Vayetzei Sermon
In this week’s portion Jacob journeys into the desert
wilderness on his own and has a dream of a ladder reaching up to heaven with
angels going up and down on it. It is an
extraordinary passage. He awakens from
the dream and exclaims, “Surely the Lord is present in this place and I did not
know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the
abode of God, and the gateway to heaven.” (Genesis 28)
As I reflect on his experience two things come to
light. #1. He ventured on this journey without his
parents. Even his overprotective mother
Rebekah sent him on this journey on his own.
And #2. He wandered by himself.
The first point is obvious.
We have to let our children go to experience on their own, to succeed
and fail on their own. Too often parents
do things for children that they should do for themselves. Parents write their children’s bar/bat
mitzvah speeches and even their college papers.
How can you make it in the world if your parents do all of the hard
work? Our children must learn to make it
through the world on their own!
On the second point I wish to dwell in more detail. This point runs counter to Judaism’s greatest
teaching. Judaism teaches that we are at
our best when we are with others. We
reach greater heights when we are in community.
The group lifts us to do better, to be better versions of our individual
selves.
Yet here we see Jacob reaching unimaginable heights when on
his own. He is alone in the desert
wilderness by himself. He is alone with his
thoughts.
It occurs to me that we do not allow ourselves to truly be
alone. We are so plugged in that we do
not sit quietly and think. We do not
walk the streets or through nature unplugged.
Recently there was a Shabbat unplugged campaign. It suggested that we should shun electronic
devices on Shabbat. Obviously they are
forbidden according to Jewish tradition.
But the reason we might do away with these devices is not so much
because of the traditional prohibition but so that we can learn again to be
alone.
Our children especially need constant electronic
stimulation. They move from DVD players
to computers to iPhones. They constantly
text or Facebook. Can they still be
alone with themselves and their thoughts?
How can you really come up with an original idea with all of that noise?
My favorite places to walk are of course parks and Jerusalem. There you can be at one with nature. You can listen to the sounds of nature—and
the sounds of your own thoughts. Sometimes
I admit I walk the streets of Jerusalem
talking on my cellphone or listening to my iPod. Other times I walk the streets and think to
myself and I am at one with this city. In
Jerusalem
especially as Shabbat descends there is only you and the city.
Jacob teaches us important lessons for our own day. Jacob must set out by himself in order to
dream. While the community does indeed
make us better, we need to be alone with our thoughts, unplugged from the
world, in order to be creative. The clatter
of modern life can sometimes get in the way of dreams. And dreams are the things that carry us into
the future.