits perfectly. This rock clinches the connection man to man and man to God. This rock alone defines place. Place therefore goes beyond a field, a mountain or even a temple. It goes beyond subjective meaning as well as emotions. It goes beyond the situation you might find yourself in and/or your state of mind. It might seem to be that rung on the ladder that connects all places, the color on your big protective coat. One thing for sure. Place manifests itself beyond senses. Place is not only the rock but the moisture that rises from it.

The next word in this sentence is and. How could a simple vuv be important? Clearly, with the divine and the mundane on both ends, we are gifted with a connection between the two. Vuv, in other words, means that there isn’t some cut and dry seperation between God and man but that we bleed one into the other. And is the backbone of Adonay, the tunnel between the known and the unknown, the light that expands from our divine sparks and our bodies to the radiance beyond. And is a word of hope. By using and here, form equals premise. This is what makes poetry. God is in this place. The word and shows it.

Now for the end of the sentence…I did not know it grounds the action. It helps us to understand the nature of God, the textures of intimacy leading to oneness. It also lets us peak at the swift and heroic realization of a man who admits to being able to learn, to having not known. Here, not knowing is the very parallel of knowing. It's a holy way of being, the reason for Jacob's divine struggle.

As we follow Jacob, we watch as he gains intimacy and knowledge of God. He first tries to hide his light within the animal skin. Then he is suddenly forced to hide his light within a setting. This jump from garment to place and time is not easy. Whether realizing it or not, if we are first only concelaing ourselves within some layer on our skin, and then we must conceal ourselves in a makom, it's an expansion. It's new. It’s demanding, dangerous. It necessitates trust and faith that is almost super-human. And that’s frightening. But while the heights that nurse and give birth to us might send us running into a world that seems foreign, flat, a real world laced with anger, deceit, jealousy, a real world in which people pay coins of darkness and despair, in which we reject home or forget it or think we have a handle on it….there is a way to navigate through the relative darkness. No matter the pain, the desperation, the pounding of feet…our need to masquerade as angels from the outside when we are really angels of the Promised Land…we can spiritually grow and survive. We can know the rhythm of our hearts. We can stay in touch with our true essence as we discern layers, blend them, peel them. We can use the layers to bless God and to make altars. We can love them so the divine spark can turn them into great wings. Soon, the wings will open to reveal our transforming selves.

Finally, by letting the moisture from the rock be the love that fills our beings, we can get closer and closer to God in this place. By letting go, opening up and accepting we can feel God in the words that rush out of our mouths...and learn from them.

There’s a story about Rabbi Hillel that I’ve heard a few times. It seems that a student wants to recite the basic premise of Judaism while standing on one foot. Rabbi Hillel tells him to repeat the words love thy neighbor as thyself.

No doubt, that’s what Judaism is all about.

In the end though, if the student has good balance (I trust he does yoga) why not ask him to repeat the words of this line as well? It might take some thought and a few extra seconds but you can say it quick and easy. You can say it while lifting your feet to move on after a revelation, while tending the sheep for fourteen years, while falling in love, while waiting for the children to be born, while wondering how you could have confused your eyes with your heart. You can say it as the sun quickly sets, silently to yourself even if no one else is saying it yet.

So may we love our neighbor and know intimately that our neighbor is ourself, that love is here in this place. May we be able to admit not knowing to get to a place of knowing. May we all be in God’s image. May all speech vision and hearing merge within our hearts. May we be the floating angels that bring the fast light to those we love and to everyone around us.