Curve Balls – Vayeitzei
After receiving two blessings from his father Yitzchak, the material and the spiritual, Yaakov is forced to leave his home in Eretz Yisrael and flee to chutz la’aretz, to Charan, to escape his vengeful brother Eisav.
As Yaakov leaves Eretz Yisrael, HKB”H appears to him. It is interesting that HKB”H appears to the Avot and gives them the Divine promises only when they are “leaving” from somewhere. With Avraham, it was after he left the comfort of his home to go save Lot. ויוצא אותו החוצה ויאמר הבט נא השמימה וספר הכוכבים (בראשית טו,ה) followed by brit bein habetarim. With Yitzchak, it was when he had to leave the comfort of his home because of a famine וילך יצחק אל אבימלך מלך פלשתים גררה (בראשית כו,א), followed by Hashem reiterating to him the promise of Avraham his father. In Yaakov’s case it was when he left the comfort of his home to go to Charan. ויצא יעקב מבאר שבע וילך חרנה (שם כח, יא). The fact that one needs to step out of their “comfort zone” in order to merit Divine revelation is a deep and profound concept, but not the subject of this shiur.
Yaakov has a dream, a vision - of a ladder stretching from the earth to the heavens, with angels ascending and descending. Chazal say that HKB”H revealed to Yaakov the three Batei Mikdash, the churbanot, the galuyot and the geulah. Hashem promises Yaakov והנה אנכי עמך ושמרתיך בכל אשר תלך וכו' (שם כח,טו) that He will watch over Yaakov in everything he does and will safely return him to Eretz Yisrael.
Yaakov enters Charan and heads for the home of Lavan his uncle. It is here that he first sets eyes on Rachel (aged 5). Chazal say that from this meeting to the next time Yaakov and Rachel actually see each other, 14 years will pass. Yaakov first saw Rachel at the well and the next time he saw her was at their (real) wedding 14 years later. At this first encounter Yaakov falls in love with Rachel and resolves to marry her. He gives her signs so that he will be able to recognize her the next time they meet. According to the mefarshim Yaakov taught Rachel hilchot hafrashat challah, nida and hadlakat neirot (the Sefardi custom of the Hina חִנָה is based on these simanim, the rashei teivot of חנה are חלה, נידה, הדלקת הנר).
Yaakov then encounters Lavan and, knowing Lavan is a scoundrel, is very specific in his contract with him אעבדך שבע שנים ברחל – בתך - הקטנה (שם, כט,יח), I will work for you for seven years in return for the hand in marriage of Rachel (and if Lavan may have tried to slip him another Rachel), your daughter (and if Lavan tried to change Leah’s name to Rachel in her teudat zehut and marry off Leah instead), your youngest daughter. Yaakov thought there was no way to weasel out of such an ironclad contract, but he didn’t know who he was dealing with.
Yaakov is not much of a negotiator, is he? Straight off he offers “seven years”! Why didn’t he rather say “How many years do you want me to work for Rachel”? and if Lavan said “Three”, try to bargain him down to at most two. Yaakov dearly loved Rachel surely he wanted to marry her as soon as possible?
Our story continues. Yaakov works for seven years and so intense was his love for Rachel, they passed in the “blink of an eye”. The big day arrives. Lavan (as expected) is planning to deceive Yaakov and marry off Leah instead, but he cannot do it by himself, he needs his neighbors to play along or he will not succeed. So he goes to them and says “Before Yaakov arrived we had a drought (that was why there was a huge rock over the well, because the water was rationed and monitored). Since Yaakov has been here, there has been an abundance of water. If he marries Rachel, he is going to leave straight after the sheva brachot and the well will dry up again. Help me to keep him here another seven years”. The entire village is complicit in the deception. They organize a huge wedding reception and as the band plays “Here comes the bride ……” the lights go out! “What happened to the electricity?” asks Yaakov. “This is our custom in Charan, we are very modest here and therefore conduct our weddings in the dark” they reply.
OK, no problem, Yaakov has the secret simanim he made with Rachel, no way anything can go wrong! Finally they are in the cheder yichud and Yaakov, who hasn’t seen Rachel for seven years, asks for the simanim and Leah gives them to him, challah, nidah and hadlakat neirot. Leah knows the simanim because Rachel revealed them to her. Why would Rachel do that, what did she stand to gain from it? Anyway, Yaakov wakes up the following morning and lo and behold …. it is Leah! Yaakov confronts Lavan “How could you cheat me?” Lavan brushes him off and manages to swindle an additional seven years of Yaakov’s labor in return for Rachel’s hand in marriage.
This is only time in Yaakov’s entire stay with him that Lavan successfully managed to cheat Yaakov. I was not for lack of trying though, as Yaakov later accuses Lavan – ותחלף את משכורתי עשרת מונים (שם לא, מא), Lavan repeatedly tried to swindle him. Each time however Yaakov, with Hashem’s help, prospered, despite Lavan’s malfeasance. The big question is – this is Yaakov Avinu we are talking about, with nevuah and ruach hakodesh. How is it possible that he could be caught out like this? An even bigger question is – Hashem promised to look after Yaakov when he left Eretz Yisrael. What about that promise? How could Hashem allow Lavan to deceive Yaakov in this way?
In order to answer these questions, we need to return to an earlier time, Adam and Chava in Gan Eden.
If you think Lavan was an archvillain swindler, he had nothing on the nachash. The nachash (samech mem) was the “inventor” of swindling, using wiles and deception to trick Chava into eating from eitz hada’at. Chava in turn deceived Adam to also sin, with catastrophic consequences for mankind.
Chazal say that the three Avot, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov were each responsible for repairing a facet of the sin of Adam Harishon. But it was not only the Avot, it was the Imahot as well - repairing the sin of Chava. We see an example of this in last week’s parsha (see my shiur on Toldot) when Rivka tries to get Yitzchak to give Yaakov the material blessing.
Chava’s sin was being complicit in the nachash’s deception, so her tikkun for all time would forever involve some kind of “deception”. HKB”H’s punishment for the nachash is that he too would be deceived, throughout history, by women - midda kenegged midda – the way he deceived Chava.
The nachash always has his vigilant eye on the men, expecting his nemisis to come from them, which it ultimately will - והיה בית יעקב אש ובית יוסף להבה ובית עשו לקש (עובדיה א, יח) however, although men will be the instruments of the nachash’s eventual destruction, everything will first be facilitated by women. The women are the curve ball - they fly under the nachash’s radar and blindside him. When he eventually realizes what is happening, it is already too late. More incredulously, the men involved are initially oblivious to what is about to happen, through the women, because Hashem doesn’t tell them ahead of time, they only discover it and recognize it in retrospect.
There are numerous examples of this. Avraham has two sons, Yishmael and Yitzchak – he loves Yishmael but is blinded by his love. Sarah is the unexpected curve ball causing Yishmael to be banished (with much resistance from Avraham), ensuring Yitzchak’s future. The daughters of Lot deceive their father and sleep with him, thus laying the foundation for Mashiach ben David. Yitzchak is blinded by his love for his firstborn Eisav, but it is Rivka, who grew up in a home of degenerates (completely under the radar), that orchestrates and ensures Yaakov’s future. We have the episode with Yehuda and Tamar deceiving him with his seal and staff, ensuring the foundations for the future monarchy of Beit David. Bitya, the daughter of Pharaoh (you cannot get more “curve ball” than that) saving Moshe from the Nile, deceiving her father and raising him in the palace. Rut, the granddaughter of Balak (nobody was expecting anything from there), converts and becomes great grandmother of David Hamelech. Batsheva, the “victim” of a “sin” of our greatest king, ends up being the mother of Shlomo Hamelech who built the Beit Hamikdash, after using a “deception” together with Natan Hanavi to get David to recognize Shlomo as king. These are but a few of the many examples.
The curve ball always comes from the least expected place, it involves women, some kind of deception and the men are always the last to know!
Such is also the case in our parsha.
All the Avot had nevuah and knew that Am Yisrael was eventually going to emanate from them. The future Am Yisrael would be a combination of the spiritual and the material - Yissachar and Zevulun - one studying Torah and the other dealing with parnasa, Levi and Yehuda – kohanim serving in the Beit Hamikdash and kings ruling the country.
Avraham had two sons, Yishmael and Yitzchak and mistakenly thought that they were the model, until Sarah put things back on track. Yitzchak had Yaakov and Eisav and history repeated itself, with Rivka this time intervening. Yaakov was all set to repeat the mistake of his fathers. He would marry Rachel and have two sons – Yosef the parnas and the Mashiach (material) and Binyamin, the Beit Hamikdash (spiritual - the Mikdash is in nachalat Binyamin) and the monarchy (Shaul is descended from Binyamin). But HKB”H had other plans, plans for not two shvatim, but twelve!
As in all the other cases, the implementation of this “tikkun” involved women and some kind of “deception”.
Back to our parsha.
Yaakov meets Rachel, aged 5. He offers to work for Lavan for seven years, not because he is a bad negotiator, but because he wants Rachel to reach childbearing age (12) before he marries her (why Yitzchak married Rivka aged 3 is the subject of another shiur)..
Rachel and Leah know they both have a part to play in the foundation of Am Yisrael. If Yaakov were to marry Rachel first, there would never be a Moshe Rabeinu, Aharon Hakohen or David Hamelech (all descended from Leah), because Yaakov would have married Rachel and left, exactly as Lavan threatened his neighbors with. His descendants would then have been Mashiach ben Yosef and Shaul Hamelech (from Binyamin). This was not HKB”H’s plan, there were pieces missing.
It was not a case of HKB”H not looking out for Yaakov that Lavan managed to deceive him with Leah. It wasn’t Lavan’s deception at all, it was HKB”H’s deception - using the women – midda kenegged midda against the nachash! Just like in last week’s parsha, it wasn’t Yaakov deceiving Yitzchak - it was HKB”H deceiving Eisav, with Rivka’s help. Same here, it wasn’t Lavan deceiving Yaakov, but HKB”H deceiving Lavan, with Rachel and Leah’s help. As we read in the Pesach haggadah לבן הארמי .... בקש לעקור את הכל. Lavan didn’t merely want to financially cheat Yaakov. He was an instrument of the nachash who was trying to totally destroy Am Yisrael, as the nachash had tried many times before.
Yaakov had given Rachel the simanim. Rachel revealed them to Leah. Some mefarshim say she had mercy on her sister and didn’t want her to be publicly shamed. But it is much deeper than that. There was complicity here between Rachel and Leah because they were instruments of HKB”H in laying the foundations for Am Yisrael, the twelve tribes and being metaken the sin of Chava.
Of course Yaakov was the last to find out, as we said HKB”H kept the men in the “dark” (literally) lest they “interfere” with the plan. The men only recognize and respect the “deception” of the women in retrospect. In last week’s parsha Yitzchak finally admitted his error to Rivka. Yaakov is buried together with Leah in Me’arat Hamachpeila. Do you think he ultimately loved Leah? It took a while. Initially Yaakov hated Leah for the “deception” and davka because of this HKB”H allowed her to conceive first. Within 7 years all the shvatim were born (except Binyamin, who was on the way). At that point Yaakov stopped hating Leah - when he finally understood Hashem’s plan in retrospect.
This was the only fast one “Lavan” succeeded in pulling on Yaakov, because it wasn’t Lavan at all, it was HKB”H – pulling a fast one on Lavan. Lavan who was trying to destroy Am Yisrael, became an unwitting accomplice in their inception, just like Eisav, Pharaoh, Balak and others. If Lavan had allowed Yaakov to marry Rachel first as planned, Am Yisrael would probably never have emanated from Yaakov.
When Yaakov enters Charan after leaving Eretz Yisrael, he prophetically vows -
פרק כח, כ. וַיִּדַּר יַעֲקֹב נֶדֶר לֵאמֹר אִם יִהְיֶה אֱלֹהִים עִמָּדִי וּשְׁמָרַנִי בַּדֶּרֶךְ הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי הוֹלֵךְ לֶחֶם לֶאֱכֹל וּבֶגֶד לִלְבֹּשׁ. כא. וְשַׁבְתִּי בְשָׁלוֹם אֶל בֵּית אָבִי וְהָיָה יְהוָה לִי לֵאלֹהִים. כב. וְהָאֶבֶן הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר שַׂמְתִּי מַצֵּבָה יִהְיֶה בֵּית אֱלֹהִים וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר תִּתֶּן לִי עַשֵּׂר אֲעַשְּׂרֶנּוּ לָךְ.
If Hashem will be with me and guard me on my way and give me Lechem Hapanim and Bigdei Kehuna (material and spiritual) then I will return in peace to Eretz Yisrael and Hashem will be my G-d. And this stone that I have laid as a monument will become a Beit Hamikdash where I will bring ma’asrot.
Ma’aseh Avot Siman Labanim – what appear on the surface to be simple “children’s stories” in Sefer Breishit, are nothing of the sort. Everything the Avot did was for one purpose and one purpose alone – to lay the foundations for Am Yisrael to be metaken the sin of Adam and Chava.
Yaakov, at the beginning of his journey had a “general” picture of what was to be, and it actually did come to be as he prophesized (including the “peace” part in the time of Shlomo Hamelech), but not exactly how he envisioned. Perhaps the only way that it could actually happen at all is - because Hashem repeatedly deceives the nachash and throws him curve balls, blindsiding him and getting help from the tzadikkot in doing so, being metaken the sin of Chava and punishing the nachash midda kenegged midda.
If this is the way things have always been, it is probably a safe bet that the Mashiach is also going to be a “curve ball”, involving women and coming from a direction that we least expect – bimheira beyameinu amen!
Shabbat Shalom
Eliezer Meir Saidel
Showbread Institute
www.showbreadinstitute.com
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