Netvort: parshas Vayeitzei, 5771

                                                 Taking Leave
           By Rabbi Joshua infusively known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

The Torah tells us, at the beginning of parshas Vayeitzei, that Yaakov left Beer Sheva and went to Charan ( Bereishis, 28:10) As the Netziv points out, this entire  verse seems to be superfluous, since we already know these facts from the end of the previous parsha. Why, then, the repetition? In one of his answers, the Netziv ppoints out that Onkeels here translates the words "Beer sheva' as as referring to the oath taken by Avraham to Avimelech at that location, promising that neithwer he nor his descendants would settle there for several generations. Usually, says the Netziv, Onkeles merely repeats the name Beer Shava as it is written in the Torah. The change here would seem to be an allusion to the midrash ( Bereishis Rabbbah, 68:7) which says that Yaakov did not make an oath of this nature.

Rabbi Hillel Lieberman, H'yd, who was murdered by Arab terrorists during the second Intifada, trying to defend Jewish rights to the Tomb of Yosef, writes, in  his commentary Ahavas HaAretz, without citing the Netziv or the midrash, makes a similar point about our verse, and elaborates on the significance of Yaakov refraining from making an oath to Avimelech. He writes that the oath constituted the ceding of the rights of the Jewish people to a part of Eretz Yisroel, to non- Jews, and the first step a Jew must make if he wished, as Yaakov did, to merit an audience with God is to repudiate any notion of making a covenant with non-Jews, and sharing our rights to Eretz Yisroel with them.


Interestingly, the Ramban , in his Torah commentary, mentions another rmidrash, which says that Yaakov went to Beer Sheva  before leaving Eretz Yisroel because that was the place that his father Yitzchak used to pray, as we see at the end of parshas Toldos, and Yakov wished to ask permission of God before leaving the  Holy Land. The midrash cited by the Netziv, and Rabbi Lieberman's comments, take on additonal meaning in light of this midrash. Before leaving Eretz Yisroel, Yaakov wanted to reaffirm his dedication to the land, and, so he repudiated the oath made by Avraham to Avimelech, as if to  say ythat  he was leaving Eretz Yisroel only out  of necessity, because his brother was chasing after him to kill him, but he intended to return as soon as possible, and was not in any way relinquishing any rights to the land by leaving.

The Ramban mentions another midrash according to which the stones that Yaakov used to place under his head before going to sleep that night were taken from the altar that avraham built to use for the akeidah of Yitzchak.  In context of Yaakov's emphasis of his dedication to Eretz Yisroel before leaving the land, this midrash takes on added significance when recalling the remarks of the Rashbam, which, he says, he later found in the Midrash Shmuel, in regard to the akeidah. The Rashbam in parshas Vayeira  says that God tested Avraham with the akeidah as a direct result of the oath he made to Avimelech. In the aftermath of that oath, says the Rashbam, God said to Avraham, "do you think that the land belongs to you to give away? I will show you that even your own son does not belong to you.' By taking  stones of the altar to use as a pillow before his departure from Eretz Yisroel, Yaakov was indicating that he understood  the mistake that Avraham had made and its consequences, and that he would not  repeat that mistake, even though he was now leaving the land, due to force of circumstance. Another midrash tells us that Yaakov used these stones as a pillow, rather than using a regular pillow, because even the stones of Eretz Yisroel meant more to him than all the riches in the world. It was with this single-minded devotion to the land that Yaakov took his leave from it, hoping to return as soon as possible.