Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parshat VaYetze 1

good evening we are learning parat we're using the art scroll Kash we're on page 45 last week um Torah portion finished with Yakov running for his life away from his house to save himself from asav and he's running away on under the pretense that he is going to get married but on the way he um goes to a Yeshiva and spends 14 years there the Yeshiva is of uh his ancestor of his great great great grandfather Shem who is also called maled who lives in Yus at that time it was called shalm and a Yeshiva back then was not a Yeshiva like in our times they didn't have texts everything was transmitted Orly from Adam to um his children and then eventually to Noah and then to Noah's son Shem and Shem had um generation children after ch gener after generation children grandchildren uh he also had a grandson called ever that is why we are called I from the word ever because we are descendant from a man called ever and we also called seites because we are descendant from Shem um and Yakov went to the Yeshiva that Shem and ever his great grandparents uh ran and uh they taught him about how God created the world about and the secrets of it cabalistic Secrets they taught him about how God created man the purpose of man they learned the history and what they can learn from each generation and Yakov spent 14 years immersed in studying the Divine studying the spiritual uh teachings um at that time there was only one spiritual teaching because everything came from Adam and um after 14 years he felt ready to go out and get married and live with an uncle like or with a father-in-law like Lavan um which we will speak Pi up learn about this week and we will see that he really did need those 14 years of preparation otherwise he wouldn't survive in the house of Lavan so Yakov was 63 years old when he left his parents' home and after 14 years in Yeshiva he's now 77 so the the Torah starts in uh on on P the par starts on page 145 Yakov departed from beeva that's where his parents lived and went toward Karan yes he went toward Khan but he got there only 14 years later he encountered the place and spent the night there because the sun had set and our sages say that that was yush now according to our introduction that he actually went to yush to uh spend 14 years in the Yeshiva so either this was right before he um started the Yeshiva or as he was leaving the Yeshiva on his way to Khan right then and there in yush he encountered um the angels as we're going to see he spent the night and before he uh uh fell asleep he decided to take some stones of the place and he arranged them around his head and lay down in that place um now there are many midashim that explain what exactly happened there on a simple level he uh put the stones around his head only not around the whole body because the head is the most sensitive part and if an animal walks at night and by accident steps on his head that's that's dangerous uh so he put stones around his head so that the the animal will will feel the stones and not step on his head and around his body that wasn't necessary because the body is is more resilient on a cabalistic level and his more deeper level uh what happened was that the midash says that he placed the stones specifically around his head and he wasn't worried about physical protection it was it was uh there were 12 Stones corresponding to the 12 tribes that are in the future are going to come out of him and at night the stones United the stones united into one uh Stone and they went under his head um the pasuk says that he placed the stones around his head and they came together and they formed a nice pillow for his head however our say that that place was where in the future uh the holy of holies is going to be the KES and where he slept and that Stone became the place where the ark the holy Ark um was placed in the Kash now he is in this place which is very holy which is going to be the BET mikdash and he falls asleep and he dreamt and behold a ladder was set from the earth till heaven in his dream and angels of God were ascending in and descending on it he saw the function of the spiritual world he witnessed it how Hashem runs the world through Angels angel in a um Hebrew is Malak the word Malak angel means a messenger which really means that angels are not independent um beings but rather angels are forces created by Hashem to fulfill his will just like if I want to do something I think about it and then I send my hand to take it or to uh perform an act so my hand is my agent the agent of the brain the brain makes a decision and it uh sends a signal for the body to move so to Hashem makes a decision and the way he carries out that decision is by creating a force we may call it uh forces of nature we may call it wind we may call it sunlight we may call it um waves of the ocean we may call it uh any any um name that we want but what an angel really means is just a fulfillment of God's will so these Angels were coming down the leather in yacob's dreams and going up coming down the Lether means the the influence from above the flow of divine blessing from above the messengers that are coming to perform God's will where whether it is to reward a person to bring blessing to bring uh bounty to bring children and money and everything else or sometimes they're sent in order to uh carry out judgments and punishments against people Shalom like we know in the story of um The Three Angels that visited Abraham they were sent by Hashem uh want to say the the news of uh's birth one to save lot one to and the same one to heal Sara so that she should be able to have children and um one to destroy sedom the one that was sent to destroy sedom was Gabriel So Gabriel from the word g strict Justice is uh an example of an angel that is sent to fulfill God's will of bringing punishment upon upon uh people but again Angels do not have independent existence rather in uh Judaism an angel is just a force that God created to carry out his will in our world um now verse 13 Hashem blesses yob he appears and Hashem says I am Hashem God of Abraham your father meaning your grandfather and God of Y the ground upon which you are lying to you will I give it and to your descendants rest well you are laying on your own land it's not someone else's land be comfortable it's your land your Offspring shall be as dust of the earth and you shall spread out powerfully Eastward Westward northward and Southward and all the families of the Earth shall bless themselves by you and by your Offspring so many of the same blessings that we know already from uh Abraham and are repeated to yob behold I am with you I will guard you wherever you go and I will return you to this land and I will not forsake you until I will have done what I have spoken about you so Hashem reassures him that even though he's about to leave the land of Israel Hashem tells him I will bring you back safely now on page 147 and yakob realizes that uh he is laying on a holy Place Yakov woke from his sleep and said surely Hashem is present in this SLE in in this place and I didn't know he became frightened and said how awesome is this place this is the Abode of God and this is the Gate of the heavens so Yakov took the the stone that was under his head and he set it up as a pillar and he poured oil on its top as an offering verse 20 Yakov took a vow and said if God will be with me and guard me and provide me with bread and uh clothing and bring me back to my father's home then I dedicate myself to him he will be my God and then this Stone which I set up as a pillar shall become a house of God this is a a a short-term prediction that when yakob will come back from the house of Lavan he will again bring offerings on that pillar and it is a long-term prediction that eventually there will be a betam mikdash built on this location and one more promise Yakov takes is whatever you God will give me I will separate 10% for you uh this is where yov accepted upon himself and for all future Generations that the Jewish people will separate 10% of whatever they get from God later that became the Mitzvah of M that a farmer who gathers his Harvest separates 10% for the Levites but now since most of us are not Farmers we still follow this example of Yakov not as a Torah law but just as a a a custom that the Jewish people accepted upon um ourselves and uh we still separate 10% just like Yakov promised now somebody's asking uh a question sounds like he gave God an ultimatum are we allowed to do that say God if you do so and so so then I will do so and so that's a very good question and the answer is uh yes uh especially in the mitvah of the say that if you want to be successful and U to earn money what you should do is you should say Hashem if you help me with my business with my job with my investment I will separate such and such amount of money and uh the trick is to separate it already write out the check so that when it does happen your yet will not take over you will just be able to right away send this check to whoever you wrote it out to immediately and some people go even further and they actually mail the check for example if you know that you are going to earn from that business transaction $10,000 you say why should I wait until I earn it I hope I do and in order to make sure I'm successful I write down 10% $1,000 already and I mail it and now I sort of force God to give me $110,000 cuz I already separated Mas for it and uh similarly uh we we can do uh for example it says somebody who uh gives a coin to charity and says I'm giving this coin to poor people may Hashem heal such and such person uh that is permissible because we say that at the end of the day Jewish people want to do mitv and they would uh willingly do whatever they need to uh even if Hashem doesn't answer his prayers because they understand that God is good and Hashem only gives us what is good for us and therefore we can ask him and we can take upon ourselves to become better people but nothing goes to waste all our efforts are counted and if Hashem decides not to give it to us we will accept it with love so as long as that is your intention I ask Hashem and in order to make sure that it happens or to have a higher chance to increase my Merit I will accept upon myself a certain Mitzvah on the condition that Hashem helps but I do have have in mind I do have in mind that if it doesn't happen I will view it as God's loving response that it's either not time or it's not good for me now somebody is asking a good question why specifically you can test god with the Mitzvah of M um and that is because God is choosing the Mitzvah that is least likely to produce result which means if you want to become rich and somebody comes to you and says oh you want to become rich give away your money and then you'll become rich you'll say what do you mean becoming rich means I take money not give money and you say yeah even though it seems unlikely to produce result cuz I'm telling you to do the opposite of what you desire test me with something that is the least likely and if you find that it works then all the other things are going to be uh all the more so it is compared to uh to a merchant who um who has different kinds of uh produce to sell uh items and you want to to test so what which one would you want to test the weakest link you want to make sure that the whole machine or the whole uh set of items is uh trustworthy is reliable so you're going to choose the smallest one the weakest one and you say if that can handle the load that I want to subject it to then for sure the more robust items the better looking items for sure they will be able to withstand it so Hashem says take the the weakest mitvah in our minds where I'm I'm telling you to give away something and if that gives you success and wealth then for sure all the other MIT of the Tor will give you success because all the other SW are something that we understand of course if I rest on Shabbat I'll have more energy and it it it's obvious that is healthy of course if I uh kill the animal in a more humane way and I drain its blood and I don't scare it of course it's going to be healthy so if uh some doctor does research and finds out that yes it is good to rest on Shabbat and yes it is good to eat kosher and yes it is good to put on in that's not a big deal of course it makes sense but a mitvah that goes against logic give away in order to get that we can test Hashem um with now someone is asking uh a practical question about Mas by the way we can learn about Mas in a separate lecture and thank you for the idea but somebody is asking if you take upon yourself to separate 20% and then Shalom if in the future you cannot afford it can you downgrade to 10% so whenever you separate M the general rule is that you should take upon yourself to do it as a custom not as an obligation not as something that you will do forever you have to say I'm doing it B NE as long as I can afford it and therefore if I can afford 20% 30% 50% 90% I'm going to give later if I can afford less I will give less all the to 10% it's not recommended to give less than 10% but if a person cannot afford then he can give even less than 10% but 10% is considered average this is a minimum that's required if you give less than 10% it's only uh out of necessity but you can give more than 10% if you work check paycheck to paycheck you can give up to 20% but if you have your own business or if you have multiple sources of income if you are comfortably uh wealthy then you can give as much as you want um as long as you have enough to live but uh you can give 90% be my guest that's that's not forbidden okay now we continue on page 147 so Yakov took this vow upon himself that he will separate 10% from everything that God gives him as as a as his thank you for Hashem protecting him and helping him on his way now chapter 29 yakob comes to a well near haran Yakov went towards the land of the easterners because Khan was North East so it's called easterners he looked and behold there was a well in a field and there were three flocks of sheep that lay beside it now we turn to page 149 uh verse 4 yob said to them my brothers where are you from these were Shepherds with their sheep and they were next to the well just sitting and they said we are Froman and he said do you know laan they said surely we know here his daughter is coming Rael with her father's sheep verse 7 he said the day is still long this is uh not the end of the day it is not yet time to bring the livestock in water the flock and go on grazing there are a few more hours in the day that the sheep can can graze why are you sinning and they said we can't we don't trust each other and therefore we placed a huge Stone on top of the well and only when all the Shepherds gather together they can together lift off this Stone and there are only three of us who can't lift it by that time Rael arrived with her father's flock and at that moment Yakov saw ra Yakov came forward and he decided to not to waste time to take an action he rolled the stone off the mouth of the well and watered the Sheep of Lavan his mother's brother and this is uh a show of force of strength that Yakov possessed here are three grown-up men that are saying we're not able to pick up the stone we need the entire uh Shepherd Community to come and Yakov goes and does it single-handedly verse 11 y then Yakov kissed ra and he raised his voice and wept now at this point many ask a question isn't that not modest how is it that a a young man is kissing a young lady in public and the answer is that it's not a young man Yakov is 77 years old and Rael is 8 years old so people understand this is a great grandfather kissing his great granddaughter and plus they are cousins because uh Rifka and Lavan a brother and sister yob is the son of Rifka and ra is the the the daughter of Lavan so it's their relatives cousins first cousins and he in age wise he can be her great grandfather so it's a completely different Dynamics over here and and uh to show that this is not a passionate kiss of a young man to a young woman Torah tells us that Yakov raises his voice and he cries he weeps not something you would expect a young man to do and why is he crying our sages say that he's crying because he comes empty-handed he came to marry Rael and here he sees her he can't give her flowers he can't take her out he doesn't have money he doesn't have anything as opposed to when his father Yak was proposed in marriage to his mother Rifka his servant elezar brought 10 camels loaded with all the goodies but he is coming by himself no servant no camels no money no goodies nothing yakob only had a walking stick a single man with his walking stick poor man comes and says can I marry you and he's 77 she's eight now ra ran to her uh house to tell them the news that their nephew came verse 13 and was when Lavan heard the news of Yakov he ran toward him embraced him and kissed him now there's a lot of kissing in this uh um um from now and until the end of uh seph so there's a lot of emotion some of these emotions are sincere some of them are insincere for example when Yakov kisses Rael and he cries that shows that it's his emotions are sincere when Lavan Hogs and Kisses Yakov I say just say that he was not sincere what he was really looking was for uh he was looking for wealth he expected to find many camels he comes to the well and he sees just one man standing where are your camels are they coming maybe you left them at an inn no Yakov says I didn't bring anything where are your suitcases I don't have suitcases where's your big wallet wallet I don't have wallet so he hugs him to check maybe he has pockets he presses him against his chest no he hugs him and Pats him down no nothing I don't see any coins nothing so then he kisses him on both cheeks and on his lips trying to figure out maybe he's hiding precious stones in his mouth nothing there okay so he takes him home we on page 151 and he says what can we do you're my relative so okay stay for free and he stayed with him for one month now even though he stayed for one month but Yakov wasn't just sitting doing nothing ER he was working hard so hard that laan himself was surprised he never saw people working even for pay and here he's working for free so enthusiastically so Lavan said just because you're my relative should you serve me for nothing what are your wages so um the Torah parenthetically tells us that Lavan had two daughters Leia the older one and ra the younger one in verse 18 Yakov loved Rael and he said I will work for you seven years for Rael your younger daughter and he's trying to be as specific as possible to make sure that Lavan does not offer him he says