I think Vayaitzei is my very favorite Torah portion. The image of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth. Angels ascending and descending. Jacob waking from his sleep and speaking perhaps the most truthful line in a book filled with memorable verses. “God is in this place,” Jacob says, “and I did not know it.” The precursor, I suppose, to today’s more succinct OMG.
There is something to the verse, though, not captured in translation. In the Hebrew language, the subject is usually understood to be included in the verb. So when Genesis 28:16 reads v’anochi (and I) lo yadati (I did not know it) there is a superfluous ‘I’ in the verse. Literally the translation should read, “God is in this place and I, I did not know it.” The Hebrew implies a sense of jarring recognition of the previously overlooked.
Imagine a person being granted entry to Buckingham Palace, ushered into a personal audience with the Queen, and in the presence of Her Majesty grabbing an uncomfortable couch and going to sleep.
Of the countless commentaries offered by our tradition then, consider reading the verse this way:
God is in this place and I did not know it because if I had known it I would never have been so rude as to go to sleep in the first place. In other words, an awareness of context ought to influence proper behavior.
In Hebrew, the word for proper behavior is derech eretz. Literally it means the way of the land. The term signifies the appropriate, respectful, ethically sanctioned way a person should conduct him or herself in their interactions with others. It’s the way people should behave as they walk the path of life. There is an entire tractate in the Talmud devoted to derech ertez.
Derech eretz is Hebrew. It’s better known Yiddish equivalent is menschlichkeit. To be a mensch is to be an honest, ethical individual laboring always to do the right thing in an unassuming and honorable way. When my nephew was 2 years old he learned to sit up in a chair all by himself, and his grandfather was heard to remark, “Look at Adam. He sits up just like a little mensch.” To be a mensch is to be upright.
We share the world with countless others. Our interactions with anonymous self-centered people are literally beyond counting, and the context of living in a sometimes bruising, often stressfull, continuously challenging world can strain the resolve of even the most ardent devotee of derech eretz. Or to point it another way, menschlichkeit isn’t always easy.
The tale is told of a holy man sitting on the banks of a river trying to save a scorpion that was drowning, but ever time he went to rescue the scorpion it tried to sting him. His disciples asked the holy man, “Why do you continue to do this?” He answered, “It is in my nature to save. It is in the nature of the scorpion to sting. And why should I change my nature just because he will not change his.”
In Psalm139 we read: Whither shall I go from Thy spirit, whither shall I flee from Thy Presence? If I ascend into the heavens Thou art there. If I make my bed in the world Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell on the farthermost shores of the sea, even there would Thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.
Which means that God is in this place, every place, all places. And if and when we know it, we are more likely to strive always to conduct ourselves accordingly. So the principle holds. When it comes to derech eretz, an awareness of an all-pervasive, in this case Divine context is certainly of decided benefit.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Whiman