This commentary on Va'yetzei is dedicated to the memory of my beloved father, Sol Ervin Dorff, Shelomo ben Hayyim v'Hannah, z"l, whose Bar Mitzvah portion was Va'Yetzei and who was born and, as it happened, died during this week. He died 22 years ago, but it seems as if it was yesterday. I cannot believe that so much time has elapsed since my father passed away, that he did not get to see all that has happened during those years for my wife and me, our children, and now our grandchildren. Although I surely understand intellectually that he died before these events happened, and I can even identify many markers along the way, it surely does not feel as if 22 years have gone by – or that I have been living all these years without him.
It is this connection between emotions and time that made a verse in this week's Torah reading that I have read probably a thousand times stick out as it has never done before: "And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her" (Genesis 29:20). The simple meaning of the text is quite fetching in its own right. As Rabbi David Kimhi explains it, Jacob loved Rachel so much that the seven years he worked to pay her bride price seemed to him as if they were seven days. Seforno goes further when he suggests that Jacob loved Rachel so much that he thought that he should have had to pay a larger bride price for her, "for love thwarts the normal state of affairs" (she ha'ahavah mekalkelet et ha'shurah, a citation from Genesis Rabbah 55:8 [55:11 in some editions]).
Yes, indeed, love changes our view of everything. An example in that text from Genesis Rabbahis exactly what I was feeling about my father. When Joseph hears that his father had arrived in Goshen, he was so eager to see him that he tied the horses to his own chariot (Genesis 46:29) rather than wait for servants to do that, "for love thwarts the normal state of affairs." Love, whether of one's potential mate or one's parent, does indeed alter the usual state of affairs and even one's perception of time.
All of us have experienced this in both directions. Sometimes we just cannot wait for something to happen, and the time we wait for it seems like an eternity. That is surely true for women who are pregnant and their husbands, especially if they have had trouble getting pregnant, as Rachel and even Leah experience in this Torah reading. The nine months seem interminable. Then the 3:00 a.m. feedings of an infant seem to go on forever. Couples planning a wedding month or even a year or more into the future eagerly anticipate that day but often think that it is eons away – until the time passes and it is suddenly here.
On the other hand, that exact same couple who made all those wedding plans ultimately find that the event takes but a few hours, and then it is over. Time passed all too quickly. And parents of children who go off to college or who get married wonder where the time has gone, how it has flown by.
The point is that time is both objective and subjective. We can measure time objectively within milliseconds and, conversely, in light years. That is objective time, and it matters. Time goes by on its inexorable journey whether we want it to do so or not.
On the other hand, the way we feel about the passage of time is only in part a function of the actual time that has passed or that we must yet wait to pass. Love alters the normal pace of things such that people do things they would never usually do. Love also affects our perception of events, making them seem further away or nearer in time than they actually are. And love makes some people who live very far away or who have not been part of our lives for years seem as if they were sitting right next to us and engaging in conversation.
Like Jacob, may the love we have for those near and dear to us make us experience the trials and tribulations of life as if they flew by. May that same love help us stretch across the years so that we can feel as if our loved ones were with us long after they are gone.
Shabbat Shalom.