The first time that G-d ever spoke to our father Avraham - before he was yet Avraham, when he was still Avram - was in the opening words of Parashat Lech Lecha:
“Get yourself away from your country and your birthplace and your father’s house, to the Land that I will show you; and I will make you a great nation…” (Genesis 12:1-2).
G-d’s first-ever charge to Avram was not to keep Shabbat, or to keep Kashrut, or tzniyut (modesty); it was to leave his comfortable, familiar surroundings and to make Aliyah.
Last week, in Parashat Toldot, we saw G-d’s first-ever words to Yitzchak, when he had relocated to Gerar (in the Gaza region) because of a famine:
“Hashem appeared to him and said: Do not go down to Egypt! Reside in the Land which I will tell you to. Dwell in this Land, and I will be with you and I will bless you, because to you and your descendants I will give all these Lands, and I will fulfil the oath which I swore to Avraham your father; and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the Heavens, and I will give your descendants all these Lands” (Genesis 26:2-4).
Again, G-d’s first-ever charge to Yitzchak was not to keep Shabbat, or to keep Kashrut, or tzniyut (modesty); it was to remain in Israel in spite of the famine, not to leave the Land of Israel; and the promise that He would yet give the Land of Israel to Yitzchak’s descendants.
This week, in Parashat Vayeitzei, G-d appears to Ya’akov for the first time. Ya’akov has just fled his parents’ home to avoid his brother’s murderous vengeful fury. He has reached the future site of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and has lain down to sleep there for the night.
As he slept, “he dreamed, and behold! - a ladder firmly set earthwards with its head reaching heavenwards; and behold! - angels of G-d were ascending and descending on it. And behold! - Hashem was upon it, and said: I am Hashem, G-d of Avraham your father and G-d of Yitzchak. The Land upon which you lie - I will give it to you and to your descendants. And your descendants will be as the dust of the earth, and you will burst forth westwards and eastwards and northwards and southwards… And behold! - I will be with you…and I will return you to this Land” (Genesis 28:12-14).
As with his father Yitzchak, as with his grandfather Avraham, the first time that G-d ever spoke to Ya’akov was to give him the Land of Israel, and to guarantee that he and his descendants would inherit the Land.
This is the beginning and the foundation of Judaism: inheriting the Land of Israel, living in the Land of Israel. Only in the Land of Israel do we fulfil our Divine destiny as G-d’s nation.
Since Ya’akov’s dream was the first time that G-d ever spoke to him, and since the Torah records his dream, it clearly has immense significance. Let us begin with what he saw:
וַיַּחֲלֹם וְהִנֵּה סֻלָּם מֻצָּב אַרְצָה וְרֹאשׁוֹ מַגִּיעַ הַשָּׁמָיְמָה וְהִנֵּה מַלְאֲכֵי אֱלֹקִים עֹלִים וְיֹרְדִים בּוֹ:
“He dreamed, and behold! - a ladder firmly set earthwards with its head reaching heavenwards; and behold! - angels of G-d were ascending and descending on it”.
The Midrashim offer several explanations of who these “angels of G-d” were; Rashi selects just one opinion, summarises and condenses and paraphrases it in one sentence:
“First they ascend and after that descend; the angels who had accompanied him in the Land of Israel do not leave for outside of the Land of Israel, they ascend to the Firmament, and the angels of outside of the Land of Israel descended to accompany him”.
Rashi clearly considers the sequence as significant: first the angels of the Land of Israel, who had accompanied Ya’akov as far as here, ascended to the Firmament, and only after that the angels who would accompany him outside of the Land of Israel descended.
This means that for an undetermined amount of time (a fraction of a second? several minutes? the entire night?), Ya’akov was left unprotected by his angelic escort.
To be sure, he was justified in fleeing Israel for Haran…but still, there were consequences. G-d Himself told him that he would inherit the Land, he and his descendants after him forever - yet here he was, leaving the Land. Of course he fell to a lower spiritual level, as justified as his leaving was.
Ya’akov’s leaving the Land of Israel for exile was a precursor of things to come: the Ba’al ha-Turim (Rabbi Ya’akov ben Asher, Germany and Spain, c.1275-1343), following Midrash Tanhuma Vayeitzei 2, notes that the gematria (numerical value) of the phrase עֹלִים וְיֹרְדִים בּוֹ (“ascending and descending on it”) is 428, the same as בָּבֶל וּמָדַי וְיָוָן וְרוֹמִי, “Babylon and Media and Greece and Rome” - the four powers which would exile and oppress us.
The Ba’al ha-Turim also notes that the word מֻצָּב (“firmly set”) appears only three times in the entire Tanach:
The first time is in Ya’akov’s dream, “a ladder ,מֻצָּב firmly set earthwards…”.
The second is when Avimelech seized power and proclaimed himself king:
וַיֵּאָסְפוּ כָּל־בַּעֲלֵי שְׁכֶם וְכָל־בֵּית מִלּוֹא וַיֵּלְכוּ וַיַּמְלִיכוּ אֶת־אֲבִימֶלֶךְ לְמֶלֶךְ עִם־אֵלוֹן מֻצָּב אֲשֶׁר בִּשְׁכֶם:
“All the men of Shechem and all of Beit Millo gathered together, and they went and proclaimed Avimelech as King at the Plain of the Monument (מֻצָּב) which is in Shechem” (Judges 9:6).
And the third is in Isaiah’s prophetic warning of impending exile:
וְחָנִיתִי כַדּוּר עָלָיִךְ וְצַרְתִּי עָלַיִךְ מֻצָּב וַהֲקִימֹתִי עָלַיִךְ מְצֻרֹת:
“I will encamp encircling you, and I will besiege you with a siege-wall (מֻצָּב), and I will erect fortresses against you” (Isaiah 29:3).
The Ba’al ha-Turim deduces from this that “He showed him both the entry into the Land and the exile from it. The entry into the Land as symbolised by the Monument (מֻצָּב) in Shechem, which was among the first places they conquered [vide 1 Kings 12 and Sanhedrin 102a], and the exile from it as symbolised by the siege-wall (מֻצָּב) that He would erect”.
G-d appeared to each of our Fathers, and His first address to each of them was: Land of Israel! Go there, live there, don’t leave there! I give this Land to you and your descendants for all time! Your destiny is in this Land, everywhere outside of the Land of Israel is exile.
This is the beginning of Judaism, this is the base and the centre of Judaism.