NOVEMBER 11 • 2021 | 55
pain and hardship: the decep-
tion of Lavan; the loss of his
beloved wife, Rachel; the sep-
aration from his beloved son,
Yosef; and many other severely
challenging experiences. And
yet, throughout, this vision —
this pledge that God would be
with him at all times — sus-
tained him, and gave him the
strength to withstand all of the
difficulties and challenges that
lay ahead.
This vision can sustain us
through our own difficulties
and challenges. As King David
famously said: “Even though I
walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I fear no evil
for you are with me.
” (Psalm
23) He does not say: “I fear no
evil because no harm can befall
me,
” but rather: “I fear no evil
because You are with me.
”
Everything that happens to
us is from God and is therefore
ultimately for the good, even if
we cannot see it at the time, and
there is great comfort in know-
ing that God is with us and
looking after us throughout our
life’s journey.
This is all from a personal
perspective. The Midrash of Rav
Eliezer ben Hurkenus, on the
other hand, probes the national
significance of the angels on
the ladder. He teaches that
the ascending and descending
angels symbolize the rise and
fall of the great empires of the
world that would oppress and
seek to destroy the nation of
Israel. Yaakov was being shown
that the Jewish people would
undergo great challenges and
distress, as one kingdom after
another — the Babylonians, the
Greeks, the Romans and oth-
ers — came to subjugate them.
And yet, somehow, through the
incredible Divine miracles of
Jewish history, we survived, and
that was the message to Yaakov
— that no matter what forces
of destruction would come
against his descendants, God
would be with them and would
ensure the survival of the Jewish
people.
Indeed, this is one of the
great miracles of human histo-
ry. No other nation in history
has endured as much hardship
through exile, dispersion and
persecution as the Jewish peo-
ple. And what has sustained
us throughout is this vision
of “Jacob’s Ladder” — God’s
pledge that He would be with
us, always.
There is another Midrash that
explains that the ladder sym-
bolized Mount Sinai. In fact, the
gematria — the numerological
value — of the Hebrew word for
‘ladder’ and ‘Sinai’ are identical.
ACCOMPANIED BY TORAH
The Midrash says the angels
themselves symbolize Moshe
(Moses) and Aharon (Aaron),
who ascended and descended
Mount Sinai at the time of the
giving of the Torah.
This further reinforces the
idea of the ladder as a bridge
between heaven and Earth.
Many of the mitzvahs of the
Torah relate to the physical
world. There’s the famous
Midrash that describes how
“God looked into the Torah
and created the world,
” that the
Torah is the blueprint of cre-
ation. Indeed, most of the pre-
cepts of the Torah are fulfilled
through the physical world —
lulav and etrog, tefillin, challahs
— these are all physical objects.
Simply by utilizing them within
the framework of the Torah’s
instructions, we infuse them
with a cosmic significance. We
elevate the physical world and
connect it with the upper world,
God’s eternal world.
Similarly, the Torah is also
about elevating our physical
lives, our physical bodies, and
transforming them into vessels
of Godliness and spirituality.
The relationship between a man
and a woman, for example, or
the act of raising children, or
the process of eating. All of
these are governed by Divine
parameters laid out in the Torah
that enable us to elevate them
beyond the biological and trans-
form them into something truly
transcendent. To connect heav-
en and Earth.
There’s a third Midrash that
says the ladder represents the
altar in the Temple, and the
angels going up and down rep-
resent the Kohanim, the priests,
who would serve in the Temple
(and ascend and descend the
altar). In other words, the lad-
der represents the service of
God — through prayer and
mitzvot and the daily activities
we dedicate to our Creator — so
our lives themselves become an
active act of service.
These last two Midrashim
are connected. It’s about receiv-
ing the Torah, which connects
heaven and Earth, and living a
life that connects heaven and
Earth. Through the Torah and
through acts of service, our lives
become filled with meaning.
We become more than physical
beings eking out an existence;
we become elevated, spiritu-
al beings, connected to our
Creator.
So this then becomes the
overarching vision that sus-
tained Yaakov and has contin-
ued to sustain us through all of
our generations — that God is
with us every step of the way,
and there is a way to uplift our
lives and connect heaven and
Earth. What is so powerful is
that, according to our sages,
Yaakov was shown this vision
after he’
d already arrived in
Haran. The Talmud explains
that Yaakov had mistakenly
passed over the holy place
where Avraham had brought
his son Yitzchak on the altar,
and that he hadn’t stopped to
pray. Yaakov felt such a yearn-
ing, such a sense of lost oppor-
tunity, that a great miracle was
performed, and that holy site
was miraculously transported to
Yaakov, whereupon he had his
vision.
Rav Moshe Feinstein says
the message here is that even
though he had left the holiness
of his parents’ home and was
now in a place of spiritual des-
olation, through maintaining
a loyalty and a devotion to the
vision that was given to him, he
would be able to achieve that
holiness and that connection.
The holy place came to him —
and so the message was that he
could take the vision with him
and implement wherever he
went.
People often believe them-
selves to be limited by their
circumstances. But what we see
here is that having a vision — a
great, lofty Divine vision that
we dedicate ourselves to — can
enable us to transcend those
circumstances. It can inspire
us and guide us and transform
the world in which we find
ourselves.
This is the vision that Jacob
took with him on all his jour-
neys; the same lofty, life-affirm-
ing, transformative vision that
has accompanied the Jewish
people on all of our journeys,
both national and personal.
It is the vision that makes us
who we are and has held us all
together throughout the gener-
ations.
Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, who
has a Ph.D. in Human Rights Law, is the
chief rabbi of South Africa. This article
first appeared on aish.com.