VaYetzeh: Leaving and Returning

Yaakov leaves Be’er Sheva and goes to (or toward) Charan.  He is running from Aisav’s anger; he is following his parents’ instructions to find a wife from among his kindred.  He is undoing Gd’s instructions to Abraham to settle in Canaan. We know the end of the story: he is going into a temporary exile, he will return and lead and follow his offspring into the more lasting Egyptian bondage. But when Yaakov leaves Be’er Sheva, this district that was ceded to  Abraham by the Philistines by a treaty; and was a refuge for Yitzchok in his conflict with the next generation of Philistines, Gd delivers the promise of return in his dream. By leaving Be’er Sheva, Yaakov had not ceded his claim to the land.

When Aisav marries the Canaanite women, he was moving to possess the land. Marrying into the local tribes is a way of acquiring rights and property. But it would come with compromise of the ancestral culture.  Aisov would bring some of the tradition of Abraham and Isaac to the place, but it would be serially diluted over the generations. There would be an assimilation.

Yaakov was going back to the place that Abraham, on Gd’s instructions, had rejected.  Abraham came to Canaan to establish his own way, not to adapt to the local customs.

When Yaakov left, when he went out, he could have abandoned this approach. He could have called Charan home. It was the place settled by his great grandfather Terach. The dream he had as he departed made it clear that he could return,that he should return.

Jacob in Charan is the model for young adulthood: marriage, children, career, the accumulation of wealth. Once these tasks are accomplished, he returns to the land of Abraham’s sojourn. Actually, he was also motivated by the growing resentment of his brothers-in-law, which was now impacting Lavan’s attititude:

וַיִּשְׁמַ֗ע אֶת־דִּבְרֵ֤י בְנֵֽי־לָבָן֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר לָקַ֣ח יַעֲקֹ֔ב אֵ֖ת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֣ר לְאָבִ֑ינוּ וּמֵאֲשֶׁ֣ר לְאָבִ֔ינוּ עָשָׂ֕ה אֵ֥ת כׇּל־הַכָּבֹ֖ד הַזֶּֽה׃

Now he heard the things that Laban’s sons were saying: “Jacob has taken all that was our father’s, and from that which was our father’s he has built up all this wealth.”

וַיַּ֥רְא יַעֲקֹ֖ב אֶת־פְּנֵ֣י לָבָ֑ן וְהִנֵּ֥ה אֵינֶ֛נּוּ עִמּ֖וֹ כִּתְמ֥וֹל שִׁלְשֽׁוֹם׃

Jacob also saw that Laban’s manner toward him was not as it had been in the past.

It is only after this that Gd tells Yaakov

שׁ֛וּב אֶל־אֶ֥רֶץ אֲבוֹתֶ֖יךָ וּלְמוֹלַדְתֶּ֑ךָ וְאֶֽהְיֶ֖ה עִמָּֽךְ׃

“Return to your ancestors’ land—where you were born—and I will be with you.”

Yaakov has a practical and a spiritual reason to move on.

Embedded in the conflict between Yaakov and Lavan ( and his sons) is the argument between the relative value of capital  and labor.

When Yaakov explains his leaving, he recounts the hardships of his labor as part of the justification for his reward. Lavan argues:

וַיַּ֨עַן לָבָ֜ן וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֶֽל־יַעֲקֹ֗ב הַבָּנ֨וֹת בְּנֹתַ֜י וְהַבָּנִ֤ים בָּנַי֙ וְהַצֹּ֣אן צֹאנִ֔י וְכֹ֛ל אֲשֶׁר־אַתָּ֥ה רֹאֶ֖ה לִי־ה֑וּא וְלִבְנֹתַ֞י מָֽה־אֶעֱשֶׂ֤ה לָאֵ֙לֶּה֙ הַיּ֔וֹם א֥וֹ לִבְנֵיהֶ֖ן אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָלָֽדוּ׃

Then Laban spoke up and said to Jacob, “The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks; all that you see is mine. Yet what can I do now about my daughters or the children they have borne?

Lavan argues: The owner of the capital keeps the produce. Is this a model for a duality that has colored modern Jewish history. The Jewish labor leader (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Gompers), the communist, the money lender, the landlord. The Jew hater could pick any of these (or other) targets, globalize and persecute.

The Haftarah is a commentary on the parsha. Both Ashkenazim and Sephardim read the latter part of Hosea. It talks about the rebelliousness of Ephraim, repentance and return to the land. Ashkenazim start with

וַיִּבְרַ֥ח יַעֲקֹ֖ב שְׂדֵ֣ה אֲרָ֑ם וַיַּעֲבֹ֤ד יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ בְּאִשָּׁ֔ה וּבְאִשָּׁ֖ה שָׁמָֽר׃

Then Jacob had to flee to the land of Aram;

There Israel served for a wife,

For a wife he had to guard [sheep].

A clear reference to the end of our parsha; arguably the point of our parsha – the return. Jacob (unlike Esau) does not disappear into assimilation. He returns to try to re-establish the values and traditions of Avraham and Yitzchok.

Not long before my birth, the people of Germany,and Poland, and the world stopped looking at Jews as had been. The Jews had become too needy, too rebellious, too successful, too strange, too similar. They were intermarrying too much and too little. Too few Jews saw the faces change. The Jews had a practical reason to leave. Some saw a spiritual salvation that had, through millenia of time, become spectral (both in the ghostly and electromagnetic sense).  They went to Palestine.

Jews cannot tolerate Hamas’ murders and violations. There is no place left to go. There was never a place to go.

But the values must be kept.

This is a practicality that I do not know how to operationalize.