Vayetze

Vayetze – Zahavit Shalev

Zahavit Shalev has taught on the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School and prepares students for conversion at New North London Synagogue.

Vayetze deals with the busy family- and fortune-forming years of Jacob's life. It's a crazy soap-opera of a sedra, full of extreme characters (pretty sister, ugly sister, villainous father-in-law); bizarre plot twists (wedding deception!); and tragic emotions (unrequited love, jealousy, infertility).

Vayetze begins and ends with a matzeva (standing stone monument). Between the matzevot fall the twenty years Jacob spends with Laban, from arriving as a young, single man, to leaving with wives, concubines, children, and cattle in tow. Before the first matzeva, Jacob is a son; after the second, an established patriarch. But here, in Vayetze, his status is less clear - he is an adult male in another man's household.

In order to begin his adult life, Jacob has first to leave his natal home. He leaves in a hurry after stealing his brother's birthright. After his first night alone on the road, Jacob erects a matzeva, asking God to protect him and eventually guide him back to his father's house in safety. Two decades later, sensing that the tension between them has reached breaking point, Jacob gathers up his family to return to Canaan, departing while Laban is away. Without Jacob's knowledge, and for reasons unexplained, Rachel steals her father's teraphim (idols or soothsaying devices) and takes them with her. When Laban catches up with Jacob he demands to know why Jacob left in secret without allowing him to bid his daughters farewell. Then he asks after his teraphim, and Jacob, unaware that Rachel has them, invites him to search the family's tents. With Rachel concealing the teraphim, the text repeatedly emphasizes that Laban fails to find ("matza") what he is seeking.

An angry exchange between Jacob and Laban follows, discharging two decades-worth of resentment and frustration. Jacob opens, fuming that his father-in-law exploited him, frequently changed his wages, and would have let him leave empty-handed. Laban counters: "The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks; all that you see is mine. Yet what can I do now about my daughters or the children they have borne?" His argument is clearly absurd, yet he ends by inviting Jacob to join him in a pact.

Whatever preparations are made, and despite the inevitability of it, for most of us it is difficult to move along to the next life stage. The temptation to stay where we are and hang on to what we know, even when it is no longer working is powerful. Playing out this fantasy is rarely helpful, which is why Laban does not find ("matza") what he is looking for when he chases after and catches up with the grown-up children who have finally escaped his clutches.

Yet something great emerges from this encounter. The air cleared, Jacob and Laban erect a matzeva, make a pact, and separate in peace. The matzeva mysteriously turns out to be what Laban was really seeking. Whereas Jacob erected his first matzeva alone and in fear, this one is a joint leave-taking project marking the separation between a father-in-law and a son-in-law who have lived messily entangled lives for 20 years.

Nobody performs their life in a vacuum. People, even patriarchs, even Biblical baddies, do not operate in a void. Whatever we imagine our achievements to be, it's possible that the real monuments we leave behind are the messy, cobbled-together accommodations we make with the people who, even if they obstruct and frustrate us, are the people we share our lives with.