Jacob isn’t someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Instead, he worked — hard — for everything that came his way. The birthright, his father’s blessing, his beloved wife Rachel, all of these accomplishments and relationships came to Jacob as the result of long, arduous toil. Looking back on his life, it isn’t hard to understand why Jacob pauses to consider what was the source of strength that enabled him to persevere. How, despite the difficulties and the disappointments, did our ancestor manage to keep on keeping on?
For Jacob that question became especially poignant as he left the home of his father in law, Lavan. Having worked for fourteen years for his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and another six years for a share in Lavan’s flocks of sheep, Jacob sees twenty years living in a foreign land, away from his cherished Israel, and away from his family and his childhood haunts. Only after the fact could Jacob allow himself to see the enormity of his struggle and the extent of his own inner exile and transformation.
In response to Lavan’s claim that Jacob owed his success to him, his father in law, Jacob insists that “lulei, were it not for the God of my ancestors, the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac who was with me …”. God, not Lavan, was Jacob’s sustaining rock throughout his years of turmoil and deprivation.
The rabbis of Midrash Bereshit Rabbah noticed the odd Hebrew word lulei, which is generally translated as “were it not…” or “had not…” Coming as it does at the beginning of the sentence, the word seemed sufficiently superfluous to warrant the insertion of ingenious rabbinic interpretation.
Zavdi ben Levi understood lulei to be an appeal to ancestral merit, zekhut avot. He understands Jacob to say that had it not been for the good deeds and the role model of his grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, and his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, he would have lacked the clear sense of right and wrong, and the inner strength to hew to the proper path. As the Talmud notes, “ma’aseh avot siman la-banim, the deeds of the parents become signs for the children.” The goodness of his ancestors gave him his sense of purpose, his vision of what could be, and the ability to work toward that distant goal.
Rabbi Yohanan has a different drash for lulei, seeing it as devotion “for the sake of the sanctity of God’s name, for kiddush ha-Shem. Jacob knew that his behavior would either reflect credit on the God of Israel, or would make God and Jacob’s religion seem hypocritical and foolish. How he behaved would affect God’s reputation among the people who knew him. Kiddush ha-Shem, acting in a way that reflects positively on God, motivated our patriarch to live up to his ideals, to walk in God’s ways even during times of sorrow, want, and fear.
Finally, Rabbi Levi asserted that lulei implied being motivated by “the merit of faith and the merit of Torah.” As he understood Jacob, the patriarch was inspired by his sense of God’s presence in his life, the pervasive holiness made concrete through the mitzvot, the sacred commandments that link the Jew and God.
•Ancestral merit is an awareness of being connected to those who preceded us. It is found in cherishing our traditions by living them in our daily lives and by transmitting them to our children and to their children. It is a sense of identity that involves the continuing stream of Jewish people, starting with Abraham and Sarah, continuing through ourselves, and extending to each new generation of Jews.
•Kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of God, is an awareness of spirituality and the importance of making God’s presence and love a pervasive part of our consciousness and our lives. Through prayer, contemplation, song, dance, meditation, and study, we sanctify God by focusing our minds, hearts, and souls on our sacred source.
•Faith and Torah translate into a devotion to the mitzvot, the 613 commandments of the Torah as understood, amplified, and defined through rabbinic interpretation (drashot) and legislation (takkanot). By regularly acting out the deep wisdom of Jewish values through concrete actions, Judaism provides a pedagogy of hands and feet, a spirituality of pots and pans, a sense of fidelity to God that extends to every aspect of our lives.
On those three legs, ancestral merit, sanctification of God, Torah and mitzvot, Jewish life is assured and our Jewish lives are enriched. Holiness, wisdom, and belonging are within our grasp, able to sustain and to nurture us through life’s trials, even as they did for our patriarch, Jacob.
Shabbat shalom.