­In reading today’s Sidra we are puzzled by some extraordinary incidents therein recorded. Jacob, we read, had chanced upon a group of shepherds waiting to water their sheep from a nearby well. And on it, there rested a stone, a stone big enough to cover the mouth of the opening of the well: “ve’ha’even ha’gedolah al pi ha’be’er.” When Jacob notices the shepherds lingering, he tells them, “hashku ha’tsoan u’lechu re’u” – why don’t you go ahead, remove the stone from the mouth of the well and water your sheep? It all seemed so terribly simple to the naive Jacob. But they answered: “va’yomru lo nuchal ad asher ye’asfu ha’adrim” – they said: we cannot, it is impossible, until all the herds gather and the other shepherds help us. Jacob was puzzled by their attitude, and he thought he might be able to do it – and, in the Bible’s eloquent simplicity: “vayigash yaakov va’yegal ess ha’even me’al pi ha’be’er” – He went over and rolled the stone off the mouth of the well! Just like that! We can well imagine the attitude of the shepherds when Jacob walked over to the well. “Look,” they probably sneered, “look who’s going to play big hero – Jacob, the Batlan, the Luftmensch!” And we can also imagine their amazement – and their embarrassment – when this same Jacob walks up to the stone and effortlessly rolls it off. The stone appeared to Jacob, say the Rabbis, “ki’mlo pi kvara ktanah,” as big as a hole of a strainer. What to these mighty muscle men appeared to be a boulder, appeared to Jacob to be a mere pebble!This narrative certainly is remarkable. The feat of strength of Jacob and the apparent weakness of the shepherds require some explanation. Why could Jacob do it? – and even more important – why couldn’t the shepherds? What does all this mean, and what is it that the Bible is trying to teach us?The “be’er,” the well, was interpreted in many different ways by our Rabbis. Some said that it refers to Zion – the love for the Jewish home. Others would have it mean the feeling…

Let me begin by saying that I am very favorably impressed by your fair community. Indeed, I find myself in the same predicament in which Jacob found himself at the beginning of this week’s portion. Vayetzei Yaakov mi’Beer Sheva, Jacob left his home for a new and strange place; so have I left New York for Chicago, which I have never visited before. Like Jacob of old, I too did not expect to see any great and beholden sights. We of the East know that there is an active Jewish community in Chicago, but that is about all. After even this brief visit with you, I am glad to repeat the very phrases Jacob uttered when he discovered the nature of the place he visited: Achein yesh Hashem ba’makom hazeh ve’anochi lo yadati, there is G-dliness, greatness, in this place, and I did not even know about it. Your synagogue is a beautiful one; your community an intelligent and responsible one; and your ambitions, as I have come to know them, noble and far-sighted. I am glad to be with you and learn about you. I sincerely thank you for your hospitality.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with a colleague of mine, not an Orthodox man, who expressed his dismay and consternation at the lack of religious progress of us Jews. He felt extremely disturbed and even somewhat ashamed of himself as a Jewish religious official. The source of his dissatisfaction was the lead article in the recent issue of Look magazine, undoubtedly a journal of deep religious scholarship, which pointed out that religion was becoming “big business” and was taking on the techniques of “show business,” stressing the contributions of the Protestant and Catholic clergy in this sacred field. Now, while these other religions have availed themselves of all these new “gimmicks” and reveled in new-found popularity, we Jews have remained religiously backwards. No, my colleague sadly commented, we have not learned our lesson, we are again behind the times. But perhaps, he came back hopefully, perhaps some day we too will deserve a high Hooper rating.I may ask you, my friends, to excuse me for using as my text – or pretext – his sincere feelings on these matters. But I think that it is an attitude, a state of mind, which bears further study. For your edification – and perhaps amusement – let me read you some choice selections from this learned article:“The preachers are using TV, radio and movies to bring religion back into the home.”“The Protestants are going into show-business in a big way”“He (a famous Protestant minister) tells his businessmen they’ll live longer and be more successful human beings (and salesmen) if they’ll only learn to relax and remember that nobody is ever alone so long as G-d’s in His heaven.”“There’s a guy,’ said a man in the audience in Chicago recently… ‘There’s a guy who really reaches out.’”“His director (of a prominent Catholic bishop who has become a TV star) says it’s an easy job: ‘It’s so simple. He doesn’t care if we move the cameras in or out while he’s making a point. He’s an ideal performer’. A simpler description …

A thousand years ago, the great Rabbi Saadia Gaon taught that our Torah is reasonable and that the human intellect, by itself, can discover the great truths taught in Scripture. Given enough time and brilliance, the human mind can, unaided, arrive at the precepts and concepts revealed by G-d at Sinai. As an example of how reason can provide us with these principles, he gives: gratitude. The very first thing our reason tells us is that one ought to be grateful. Hence, from the principle of gratitude, we learn that a man ought to pray. It is reasonable that we pray to G-d out of gratitude to Him.Certainly, therefore, intelligent people should not be ingrates. That is why Jews recite the Modeh Ani immediately upon arising, why they say the Modim as part of their prayer, why they recite the Birkat ha-Mazon after eating. That is why, too, Americans celebrate every year, as we shall this week, Thanksgiving Day. It is the first dictate of human reason.It is all the more amazing, therefore, to learn of the remarkable statement of our Rabbis in their comment on this week’s Sidra. We read today of how Leah gave birth to her fourth son, and called him Yehudah (Judah) because ha-paam odeh et ha-Shem – “this time I shall thank the Lord.” Our Sages say, “From the day G-d created the world, no one had thanked G-d until Leah came and thanked Him upon giving birth to Judah, as it is said, ‘this time I shall thank the Lord’” (Berakhot 7). Noah, Shem, Eber – all these were prophets who discoursed with the Lord. Did they never thank Him? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – the founders of the true religion – were they so callous and indifferent that they never acknowledged G-d’s gifts to them? Were they, then, unfeeling, ungrateful brutes?The answer, I believe, lies in a deeper understanding of gratitude or thanksgiving itself. For there are two kinds or levels of gratitude. Thanksgiving can be understood as courtesy – or as conscience; as a social gesture – or as a sacred grace; as a way of talk…

When Father Jacob was reunited with his son Joseph, whom he had long thought dead and for whom he had grieved so many years, and whom he now saw before him in flesh and blood, Joseph ran to his father, embraced him, and wept on his neck. But Jacob neither greeted his son, nor embraced him, nor kissed him, nor wept. Instead, according to our Sages, he recited the Shema (Rashi to Gen. 46:29). What our Tradition meant by this was that there are times when our emotions are so overwhelming, our experiences so profound, that they far surpass our capacity for articulation. At times of this sort, when language falls shamefully short of the tasks demanded of it, the Jew instinctively turns to Torah in order to find expression for the essentially inexpressible. For only in the superhuman words of Scripture and Tradition can man communicate ideas and sentiments which, by the extent of their joy or their grief, test the limitations of his mere humanity.The unspeakably disastrous, calamitous, cataclysmic dimensions of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy represent such an experience. Ordinary language is miserably inadequate to the task of giving voice to the immeasurable sorrow and dismay that well up within us. How shall mere eloquence relate the stark tragedy of a country that has seen its beloved leader, in whom so many placed their confidence as he guided our destiny, cruelly cut down? How shall we, with our own petty words, tell of the personal sense of loss that each of us has sustained with such ugly suddenness? Is there one amongst us who has not vicariously identified with one or another member of his distinguished family? Have we not shared in his parents’ pride, their “nachas?” Have we not thrilled at the sense of family solidarity with his wife and young children and his brothers and sisters? And who will venture to deny the impotence of any oratory in expressing not only our profound sympathy but also our unbounded admiration for that gallant you…

The interpretation by the fifteenth-century commentator Don Isaac Abarbanel of the beginning of today’s Sidra is more appropriate for a profound psychologist than for the accomplished economist and diplomat that he was. It puts Jacob’s immortal vision of the ladder reaching to Heaven in a new light, and yields insights that are highly relevant to the condition of modern man. The vision of the ladder extending from Earth to Heaven, with angels ascending and descending it, and the Lord on the top of it, is obviously pregnant with symbolism; and God’s address to Jacob in this prophetic dream is patently more meaningful than would appear at first glance. Otherwise, Jacob would not have trembled with awe and sacred terror upon awakening.The interpretation of Abarbanel, unlike the metaphysical and mystical comments of the other exegetes, is completely personal and psychological, and comes to answer the question of why this vision took place at this time and in this place. Abarbanel tells us that the opening words in today’s Sidra, va-yetzei Yaakov, that Jacob went out of the Holy Land, does not mean that he left as a tourist; Jacob was in flight, a refugee from his brother Esau, who had sworn to kill him. The hatred by Esau for Jacob was a result of the fact that Jacob had deceived their father, Isaac, and taken the blessing that Isaac had reserved for Esau for himself. Now, the major content of that blessing can be divided into three parts: the promise of devekut, of communion or attachment between God and the bearer of the blessing; the promise of zera, posterity; and the promise that that posterity will inherit eretz, the Land of Israel. And now here he was – Jacob, the recipient of the blessing – without any of these three items! He was not in communion with God; commenting on the Biblical words va-yelekh haranah, the Rabbis expand on the second word and maintain that this was a place of ḥaron af, it reflected God’s displeasure. Jacob had no zera, no children; not ev…

One of the most disturbing and yet revealing verses in all the Torah occurs in today’s Sidra. Jacob and his wives, the daughters of Laban, flee from Laban who had exploited them in the course of many years. Before leaving, and unknown to Jacob, Rachel steals her father’s teraphim – which were his household idols or, according to some commentators, certain primitive gadgets which Laban thought he could foretell the future, and which he worshiped as deities. Rachel’s reason for this theft, according to the Rabbis, was to prevent her father Laban from worshiping idols. When Laban discovers the flight of his daughters and son-in-law and their family, he pursues them and reproaches Jacob for making a hasty exit without the proper and ceremonious farewell. This leads him to the climax of his rebuke and his complaint: lamah ganavta et elohai, “Wherefore hast thou stolen my gods?”What a pathetic figure is cut by this old and crafty fool! Here is a man shrewd enough to run rings about Jacob in business matters, and yet he stands there so pitifully and plaintively pleading for his paltry few teraphim! Lamah ganavta et elohai? “Wherefore hast thou stolen my gods?” According to Jewish legend, his grandchildren cried out to him, “Grandfather, we are ashamed of you! How foolish you are! How can a God be stolen?”Of course, the grandchildren were right, religiously and spiritually: a God that can be stolen is no God. And of course, Laban was right psychologically and culturally; in the context of belief in teraphim and icons, in fetishes and idols, gods can be bought and sold, bartered and stolen. Historically, this has always been so. Not only can idols be stolen, but they possess a special fascination; they all but beg to be stolen! Moses, at the end of his career, warned his people against the temptation towards idolatry. For you know, he tells them, how spiritually and morally degenerate are the Canaanites amongst whom we live. Beware, therefore, against worshiping their gods.…

Orthodox Jews are often accused of being simplistic, of looking at life as a series of simple choices between black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. According to the popular prejudice, an Orthodox Jew has no spiritual problems. Any time he is faced with a question, he merely decides according to prescribed formulae which he can look up in his קצור שלחן ערוך, his Code of Law. Often a non-Orthodox Jew will say, “I wish I could feel that way, it would make life so much easier!” That statement is often meant sincerely; occasionally, it is a disguised criticism for the benighted lack of sophistication by Orthodox Jews.That attitude is both unfortunate and inadequate. Such an uncomplicated view is not in accord with life’s untold complexities. And it is certainly not the attitude that Orthodox Judaism encourages.In fact, this tendency to label everything as either absolutely good or absolutely evil, to see all of life as a clear battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, is referred to in theology as the heresy of Gnosticism or Manichaeism. This view of life as consisting of an ongoing struggle between absolute polarities is not a Jewish view. According to the Kabbalah, ever since Man took that first fateful bite into the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, טוב and רע (good and evil), appear mixed in the world. There is almost nothing that is absolutely good with no evil admixture, and almost nothing which is absolutely evil with no redeeming feature whatsoever.At the same time, we cannot agree with those contemporary moralists, whether they are referred to as the advocates of the New Morality, or Situationalists or Relativists, who hold that every problem is so complicated that it is unamenable to simple solutions. These people maintain that since every situation is absolutely unique, there can be no objective moral code to guide us, and we must always rely on a personal decision made without recourse to external standards.…

The Yalkut tells us that the stones that Jacob used as a pillow during his lonely flight from Esau were the very ones upon which his father Isaac was offered up at the Akedah. How history repeats itself! We today rest on pillows of stone. I did not sleep well this past week or two. What Jew did not experience difficulty in sleeping during this time? We had a hard, cold feeling, under and in our heads – and in our hearts and in our stomachs. Make no mistake about it. Even as Jacob felt the stones and reminded himself of the near-death of Isaac, we feel today the specter of the Holocaust, the Akedah of the 20th century. It is a reality that lies just beneath the surface of all contemporary Jewish experience. So, like Jacob, we have the dread sensation of כי בא השמש, the sun is setting. Darkness is spreading, and danger is abroad in the world. How shall we respond to these worries? First, let us define the areas of concern. I find three such amongst others: self-doubt, fear of the future, and loneliness.In these critical moments, Jews both in Israel and in the Diaspora do entertain doubts about the justice and worthwhileness of our cause. Of course, I am not speaking about the New Left and Trotskyite Jews. I unequivocally and unambiguously condemn such Jewish self-haters who are open-minded to Arabs, close-minded to Jews; who can understand sympathetically every nationalism – except that of their own people. I do not refer to Communist Jews who slavishly follow Moscow’s party line. They are an instance of psychopathology, the most pathetic example of political masochism in our times.Rather, I refer to those Jews who are fully committed to the Jewish cause, who make their lives in Israel and put their lives on the line – and yet, ask themselves whether we have acted properly all along, whether it is possible to reconcile our claims with Palestinian claims. Of course, every sane person recognizes that there can be no compromise with the PLO. You cannot reconcile the cla…

My dear fellow racists – for that is what the “international community” has said we are – where do we go from here? Now that Soviet Russia has questioned Israel’s civil liberties, and Saudi Arabia has challenged its absence of tolerance for minorities, and Uganda has denounced its want of humaneness, and Libya has censured it for the malpractice of social justice, and Sudan has convicted it of discrimination against darker races – what now?I admit that my first reaction to the U.N. vote defining Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination was one of anger and fear, genuine gloom. But upon second thought, while the anger is certainly still there, I have much less apprehension and depression. I can even discern some positive results internally. Consider the adventures of the first Israel, that is, our Father Jacob. We read of him that when he left Beersheba, that ויפגע במקון וילן שם כי בא השמש, that he alighted upon the place, and he slept there because the sun had set. The Talmud (in Berakhot) maintains that the expression ויפגע במקום implies that Jacob prayed to God: ויעקב תיקן תפלת ערבית ...ואין פגיעה אלא תפילה…Jacob was the one who established the third prayer of the day, that of Maariv. The great Gerer Rebbe, the author of “חידושי הר”ם,” interprets this as implying that Jacob taught all his descendants how to retain hope in the very darkness of the night, how in the most somber and gloomy and the blackest of circumstances, a Jew can and ought achieve a sense of security through prayer.That insight is most valuable. I would even add that this explains why the prayer of Maariv is halakhically different from the other two prayers, that of Shaharit and Minhah, in that the latter two are considered חובה (obligatory), whereas תפילת ערבית רשות, the Maariv service is considered voluntary – in the sense that one may dispense with the prayer if another occasion of mitzvah presented itself at the same time.Normally, it is taken that Maariv is therefore less impor…