Divrei Rav Josh- Parshat Vayetze: The Ladder of Potential

The long-term output of any school should be not just proficient students, but enabled learners. An "enabled" learner can grasp macro views, uncover micro details, ask questions, plan for new knowledge and transfer thinking across divergent circumstances. This doesn't happen by content "knowledge holding," or even by the fire of enthusiasm, but by setting a tone for learning that suggests possibility, and by creating a culture of can.

      -Terry Heick, “Creating a Culture of Can,” Edutopia.org

No matter the subject, educating students involves a process of helping them realize their potential and capability to succeed.   However, the greatest challenge within that process is helping students envision a pathway to success, and helping them know that they will have support along the way, a set of images that we find in this week’s parasha of Vayetze.

Parshat Vayetze records that during Jacob’s dream, “a ladder was set on the ground and its top reached the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it. And the Lord was standing beside him" (Bereishit 28:12-13), and somehow we are to imagine that this encounter results in Jacob being changed, as he wakes up from this dream exclaiming, “Surely, God was in this place, and I did not know it! (28:16).  

Every time I read this story, I find myself returning to the same question: “How does Jacob’s dream fit into the context of his overall narrative?”   A similar question is asked by Aviva Zornberg in Genesis: The Beginning of Desire, where she writes that Jacob’s dreams hints at his own confusion over whether or not he will succeed in fulfilling God’s promise on this earth.  She writes:

“God appears to Jacob, as he experiences the full dream-terror, the oscillation of anger and guilt that the angels project.  And Jacob’s attention is turned, within the dream, on the power of his own sleeping body, attached to the earth.  All that a man may be is compacted within his trunk, his head, his limbs.  The whole land of Israel is his, if he can fill the proper shape of humanity, if he can body forth the image of God, on earth” (Aviva Zornberg, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire, 192).

According to Zornberg, we must see Jacob’s dream in the context of his childhood, and how one wonders what kind of person Jacob will become when this dream takes place, a question not lost upon our rabbinic commentators.

In his philosophical treatise, The Guide for the Perplexed, Rabbi Moses Maimonides writes that the ladder of Jacob’s dream symbolizes Jacob’s potential to rise or fall in his relationship and apprehension of God.  Maimonides writes the following:

"And, behold, the Lord stood erect on it," that is, was stably and constantly up on it--I mean upon the ladder, one end of which is in heaven, while the other end is upon the earth. Everyone who ascends does so climbing up this ladder, so that he necessarily apprehends Him who is upon it, as He is stably and permanently at the top of the ladder...For after the "ascent" and the attaining of certain rungs of the ladder that may be known comes the descent with whatever decree the prophet has been informed of--with a view to governing and teaching the people of the earth” (Guide for the Perplexed, Book 1, 15).

According to Maimonides, in seeing the ladder, Jacob is challenged to imagine what he might become, should he use the rest of his life as one in pursuit of divine perfection, a lifelong ascent towards God.    In contrast, if Jacob’s life is spent in trickery and deceit, alluded to in Jacob’s stealing of the birthright, Jacob will only descend on the ladder, moving further and further away from God.   

Transitioning from the philosophical to the spiritual, Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin’s Nefesh Ha-Hayyim argues that the ladder symbolizes Jacob’s spiritual potential, and his ability to ascend or descend based on his deeds from that point forward.   The text states:

“Regarding the vision of the ladder "set on the ground," ... note that it does not say "set in the ground (baaretz), but towards the ground (artzah), to signify that its principal anchoring is in the heavens above, and from there it devolves downward, until it reaches the earth. This signifies the Neshamah in man... From there it descends like a ladder and chain, joining with the spirit (Ruah), then with the soul (Nefesh), until it finally comes down to this world and into the body of man. Divine angels go up and down it, as we said above, along its length which is the living soul of the worlds, the forces and the angels of the upper spheres, whose entire ascent and descent, indeed all their actions at every moment, depend solely on the inclination of the deeds, speech, and thoughts that are in the body of man at every moment” (Nefesh Ha-Hayyim 1:19).

Using this approach, one can see the ladder teaching Jacob that his deeds, speech and thoughts will ultimately determine whether or not he fulfills God’s spiritual mission for the world.  While the Esau incident might cast doubt on whether or not Jacob is truly destined to live out God’s mission for the world, the ladder demands that Jacob recognize the choice of pursuing a pathway of righteousness now officially lies before him.

At every point of development, each of us must resist the temptation to consider ourselves a finished product, incapable of becoming more than we already are, while not absolving ourselves of the responsibility to pursue a path of righteousness, hence the image of Jacob’s ladder.  When we educate our children, we are tasked with helping them understand how life and learning are ladders up which each of them are capable of climbing, and, at any point in one’s life, there is the possibility of going one rung higher.   May each of us use this year as an opportunity to push ourselves, our children, and our students, up a ladder to great heights and great things.   

Shabbat Shalom!

• Translations of some of these texts were taken from Jacob Charlap, “Parshat Vayetze: The Meaning of Jacob’s Dream,” Bar Ilan University, <http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/vayetze/harlap.html>.