The Place

This week’s Torah portion is Vayetze, which means, and he departed. It tells of Jacob’s leaving home and of his vision of a ladder set on the earth with its top reaching to the heavens. Angels were ascending and descending on it. Jacob then sees God in his dream, who tells him that the land will be his, that he will be protected, will have many descendants, and that he will eventually return. When he awakens, Jacob is shaken to have had such an experience. He devises a ritual to commemorate his vision and declares a vow: if God will be with me and guard me on this way; give me bread to eat and clothes to wear and I will return in peace and God will be a God to me, then the stone I have set up as a pillar shall become a house of God and whatever you give me I shall tithe to you.
Jacob is an everyman: the person, like us, in the midst of real life. He got himself into a bad situation and had to leave his home. He leaves without money, unsure of himself. He is alone and on his own. And then he has an encounter: a dream that is more than a dream, that changes his life and leads him to an awareness that this place is holy and God is present.
In the Rabbinic literature and in the writings of Kabbalah, God is known as The Place. The Torah Commentator Rashi speaks about a person’s place, and the Chassidic mystic known as the S’fat Emet writes that each person must find the place belonging to him. This “finding” is initiated by God through an experience. So too, we are contacted by God through our experiences. How we respond to those experiences, those contacts with God, those opportunities for closeness, leads us-- B’Makom-- to The Place, to finding our own place. Each of us must find that place that is more than just identity. Like identity, our place is potential. Jacob, in this portion, was all potential; and Jacob’s relationship to God was potential. Jacob says, if you, God, will provide for me, then I will repay the kindness. At this point, Jacob did not yet trust his own vision. His own experience was not enough for him to believe it. The Chassidic teacher Rebbe Baruch Mezbitzer taught, when one is confident that he is fully secure on earth, eventually he will gear his thoughts heavenward. Jacob is in The Place, but he cannot yet believe it. The Place is within and without, as God is within and without. As identity is always developing and becoming, our place is always developing, continually being realized within and without. Jacob was like us, a flawed human being and also like us, he had great potential to find his Place. Like us he had great potential for becoming the Place of wisdom. That wisdom, that knowledge is available to each of us. It is our Place.