Netvort Vayeitzei 5773:         The Twin Towers

By Rabbi Joshua (bondingly known as Hoffer the Hoffer) Hoffman.

 

In honor of the birth of Sarah Shaindel Burk, to her parents Yitzchak and Ariana Burk, and to her grandfather, Rabbi Gerry Burk who is a grandparent for the first time. May Sarah Shaindel be a source of joy and Jewish fulfillment for her family, for everyone in Netvort land and the entire Jewish people.

            Yaakov, on his way to Haran, stops to get some sleep and has a dream in which he sees a ladder placed on earth and rising up to heaven, with God standing next to it and heavenly angels ascending and descending upon it. Rav Amnon Bazak, in his Nekudas Pesicha, presents a fascinating essay in which he compares and contrasts this dream of the ladder with the episode of the tower of Bavel and the generation of dispersal in Parshas Noach. On the one hand, in both cases, there is an image of uniting heaven and earth. On the other hand, in the case of the tower, the builders intended to battle God by preventing anyone from leaving town, in defiance of God’s directive to fill the earth with inhabitants. In the case of the ladder, however, the message was one of fealty to God’s directives. The angels Yaakov saw first ascended the ladder and then descended, instead of doing the expected opposite, because, as the midrash says, the angels of Eretz Yisroel that accompanied Yaakov ascended to heaven, and the angels who would accompany him in Haran descended. Yaakov, because of his dire circumstances, needed to leave Eretz Yisroel, and raise up a family in Haran. God told him that he would eventually return to Eretz Yisroel where he would spread out in all directions. In contrast, then, to the people of Bavel, who sought to constrict the spread of humanity on earth, Yaakov prepared to conform to God’s will and expand the earth’s habitation.

            We may add to Rav Bazak’s remarks that there is a unity theme in both the episode of the tower of Bavel and in Yaakov’s dream of the ladder. The builders of the tower sought unity among the inhabitants of Bavel, but in defiance of God. Yaakov, on the other hand, when he lay down to sleep, placed, according to the rabbis, twelve stones around him, and, when he awoke, found only one stone. The message, says the midrash, was that he was to raise a family from which would emerge twelve tribes, all different from each other, but, ultimately, united as one in their service of God. Yaakov took that stone and raised it up as a pillar at which to serve God, and pledged that, when he returned, he would convert it into an altar to God. In this way, he symbolically expressed that the family he would raise in Haran would be dedicated to performing God’s will. Thus, while the builders of the tower sought to unite in their defiance of God, Yaakov sought unity in fealty to God.

            Perhaps the contrast between Yaakov’s response to his dream of the ladder and the efforts of the builders of tower of Bavel can be attributed to the fact that, as the rabbi’s tell us, Yaakov spent fourteen years studying in the yeshiva of Ever before he went to Haran. Those years of studying God’s Torah imbued Yaakov with a sense of awareness of his divine mission in raising a family, and inspired him to dedicate his family to the fulfillment of the God’s will. The generation of dispersion, on the other hand, lacked this orientation, and misused the potentially positive quality of unity in order to constrict humanity and prevent it from serving God.