This week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei, begins with Jacob fleeing the wrath of his brother, Esau. Along his way, he stops for the night and dreams of a ladder reaching the heavens, with Divine messengers ascending and descending the ladder. According to the sages, these messengers are angels. Some accompany Jacob throughout the land of Canaan, but, as he prepares to depart, they exchange places with a new set of angels who will accompany him throughout his sojourn in Haran. God then informs Jacob, “I am with you. I will protect you wherever you go and will return you to this land.” When Jacob returns to Canaan at the end of the parashah, he again encounters Divine messengers, ostensibly exchanging roles once again.
Like Ezekiel’s vision of God departing into exile with the Judeans on a Divine chariot following the destruction of the Holy Temple, Jacob’s encounters with Divine messengers illustrate that יהוה is not bound by geographical constraints.
Though we take the ubiquity of God for granted in modernity, our forebears once considered יהוה a local deity. The God of Israel was affiliated with the Land of Israel. Only through prophecies and stories like that of Jacob did our ancestors’ notion of God evolve to embrace Divine omnipresence, an idea that ultimately became a pillar of Jewish thought. Jacob’s dream challenges us to consider how our own understanding of the Divine may need to evolve as we face new and daunting challenges.
–Rabbi Josh Knobel