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Jacob’s Dream-Episode72

“(Jacob) came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night . . . . Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head (and lay down in that place).” (Gen 28:11).

Rashi explained that the stones began to argue with one another (each seeking to serve as Jacob’s pillow) and the Blessed Holy One immediately made of them a single stone, and hence “Jacob took the stone . . .” (Gen 28:18). [Two rabbinic texts,73 providing different backgrounds, explained that the twelve stones were merged into a single stone.]

But one might interpret Rashi’s words as intimating a deeper thought. . . .

Our holy Torah comes to teach us the ways of the worship of God as we are to praise Him through Torah (study) and prayer. And in doing so, it is important not to corporealize any word or letter of the Torah or prayer, thinking that these are understandable simply according to their surface-meaning.

Rather, when one is standing in prayer, it is necessary to remember that the very existence and life-energy of thousands upon thousands of worlds depend upon the holiness of the letters and upon every word and letter and even upon a small dot in the Torah-text. This is alluded in the saying of our blessed Sages that God “is the place (makom) of the world,”74 [rather than the world being God’s place; the comment in the Midrash refers to Ps 90:1, “O Lord, You have been our dwelling-place (maʿon) in every generation,” as a prooftext] and that the Torah is entirely one with the Blessed Holy One. Failing to realize this, one might corporealize his prayer, which in that case is not a prayer of tzaddikim. For the core principle of prayer lies in one’s attaching himself to the spirituality of the letters which can awaken higher realms.

“He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky . . . . Jacob awoke from his sleep (mi-sheinato), and he said, ‘Surely the Lord is present in this place (and I did not know it). Shaken, he said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven” (Gen 28:12–17).

The Midrash strangely explained that Jacob awoke from his study (mi-mishnato).75

The Midrash would seem, however, to suggest that the core and goal of human prayer is the fullness of perfection in the worship of the Blessed One as a person grasps God’s blessed Divinity through Torah-study and prayer. This cannot be achieved by one without the other, because “An unlearned person (ʿam haʾaretz) cannot be devout,”76 and through Torah-study alone one cannot cultivate his soul to attain a state of wholeness, as our Sages said, “Anyone who says he has nothing but Torah does not even have Torah.”77 [Deeds are also necessary.]

Certainly through engaging in Torah for its own sake, one comes to a pronounced state of holiness and attaches himself, in the three basic levels of the soul, nefesh, ru’aḥ and n’shamah, to the letters of the Torah. However, even so he cannot fully attain the quality of awe and love and thirst and longing for serving God and cannot attain a true sense of Divinity other than through praying with devotion and enthusiasm, as is said in all the holy books.

Our Sages explained Jacob’s “coming upon a certain place” as his instituting the evening prayer (ʿaravit/maʿariv).78 Until then he did not know the greatness of prayer. While we find that Jacob had previously sought refuge in the Academy of Shem and Ever where he studied Torah,79 and so he certainly came to know the mystery of prayer, nevertheless he did not actually experience a revelation of Divinity until that moment when he truly grasped the mystic significance of prayer.

And this is the interpretation offered in the Midrash: “Jacob awoke from his sleep”—from his Torah-study. Through this prayer he grasped that he had not attained what he did through Torah alone. And he said, “Surely the Lord is present in this place,” indicating that through this prayer he was able more completely to understand how God revealed Himself through his study, “And I did not know” this secret. “This is none other than the abode of God”—meaning that precisely through prayer in a state of inner awakening and enthusiasm, one is able to experience awe of God’s exulted state. . . . For prayer is of the nature of the gate of heaven, the attainment of a sense of Divinity and awe of God.

Comment: Like other Hasidic teachers, Kolonymus Kalman grasped episodes from the Torah essentially not as narrative, but rather as a code, as exercises in need of deciphering. The end-product focuses not upon Jacob and his particular happenings and situation but is nothing less than a vision of being itself. And accordingly, the story revolving around Jacob’s famous dream is deciphered as a statement of a deeper truth.

The motif of the stones fusing together to comprise a single stone, based upon midrashic readings of that episode, invited the preacher to ponder the nature of oneness. Going beyond the midrashic motif of twelve stones, symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel which emerged through Jacob’s own twelve sons and their becoming a single people, the homily directed his attention to the theme of the innerness of the very words and letters of the Torah itself which is understood, in some more ultimate sense, as a manifestation of the Divine. In accord with that sense, one’s understanding of the Torah-text must go beyond the level of its simpler meaning.

The discourse on Jacob’s dream-episode goes on to echo rabbinic statements concerning the role of deeds that must accompany Torah-study. Study itself, unaccompanied by deeds, is insufficient.80 In the Kraków master’s homily, however, the basic contrast is not one between study and deeds, but rather between study and prayer. Building upon a rabbinic tradition that Jacob had studied in a prototypical academy, the Academy of Shem and Ever, the homily attributes to Jacob’s dream a realization on his part that study alone is insufficient without a devotional dimension expressed in prayer (t’filah). The preacher re-carved the account of Jacob’s dream to voice a critique of a total and exclusive emphasis upon study to the exclusion of any real emphasis upon that devotional dimension.

The Letters within All That Exists81

“And the mound was called Mitzpah, because Laban said, ‘May the Lord watch between you and me when we are out of sight of one another.’” (Gen 31:49)

On the level of its plain meaning, this verse is not understandable. But we might interpret it in terms of what it intimates, namely that while it is impossible to attain a sense of the essence of the blessed Creator, one can obtain a sense of God’s existence on the basis of His actions. The Will of the Emanator was that His existence might so be revealed, allowing His creations to attain a sense of His Divinity, and to this end the worlds evolved, one world from another, continuing even to the depths of the earth. And His Divinity is present within them, for without that presence the world could not exist, as is said in Scripture, “There is nothing but You,” [actually words from the liturgy for Shabbat morning following the call-to-prayer (Borkhu), before the piyyut, ʾEl ʾAdon; the phrase in the liturgy echoes Isa 45:6 and 14, also Deut 4:35] as without God no created being or object could exist. Created things have existence solely through the Light of Divinity that is present within them.

And all created beings together serve as a garment for the innerness of God’s Divinity present within them and giving them life. Through the actions of created things, of humans and beasts and animals and all other things having life-energy (ḥiyyut), we can conclude that the Divine is present within all that exists, bestowing upon all of them life and being. And in this way we grasp God’s blessed Divinity.

It follows that all physical bodies serve as garments for the light of God’s Divinity that dwells within them. And similarly in all the higher worlds, the spirituality of every world is like a garment of the particular level of being just above it, ʿAsiyah to Y’tzirah, and Y’tzirah to B’riʾah [among the four levels of existence in the kabbalistic world-picture] and similarly until we come to the blessed ʾEin Sof (the Divine in its totally infinite sense). The difference is simply that in the higher realms, the garments are emphatically thinner and so they differ from the external character of those worlds in which physical bodies comprise the garments of the Light of divine-energy which radiates them, making for a contrast between what is physical and spiritual in character. In the higher spheres even the garments serve as souls for the next lower world, as is clarified in the holy books and alluded in the Gemara.

We learn that the blessed Holy One created the world by cladding Himself in light,82 as it is said, “Wrapped in a robe of light, You spread the heavens like a tent cloth” (Ps 104:2). The higher garments are actually lights, and what are the lights?—letters of the Torah, as our Sages said in Bʾreiʾshit rabbah, “With the Torah the blessed Holy One created the world.”83 [This theme was developed further in the Zohar, I, 5a.] God clad Himself in the letters and their innerness and created everything, both external reality and its innerness, the Light of the letters which gives life and existence to all its aspects.

It follows from our words that there is absolutely nothing in the world, even in the lowest point in this lower stratum, in which the holiness of God’s blessed Divinity is not present as its innerness, bestowing being to it. And similarly this is true of the higher worlds; each world is a garment of the inner light of the next higher world which gives light and being to it. And this is the core aspect of the Israelites’ service (ʿavodah) in Torah and prayer and in fulfilling the mitzvot: to purify even the material character and to know that in every material entity there is something of a spiritual nature within it, giving it existence.

It is necessary to elevate everything to its Root, the light of God’s blessed holiness, the source of life and being of all that is. Through this means, one may realize the reality of God’s Divinity which gives being to everything, realizing that this light too is merely a garment of the higher worlds, and extending on and on as far as the ultimate level, the blessed Infinite One, the ʾEin-sof.

And in this way one can attain deep attachment and understanding. The very goal of creation itself was that through the garments we might attain a sense of the inner Light. That is God’s great delight, and this revelation and realization can come about only through a purification of what is external in character.

But this does not occur with the wicked who perceive only the external reality, failing to consider that beyond it is that innerness of the Light which gives being to all that is. Consequently, they are like dead bodies devoid of real life, and it seems to them that the world functions in its own particularly materialistic manner. It is this that distinguishes the people, Israel, a people brought close to God, from the nations and that distinguishes the righteous from the wicked.

And these verses intimate this view: the mound (mitzpah) comes from the word malbush (garment), as “and he overlaid it” (as Bezalel “overlaid the incense ark with pure gold,” Exod 37:26). In all the worlds created by divine Utterance, the innerness is clad within what is external.

“The Lord will watch between me and you” (Laban’s statement concerning the mound, Gen 31:49)—this is the screen separating us, in that Jacob and his sons believed and pondered that even within every material thing is the spiritual light that gives it being. In this way they attach themselves to the innerness of everything and purify everything to draw it close to its Root, the inner Light that is within it.

Not so the wicked son [mentioned in the Haggadah of Pesaḥ, the text read and discussed at the Seder, which refers to four sons, each of a different character or inclination, and suggests how the head of the family should respond to a question asked, or not asked, by each one of them] and his faction who consider only what is external in nature and hence are unable to understand the level of Jacob who cleaves to the holiness of God’s blessed Divinity. And as a consequence, one person becomes hidden from the sight of his fellow [in the sense that the one is unable to understand the mind of the other].

Comment: The above passage, commenting upon a final meeting of Jacob and Laban some two decades after the earlier dream-episode, revolves around the word, mitzpah, a mound which Laban built in order to separate his household from that of Jacob, who had married his two daughters. That word, as indicated in the verse, would mean “to look over, watch,” the mound serving as a look-out point. But the homilist read the word, mitzpah as meaning “to overlay, to cover over,” hence serving as an intimation concerning the true nature of all physical reality: the physical, empirical world in its totality is a garment placed over—covering, overlaying—the deeper reality, which is the Divine.

Spelling out this thought in terms of a kabbalistic conception of many worlds or levels of being, the preacher stated perhaps the core Hasidic conception of the cosmos as just such a garment which draws its very existence from what it covers and conceals, namely the presence of the Divine which is the innerness of all that exists. This view neither negates nor ignores physical, external reality, but instead conveys the need to purify and lift up that external reality to the level of its own true innerness.

The mound in this passage was constructed to separate Laban and Jacob, and that note of separation in the homily is then read as a separation between the people of Israel and the other nations of the world in terms of a basic contrast between each population’s consciousness and conception of existence. In that sense, it reflects attitudes that predate any sense of mutual understanding and appreciation among different religious traditions and any sense of what they might share.

72. Maʾor va-shemesh, I, 21ab.

73. b. Ḥul. 91b, and Midr. Gen 68:11.

74. Midr. Gen 68:9.

75. Midr. Gen 69:7.

76. m. ʾAbot 2:6.

77. b. Yebam. 109b.

78. b. Ber. 26b, quoted in Rashi’s comment on Gen 28:11.

79. Midr. Gen 63:10; 68:11, also b. Mak. 23b.

80. m.ʾAbot 1:17.

81. Maʾor va-shemesh, 23b.

82. Midr. Gen 3:4.

83. Midr. Gen 1:1, referring to Prov 8:30, and m.ʾAbot 3:14.