Was Yakov and Accountant?

Parshat VaYetzei

One of the famous scenes in this week’s Torah reading is Yakov’s dream of the Angels ascending and descending a ladder placed on the ground and whose top is somewhere in the heavens.  And one of the most famous interpretations of this dream is provided in the Midrash: The angels represent different nations, such as the Babylonian and the Roman Empires.  Their ‘Angels’ will ascend – they will conquer eretz yisrael and am yisrael and subjugate our people.  But in the end, the Midrash comforts Yakov, they will also descend and self-destruct.  In the end, Am Yisrael will persevere and remain standing.

The Torah Shlema brings another midrash that challenges this above understanding slightly.  Yes, the nations of the world will ascend and subjugate Am Yisrael.  But, says this Midrash, Yakov you don’t need to be a passive spectator in this historical phenomenon.  “Yakov” calls out God, “you can ascend as well.   You need not wait until the end to merely survive the others, simply outlast them; you can actually thrive now.”  Yakov hears this offer but, according to the Midrash, is fearful.  “If I ascend, won’t I suffer the same fate at the others and eventually descend as well.”  Hashem tells Yakov not to worry, that he will be next to God, and just as God is eternal and steadfast, so too will Yakov be.  But Yakov is too afraid to listen; he refuses the offer and remains on the ground.

The midrash then goes on to say that Yakov’s fear was punished, that Hashem was so disappointed in Yakov that He decided to bring future punishments on all of Am Yisrael as a result of his hesitancy.

We could end here and simply conclude with the following message: One must not fear.  One must take chances and be filled with courage.  One cannot accomplish great things without the possibility first of failing at great things, but it is worth the risk.

But I would like to go a step further because I am bothered by something the midrash suggests.  It says that Yakov was punished for his lack of courage.

Why?  Yakov certainly had every right to be a little jittery at this point in his life.  His brother was trying to kill him.  He was going into exile as a result.  He was all alone in the world, and had no idea what the future held in store.  To be apprehensive seems to be the most natural response possible.  Why punish him for simply responding as one might expect he would respond.

Moreover, let us remember that this was just a dream.  Even if he deserves punishment for not seizing the moment in real life, this was NOT real life.  He merely dreamt it – but he didn’t actually fail to demonstrate courage in real life.

How are we to explain the midrash’s severe treatment of Yakov?

Perhaps the answer can be found by understanding why the midrash treats another individual in the Torah so positively.  Here I am referring to Leah.

Though the Torah text itself describes her as the ‘hated wife’ of Yakov, and goes on to suggest she herself felt embittered by her marriage – for example, when she names her first son, Reuven, we are told it is because God has now seen (re’ah) her suffering (ani’i) – the midrash describes Lea in an inspiringly positive fashion:

Picking up on the fact that it is she amongst Yakov’s four ‘wives’ who is buried next to him in the Cave of the Patriachs, the midrash suggests that she became in the end the one most beloved by him.

 When the Torah first introduces us to Lea and Rachel we are told one is the ‘bigger’ and the other the ‘smaller.’  Why that language?  When the Torah describes Lot’s daughters, we are told that one is older and the other younger.  Why the difference.  Because, says the midrash, Lea actually had a ‘bigger’ impact on Am Yisrael than Rachel.  Not simply because she had more children, but also because her children had a more powerful and long lasting effect.  Consider Rachel’s physical and spiritual descendants: Yoseph, Shaul, Shilo and Moshiach ben Yosef.  And Lea’s: Moshe and Aron, David, Yerushalayim and Moshiach ben David.  Yoseph was of course an inspiring figure, but he was also a transitional one, while Moshe became a more permanent fixture in our tradition and the ultimate liberator of our experience in Egypt; Yoseph simply alleviated suffering, Moshe redeemed us.  Shaul was the first king of Israel; but David will be the eternal king.  Shilo is where the mishkan was erected, but again only temporarily.  Yerushalayim, which has some connection to Rachel as well given that it connects to Binyamin’s portion, is surrounded by Yehuda’s portion.  And of course the beit hamikdash is built here, and is more permanent than the mishkan.  And finally the difference between Moshiach ben Yoseph, who ushers in the messianic era, and Moshiach ben David, who fulfills it.  In all these cases, Rachel’s descendants prove powerful, but temporal, while Lea’s descendants are both powerful and enduring.

And even the Torah’s description of Lea’s sorrowful naming of her first born Reuven … even this, the midrash turns into a positive.  Reu – look! – shouts Lea to all those who will listen, and see the difference between (ben) my son and my mother-in-law’s son.  Her son, of course, is Reuven, and her mother-in-law’s son is Eisav, Yakov’s brother.  How did Eisav react when he felt his birthright was stolen?  He threatened to kill Yakov.  But how did my son, Reuven, react when he lost the ‘first born’ status to Yoseph?  He tried to save his life by pulling him up from the pit his other brothers threw him into.

And the examples go on and on.  Each time we think we understand Lea to be an object of pity the midrash transforms her into an object of admiration.  Why?

Before we explore the answer of Chazal, let me offer a little scientific background:

In 2004 a person was arrested and sentenced to 4 years of jail for refusing to turn off his phone during a flight from Egypt to England.  Why?  Because he was too enmeshed in his game of Tetrus.  He just couldn’t stop.

For those of you who have played this game, you may just understand his addiction.  You may also understand what happened to a group of Harvard students who participated in a Tetrus experiment for three days during which they played the game constantly.  Afterwards, many of them reported seeing the game in their mind repeatedly, sometimes even trying to match different physical object as if they existed on a Tetrus board.  For example, one student said he would walk the cereal aisles of the local supermarket and try – in him mind – to have different cereal boxes turned on their sides to make a perfect line.

Scientists have written about the Tetrus effect, concluding that something biological actually happens when you play the game for any length of time: Your brain neurons actually become rewired so now you are better prepared to play the game.

And this happens not only with tetrus but with many activities that one does repeatedly.

As you can imagine, this sometimes has quite the negative impact.  Consider, for example, the life of an accountant.  All day he spends time looking for errors in tax audits (of course there are many accountants that also spend all day looking for opportunities for their clients; I’m referring her to the former group).  According to one study, this tendency to find mistakes soon transmigrates from his work to his home.  After all, his brain has now actually become rewired to find mistakes wherever he looks.  Now, to the chagrin of his family, he has become “predictively encoded” to see mistakes in their lives.  One accountant even told a friend that he had prepared an excel sheet with all the errors his wife made the past year; he thought she’d be greatly appreciative of the effort.

Why does this happen?  Scientists point out that we receive hundreds of pieces of information every day, and from every 100 bits of information we can actually only integrate about one.  We have ‘spam filer’ on for all the rest.  And how do we set the spam filter?  Basically, by how we tell our brain to consider information, and we do that by repeated actions.  So in the case of the accountant, he repeatedly looked for mistakes, thus telling his brain that mistakes are the things he is interested in seeing.  When positive things came along, aware that one’s brain cannot handle too much information before becoming overloaded, they were simply ignored and placed in spam.  So he never even saw them.  But when a juicy mistake came along, it was immediately placed at the top of his inbasket.

Fortunately, what works in the negative also works in the positive.  If one goes out of their way to find the positive in life, well then his or her brain will be predictively encoded to see more and more positive things wherever that person is.  In one study, for example, a group of people were told to write down three positive things they experienced every day for a week.  A month later those who participated still were finding more positive things in their life than a control group that was never asked to participate in the experiment in the first place.  Same thing occurred 3 months and then 6 months later.  And the impact of ‘finding more positive’ things inspired a greater sense of gratitude, which in turn inspired a greater ability to cope with and succeed in life.

OK, what does all this have to do with Lea?

Everything.

According to Chazal, the quality that Lea possessed more than any other was gratitude.  Indeed, she names her fourth son Yehuda – basically, ‘thank you.’  The midrash points out that this is a sign that Lea was the first person to ever really thank God.

What does that mean, to really thank God?  Well, prior to Lea, certainly, there were others who thanked God.  But they had reason to do so.  Lea, on the other hand, did not obviously have a strong reason to thank God.  As we pointed out earlier, she had many challenges confronting her throughout her life, not the least of which was a husband that hated her.  But in spite of that, Lea – who may or may not have felt unloved – felt grateful for her lot in life.

She, in contrast to our accountant friends, saw the positive.  Her spam filter was set to disregard all the negative and pinpoint – and then celebrate – the positive.  And it is for this reason, I imagine, that all her actions had such a long lasting impact on Am Yisrael.

**

Now let us return to Yakov and his dream.  Yakov, too, had a very difficult life, but unlike Lea he perhaps got stuck in the mud of this negativity.  Perhaps he didn’t see the positive in his life, or at least in the same way that Lea was able to totally transform her experiences.  Yes, his brother wanted to kill him … but didn’t.  Yes, it appeared that his father favored his brother … but his mother favored him.  Yes, he was alone … but he had a close relationship with God at the same time that many of us would envy.  So yes, Yakov had his problems, but he also had his great successes.  Perhaps the midrash we first quoted takes Yakov to task for allowing his subconscious – his dream world – to dwell too much on the former and not enough on the latter.  Perhaps he was struggling with his spam filter, not yet sure which settings were appropriate.  In the end, he will meet Lea and she will help set the filter for him.