Overcoming Fear: Vayishlach

Overcoming Fear: Vayishlach

Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

November 30, 2017

Psychologists say that human beings are born with the capacity to fear.  Fear, you might say, is built into our DNA; it’s part of our defensive mechanism.  We are afraid of dying, afraid of falling, afraid of being hurt.

Granted, some fears are learned.  We learn from eating bad or spoiled food that it might kill us.  That’s a good thing to learn, and has led to many discoveries and inventions—such as refrigerators, and not to eat mushrooms we do not recognize.

Some fears are triggered at a later stage in our life, perhaps as a result of an experience we just had.  Fear of the unknown is perhaps one of those fears we are all born with—and quite possibly the one that we are least capable of controlling.

We learn about all sorts of dangers from our parents and teachers, and certainly from our own life experience.  Some of our fears may even turn into anxieties, or neuroses.

Jacob, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham, had much to fear, not least being his twin brother, Esau. Esau couldn’t be trusted; Jacob knew that.  He was impetuous and quick to rage. Additionally, however, a fact that everyone knew was that once provoked, Esau’s thirst for revenge was insatiable. Nearly twelve years after tricking his brother into selling him the birthright for a bowl of stew, Jacob had to flee and seek refuge in a foreign land because of Esau’s ongoing murderous and smoldering rage.

One can only imagine Jacob’s distress that first night away from home—the first time that he could remember not being surrounded by his mother’s love and protection. 

But Jacob was a smart lad.  From his mother’s side of the family, he learned to barter and negotiate—skills he found useful in his dealings with Laban, his mother’s brother.  And he knew enough to sense jealousy when his in-laws began to envy his success and tried to trick him, much as he had—years earlier—tricked Esau.

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach (Genesis 32:4—36:43), it is 20 years later, and Jacob is returning home.  Only now he has even more to fear than ever before.  Esau, Jacob learns, is coming at him with a large contingent of armed men on horseback.  And whereas when he left he had nothing but the clothes on his back, he is returning as a wealthy and successful man, with a family, including women and small children, and many flocks and possessions that he needed to protect.

Jacob resorts to tactics he knows well—flattery and bargaining.  He sends gifts to his brother; he tells Esau that seeing his face is like seeing God.  But at the same time he also takes no chances, and he divides his family into two camps—hoping that, if Esau attacks, at least one group might survive.

But that’s only the beginning of Jacob’s travails at this point in his life.  Even though he successfully staves off the danger posed by Esau, he still has to face the uncertainties of survival in a land filled with people who lived by the sword, people who first took what they wanted and only afterwards said please.  Life will not be kind to Jacob: Vayishlach contains the stories of the rape of Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter; the brutally savage revenge exacted by two of his sons, Dinah’s brothers Shimon and Levi; the death of his father, Isaac (and, according to the rabbis, his mother, Rebecca) as well as the death of his mother’s nurse, Deborah, his last remaining connection to his past.  Worst of all, Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel, dies in giving birth to Benjamin.  Bowed by grief and sorrow, Jacob becomes withdrawn, powerless to control his sons and warn them against the greed, the jealousy and rivalry that he sees rising among them.  Jacob is now even more fearful than ever—afraid for his family, afraid for himself, afraid for the future he took such care to attain and secure.

In his beautiful and often-quoted poem, “Life Is A Journey,” Rabbi Alvin Fine describes the evolutions of the soul.  “From grief to understanding, from fear to faith,” he writes.  It’s an important lesson, one first taught by Jacob.

Having lost so much, Jacob could have given in to his sorrow.  He could have given in to his fear and taken flight once again.  But instead, he chose to fight.  He spends a long night on top of a barren mountain and wrestles with an unknown being—some say it was his own conscience, others that it was Esau himself.  At sunrise, the mysterious stranger admits defeat and grants Jacob a blessing—and a new name, Israel.  “For you have struggled with men and with divine beings, and you have won,” the angel explains the name.  Jacob is now armed with new confidence.  His grief has turned to understanding, and his fear has evolved to faith.

Jacob knew about faith.  He heard about Abraham’s blind obedience to God’s commands; he knew about Isaac’s submission to his fate.  His would be different. His faith is conditional. When God promises Jacob protection along his path, Jacob bargains:  I will worship you, “If you protect me.” Later, uncertain of God’s memory, Jacob, like a child, reminds God of this promise.  At this point, however, he finally begins to understand what true faith really is. 

There is too much of the realist in Jacob.  He will never leave up to chance—or fate, as the Greeks called it—or even to God, the important matters of life.  The business of survival, for example.  But from this moment on, Jacob understands that he is part of a long process.  Just as Abraham and Isaac each had a role to play in the evolution of the Jewish People, so does he now. It will be Jacob’s role to teach his children about walking with God at their side, with God in their hearts, with God’s laws guiding their lives.  He will teach them about faith.

Jacob’s—Israel’s—faith is about hope, about not being afraid, about survival against the odds. It’s about carrying on our mission regardless of the dangers.  It’s about overcoming fear and accomplishing the goals before you.  Faith is the source of strength that lies within each of us.

Fear never goes away.  We learn to control some fears, only to discover new ones.  Yet what we learn from our third Patriarch, Jacob, is not to be discouraged or disheartened.  Our faith is our strength as we take our first steps forward, toward an unknown future, toward a promised day and a promised land. 

© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman

Where To Find God: Toldot 2017

Where To Find God

D’var Torah for Shabbat Toldot

Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

November 16, 2017

A student of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, once asked the great rabbi:  “In our prayer, the Tefilah, why do we refer to God as ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob?’ Is there—God forbid!—more than one God?  Did our forefathers, the great patriarchs of the Jewish People, not each serve the one and same Creator of Heaven and Earth?”  Answered the rabbi:  “We say: ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob,’ for Isaac and Jacob did not base their work on the searching and service of Abraham; they themselves searched for the unity of the Maker and His service.”

In this famous story we see the genius of the Baal Shem Tov.  For his words not only answer his pupil’s question.  He more than merely explained the threefold repetition of the word “God.”  Rather, by his response the great rabbi and teacher placed a similar burden on each one of us.  We do not merely rely on the teachings of our ancestors; we do not merely mimic their behavior.  Just as each of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs had to seek God in his and her way, so does each of us, in our turn, struggle with the same difficult questions.  We too seek God in places we did not know, in strange lands and new times.  We too seek to understand: Where are you, God? How do we recognize your presence?  And more importantly, how do we reach you?  What paths to you lie before us that we have not yet explored?

The stories we read about in the Torah offer us our first clues.

Abraham looked up for the answers to his questions. Gazing at the stars, he realized that God was beyond everything and anything that we might be able to see or know.  Looking to the tops of mountains, he knew where he might find God’s message, and at the top of one particular mountain, Mt. Moriah, he understood what God asked of him:  Not sacrifice, but dedication; not the killing of his child, but rather the compassionate teaching and upbringing that would guide Isaac on his own path, to his own understanding of God’s purpose.

However, at the top of the mountain, at the moment that he was holding the knife over his son, at the very instant when God restrained his hand, Abraham understood that, as far as Isaac was concerned, this was as far as he could go. Earlier, as they climbed up the mountain together, the boy had asked his father some pertinent questions about the nature of this journey:  “Here is the knife, father; here is the wood and the fire; but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham answered as well as he could, but his response left much unexplained.  “God will see to the sacrifice,” he said.  TBD.  He himself didn’t know.  From now on, Abraham realized, Isaac would be seeking his own answers, looking for God on his own, along his own lonely and difficult journey. 

Isaac’s perspective also changes up on that mountaintop.  Isaac would never again be as innocent and trusting as he once was.  His vision of God would be forever tainted by his understanding that he, Isaac, was the intended sacrifice; his view of God would be forever eclipsed by the sun’s reflection that he saw on the knife poised above his heart.  Isaac understood the irony of a God who sometimes seems to play games with us, a God who has a cruel side to Him, but who ultimately could not—would not, ever again—ask for the terrible price of human sacrifice.

Life and circumstances would never be the same for Isaac.  His home life was not peaceful.  He found love late in life—he was forty when Rebecca came into his life, sixty when he became a father.  Then, their twin boys, Jacob and Esau, were always struggling, always fighting.  Isaac had his preference among the two; he loved Esau, the hunter, the man of the open fields and untamed wilderness.  Rebecca loved Jacob, in whom she saw more of herself and the family that she had left behind to marry Isaac. Theirs was a house divided, with whispering and intrigue going on behind the tent flaps.

Moreover, in his life’s work as a farmer, Isaac endured many hardships.  Drought forced him and his family to move frequently.  For a while he lived among the Philistines, whose rules and morals were so different from his own.  He dug water wells, which, one by one, the Philistine shepherds, for spite and jealousy, filled in and stopped.

For most of his life, afraid to look up, Isaac instead looked down.  Rather than seek God on mountaintops, Isaac dug wells into the earth—an act that the Rabbis understood as searching for God deep within himself. 

As for Jacob, though the Torah describes him as a quiet, simple man, he was far from it.  A conniver and schemer, he trusted only himself.  Plotting to gain the blessing of the first-born, he waited for the right moment—when Esau came back from the hunt—offering his hungry and tired brother a bowl of soup in return for their father’s blessing and a future inheritance.  Joining with the schemes woven by his mother, Rebecca, Jacob cheats and lies to his father, trusting his instincts rather than the laws of righteousness and morality that his father and grandfather followed.

Jacob’s true understanding of God would only come later, once he leaves home.  Waking up from a fitful night spent on rocky terrain, after a mysterious dream about a ladder with its top in the heavens, Jacob realizes that God resides not only in the heavens above, nor only in the depths below.  Jacob understands that God’s presence is everywhere—particularly where we least expect it.  From that moment on and for the rest of his life, from his life’s experiences and from his interactions with neighbors, in-laws, wives and children, Jacob will learn about love, trust and faith; he will learn about laws of justice and about sh’lom bayit—making peace at home. Along his many journeys, Jacob will learn that God works through us, through our deeds and our words, and that God’s presence is, indeed, everywhere, transcending heights, depths and even time.

Today, some 3200 years after our Patriarchs and Matriarchs walked this earth, our understanding of God is still founded on their perceptions, but it has also changed and evolved.  Shaped by our culture and traditions, influenced by our past as much as by our the present, by our faith as well as by our skepticism, we still look for our vision of God, each of us gazing at the heavens, or deep within our souls, for a sign, for a message all our own.  Like Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, who, during a difficult pregnancy, sought an answer to her question, אנכי זה למה –“Why am I so,” what is the purpose of all this struggle and pain—so does each of us seek meaning and direction along a journey that each of us, uniquely and alone, must undertake.

Here is where the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov comes to help us. Hasidism teaches that holiness is found wherever and whenever we look for it.  Sometimes it appears in disguise.  Sometimes it is completely hidden—yet we must seek it out.  Learning from our ancient ancestors, we understand that holiness does not exist in a vacuum, somewhere outside us.  Like Abraham, we gaze up in awe to experience the grandeur of Creation; like Isaac, we search deep within our hearts for the answer to our doubts and questions.  Like Jacob, we realize that holiness exists in how we relate to one another and to the world around us. In view of the harsh realities of life, holiness is found in the tenderness and compassion that we bring to it. In the loneliness of existence, holiness exists in our friendships and in our love.  In a world where injustice and violence are all too common, holiness can be found in the give and take, in our everyday interactions—at home, on the street and at our workplace. 

May we, like our Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and like our Matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, find God’s Presence wherever we are and in everything we do.  And may our deeds be a guiding light for our children, and for their children after them, as they seek God and search for their own way of serving God. 

Ken y’hi ratzon—may this be God’s will.

© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman