PARSHA61 -08: Parashat Vayishlach

From:          "Yeshivat Har Etzion's Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash"
To:            yhe-parsha@vbm-torah.org
Subject:       PARSHA61 -08: Parashat Vayishlach

                     YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
        ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH (VBM)
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                     PARASHAT VAYISHLACH

                           Beit-El
                      By Rav Ezra Bick


     Parashat   VaYishlach is dominated by two dramatic
confrontations of Yaacov, once with Eisav (the person and
the angel) and once with Shechem (the person and the city).
I would, however, like to discuss a short incident, which
follows the two major ones, the return of Yaacov to Beit-El.
This takes place basically "on the road," as Yaacov travels
from Shechem, and continues onward towards Efrata (Beit
Lechem) (35,16) and Migdal Eider (35,21), finally arriving
"home" at Chevron (27). While it is true that Yaacov builds
both a matzeiva and an altar there, and receives a divine
vision   and promise, we have gotten so used to   God
reiterating the promise of the Land to the avot that we are
likely to skip over this section without proper attention. I
propose that we stop and spend some more time at this
"roadstop."

     After the conclusion of the Dina episode in Shechem,
God tells Yaacov to go up to Beit-El and build there an
altar "to the God who appeared to you when you were fleeing
before Eisav your brother" (35,1). Yaacov, after first
instructing his household to get rid of all idolatrous
articles, which they might have, travels to Beit-El and
builds the altar (5-7). Subsequently, God appears to Yaacov
(9-13) and then he raises a matzeiva (14), and, apparently,
immediately departs, continuing his journey south in the
direction of Chevron (16).

                             A.
A few questions and points to consider on the first half
of this story (1-8):

1.Why does Yaacov decide to clean out his house from
idolatry now?
2.God tells Yaacov to "rise and go up to Beit-El" (1).
Yaacov calls on his family to "rise and go up to Beit-El"
(3). What is the meaning of the striking phrase "rise and
go up?"
3.Both God and Yaacov call his destination "Beit-El."
Nonetheless, when he gets there, the Torah    states,
"Yaacov came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan,
which is Beit-El" (6). Why are we told now that the city
is named Luz?
4.And, in the same verse, what is the significance of the
phrase "which is in the land of Canaan?" If this were
Yaacov's first stop in Canaan, this would make sense, but
since Yaacov has already been in Canaan since he arrived
at Shechem, it is very strange to be identifying sites
within Canaan as "in the land of Canaan." In fact, this
appellation appears only when Yaacov arrived at Shechem,
his first stop (33,18) and here, but not at any of
Yaacov's other stops on his way south.
5.Yaacov, in Shechem, speaks to "his house and all who are
with him" and suggests travelling to Beit-El. At Beit-El,
we find "Yaacov arrived... he and all the people (`am')
who   are   with him." Somewhere along the way,   his
"household" has become his people ("am" - in the sense of
"a people, a nation" and not as the plural of person).
6.Devora, the nursemaid of Rivka, dies and is buried at
Beit-El. What was she doing there, and what does this
have to do with the story?
7.Yaacov had sworn, when he awoke from the dream in Beit-El
when he was fleeing Eisav, that the matzeiva that he had
erected then would become "a house of God." In fact, he
will, soon, erect a matzeiva in Beit-El and offer a
libation on it. If the purpose of his journey now is to
fulfill the vow, as most commentators claim, why does God
tell him to build an altar? Why is that the first thing
he does, and only after the subsequent vision of God does
he re-erect the matzeiva?

                             B.
     Yaacov arrives in Eretz Yisrael twice. Once when he
comes to Shechem - "Yaacov came whole to the city Shechem,
which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan
Aram, and he camped opposite the city" (33,18), and once
when he comes to Beit-El - "Yaacov came to Luz, which is in
the land of Canaan, which is Beit-El" (35,6). The expression
"which is in the land of Canaan" is a clear indication that
this is Yaacov's point of arrival in a new land. This is
confirmed by the expression (in the first case), "when he
came from Padan Aram." Yaacov entered Shechem WHEN HE
CAME
FROM ARAM. Now when Yaacov arrives in Beit-El we do not have
this additional phrase, but, just a few verses later, we
find, "God appeared to Yaacov again, WHEN HE CAME FROM
PADAN
ARAM, and blessed him" (9). Since we know that this took
place in Beit-El - "Yaacov called the name of the place
where God spoke to him Beit-El" (15) - it turns out that
this second confirmation that Beit-El is an arrival point is
confirmed.

     This point is, I think, greatly emphasized by the name-
switch of Beit-El in the story. God tells Yaacov to go to
Beit-El. Yaacov tells his family that they are going to Beit-
El. Yet, when they finally get there, we are told that
Yaacov has arrived in Luz - which is Beit-El. In other
words, the goal is clearly Beit-El, a location saturated
with kedusha, with the name that Yaacov gave it   to
commemorate his meeting with God and his vision of the gate
of heaven. However, until Yaacov gets there, the place is
actually the Canaanite city of Luz. The Torah has to tell us
that this place is the same place called Beit-El beforehand;
hence the phrase "Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, which
is Beit-El." The conclusion is an editorial comment, for
those who forgot that Luz is the same place as Beit-El and
therefore are likely to be confused. But the uncommented
narrative reads, "Yaacov came to Luz in the land of Canaan."
In other words, before this point, Yaacov is not in the
environment we associate with Eretz Yisrael, a land of
holiness, a land where there is a place which is "the house
of God and the gate of heaven." Despite the geographical
border of Canaan, which Yaacov has crossed some time earlier
on his way to Shechem, Yaacov has not actually returned yet
to the land of his fathers. Only after Yaacov builds the
altar does the narrative refer to the place as Beit-El.

     The reason is that, at this point in the Biblical
narrative, at least as concerns Yaacov, the Land of Israel
is a reflection of the life of Yaacov. Israel is the land
where the forefathers carry out the Divine design of
building the Jewish nation. Yaacov has been "out   on
vacation" from that project for all the years that he has
been in Lavan's house. He has to re-inaugurate his career
and his status as an "av," and only from that point on will
he be back on the course, and, as a corollary result, back
in Eretz Yisrael.

     The place for this inaugural is Beit-El. The reason is
spelled out in the command of God: "Make an altar there to
the God who appeared to you when you fled before Eisav your
brother." Beit-El was the place that Yaacov LEFT Eretz
Yisrael. (The midrash which states that from Beit-El Yaacov
proceeded directly to Aram with "kefitzat haderekh," a
miraculous warp of space, makes this true literally). The
vision in the beginning of Vayeitze is Yaacov's farewell to
Israel, to the land of holiness and the presence of God. The
content of God's message there is that he will protect
Yaacov and be with him in exile and return him home. In
other words, Yaacov "dropped out" there, and that is the
place that he returns to his destiny.

     Yaacov understands this, and therefore cleanses his
family from the dust of idolatry that might have come with
them from Aram. Habits that were appropriate in Aram,
leniencies that were acceptable, must be done away with
before commencing the great push onward in Jewish history.
It is not a question here of avoiding sin. The emphasis is,
as Yaacov states, "and purify yourselves and change your
clothes." Yaacov is declaring a new beginning. Both God and
Yaacov therefore call this journey "rising and going up."
The reference, of course, is not merely to the altitude of
Beit-El. "Rise up" means to raise oneself, to stir and
gather one's powers, to ascend spiritually. God is telling
Yaacov to make aliya. The altar that he commands Yaacov to
build there is not the fulfillment of Yaacov's vow but
analtar of consecration, reminiscent of the altar that
Avraham built when he entered the land of Israel (12,7 - in
Avraham's case it was in Shechem!, and later in Beit-El;
12,8).

     There is one further difference between Yaacov before
Beit-El and after. By accepting his destiny, by    re-
inaugurating his career as an "av" - and remember, Yaacov is
the final av, the one who is followed by a nation and not
individuals - Yaacov transforms his family from a "house"
(bayit) into a "people" (am). In Aram he was the father of a
family, albeit a large one. Once we see him as an av in
Eretz Yisrael, he is the leader of a people. By the time he
gets to Beit-El, he has become "Yaacov and the people who
are with him" (v. 6).

     I have answered all the questions I raised, except that
about Devora, Rivka's nursemaid. I am not sure about this,
but I suspect that she represents the world of Aram. I
pointed out last week that Yaacov divorces himself from Aram
at Galeid. Devora is the last remnant of that world. As a
nursemaid, she signifies the nurturing that Rivka received
in   her   father's house. That connection is now   cut
completely; that chapter in Yaacov's life closed. Yaacov is
completely a man of Israel and Eretz Yisrael.

                             C.
     The second part of our story begins when God appears to
Yaacov and blesses him, changing his name. God then says:

     I am Kel Shakkai, be fruitful and multiply; a nation
     and a community of nations will come from you, and
     kings will come out of your loins.
     And the land which I gave to Avraham and to Yitzchak
     shall I give to you, and to your seed after you shall I
     give the land (35,11-12).

      Does this blessing sound familiar? It is practically
word-for-word the blessing which Yitzchak gave Yaacov when
he left to flee to Aram, even to the name of God:

     And Kel Shakkai shall bless you, and make you fruitful
     and multiply you, and you shall be a community of
     nations.
     And He shall give you the blessing of Avraham, to you
     and your seed with you, to inherit the land you
     inhabit, which God gave to Avraham (28,3-4).

      It is as though the twenty years that Yaacov spent in
Aram (and fourteen more, according to Chazal, that he spent
in the yeshiva of Shem and Ever) are merely a dream. God
picks up EXACTLY where the story left off when Yaacov left.
The birkat Avraham, Yaacov's career as an av, has been in
suspended animation, frozen in time. Yaacov is now returning
to the point where he left, both geographically (Beit-El),
and spiritually. Yaacov's years in Aram should be placed in
parentheses.

      In fact, that is what Yaacov does. He places those
years within parentheses, a matzeiva on each end. When he
left for Aram he raised a matzeiva and prayed for protection
on his journey out of Eretz Yisrael, in other words, on his
exit from national history. When he returned, when he
realized that he had completely returned "from Padan Aram,"
had reached "the land of Canaan," and had resumed his role
as forefather, where not children but "nations and community
of nations will come from him," he then erected another
matzeiva, in the same place, at the same point, thereby
bracketing the years of personal development and drawing the
straight line from his blessing at the hands of his father
so many years before and the continuation of the role
implicit in those blessings now. The two matzeivot are
brackets   around the years that Yaacov's    career   was
suspended, the years that he was out of Eretz Yisrael.

      God is giving Yaacov a new name, and granting him the
exact same blessing that Yitzchak had given him years
earlier. The blessing is the continuation of the blessing of
Avraham (and indeed is quite similar to God's blessing to
Avraham when He changed Avram's name - 17,5-6 - "I shall
multiply you exceedingly and make nations of you; and kings
will come out of you"). The entire episode is based on the
idea that this point, Beit-El, the place where Yaacov took
his leave of Eretz Yisrael, is the place where he can return
to his role as an av. This is on the one hand the place
which serves as the entry-point to Eretz Yisrael for Yaacov,
when we consider him in his historical role (rather than as
an individual) - that is what we saw in the first half of
the story - and, on the other hand, the place where God
confirms his new identity, as Yisrael, father of a nation.
That this revelation of God is not connected to Yaacov's
circumstances after the incident in Shechem, but to his
return from Aram to Eretz Yisrael is quite explicit in the
description the Torah gives. "God appeared to Yaacov AGAIN
when he came from Padan Aram, and blessed him" (35,9). This
revelation is dated "when Yaacov comes from Padan Aram,"
although we know he has been in Shechem for some time. But
even more explicit - God is appearing to Yaacov AGAIN - a
clear reference to the dream of the ladder. This revelation
continues that one.

      This explains a curious phrase that repeats itself
three times at the end of our story. -

     God ascended from him, at the PLACE HE SPOKE WITH HIM.
     And Yaacov erected a monument, AT THE PLACE HE
SPOKE
     WITH HIM....
     Yaacov called the place WHERE GOD SPOKE TO HIM
THERE
     Beit-El.
     (35,13-15)

     Rashi (13 - in printed Chumashim the comment appears on
v.14, but it should be on v.13) comments "I do not know what
this is teaching us." I would like to suggest that the
emphasized phrase does not refer to the place where God
spoke to him NOW, but to where He spoke to him 35 years
before, on the night of the dream of the ladder. The first
verse states that God ascended from the spot where He had
spoken before; in other words, this now is the conclusion of
that prior revelation. Everything that took place in the
while can be skipped, or blocked out. Similarly, Yaacov
erects the new monument not in the spot where God spoke now,
to commemorate a special occasion, but in the spot that God
spoke THEN, as a parallel to the previous monument. The name
Beit-El, we already know, refers to the first revelation,
which has been continued now as though there were no
interruption, and that is why Yaacov reconfirms the name of
the place. The whole purpose of the story is to bring us,
literally, to the point where we left off at the beginning
of Parashat Toldot. We are back at "the place He spoke to
him."

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