5771 פרשת ויצא

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to us how Yaakov Avinu arrived in the city where Lavan lived and proceeded to meet with Lavan and discuss what work he would do for Lavan in order to marry Lavan’s daughter Rachel. The Torah then describes to us how Yaakov ended up marrying both Rachel and Leah. The Torah then describes that Leah merited having children while Rachel remained barren. Finally, Rachel decided to free her maidservant Bilha and give her to Yaakov as a wife so that if she had a child Rachel will help raise the child and it would be as if she had a child of her own. When Bilha did have a child Rachel named the child Dan. The Torah describes to us the reason why Rachel called this child Dan which was that God had judged me and heard my voice.

 The Siforno explains that these are really two individual interconnected reasons. The first one Rachel was saying that God was righteous in his judgment to withhold from me children and the second one was that even though God withheld children from me He answered my prayers.

 If we look at this Siforno a little bit more closely we can ask the following question. When Rachel was naming her son, both of these reasons together were the impetus for the name. That being the case, the second idea would seem to flow from the first idea. However, in truth this wasn’t the prayer of Rachel. She wanted to be able to give birth to a child but instead what she received at that time was a child that was born to her maidservant Bilha whom she could raise. If this is the case, then the Siforno’s understanding of the impetus for the name of Dan would be difficult to understand as Rachel did not receive what she prayed for as she herself said that God was righteous in his judgment when He decided that I should not bear children.

 The answer could be that in essence God has many ways of answering every prayer. It is true that Rachel’s desire and prayer was to have a child of her own but for whatever reason at that time she did not merit to have a baby of her own but an aspect of the prayer that she did merit she received which was to at least be able to raise one of the Shevatim which could be considered on some level as having a child of her own. It is for this reason that Rachel said that even though God was righteous in his judgment of her, He still enabled her prayer for a child to be answered in a way she did merit.

 This is a very important lesson in our lives. Many times we pray for something and we don’t receive it. We must understand that we don’t always merit that our prayers are answered the way we want them to be. This could be because we don’t have the merits necessary to receive a particular thing or potentially because the thing we requested really isn’t beneficial for us even though we might think it is. Our reaction to that must be that we accept the judgment of God as righteous and correct and we should understand that God is doing what is good for us and if we look hard enough we may even see that we received what we requested albeit in a different form or at a different time as God is always doing what is good for us and always wants to answer our prayers in a way that is the best for us.

פרשת ויצא 5770

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah tells us how Yaakov Avinu went to Lavan’s house to find a wife. The Torah continues and describes how after Yaakov worked for seven years to marry Rachel, Lavan gave him her older sister Leah as a wife. The Torah then tells us that after the Sheva Berachos for Leah, Lavan gave him Rachel as a wife too. When describing the relationship that Yaakov Avinu had with Rachel and Leah, the Torah says that Yaakov loved Rachel more than Leah. The Pasuk then tells us that God saw that Leah was hated and he merited her to have children. Leah had the first four children to Yaakov Avinu. She named them all to give thanks to God for different things He did for her. The first son Reuvein was named that to thank God that she merited having a son who will cause her husband to love her more and the next son she named Shimon to thank  God for giving her a son who removed the hatred her husband felt towards her.

 The Ohr Hachayim when describing the events leading to the birth of Leah’s children and their subsequent naming asks the following two questions:

1. Why does the Pasuk say that God saw the Leah was hated, shouldn’t the Pasuk have said, “Leah was hated so God gave her children?”
2. When Leah was naming her children, she named the first one after the fact that now her husband will love her more and the second son after the fact that God removed the hatred that my husband had for me, logically she should have named the first child after the fact that the hate was gone and the second child after the fact that her husband loves her more?

 The Ohr Hachayim answered the first question as follows. In truth Yaakov Avinu felt some small degree of hatred towards Leah due to her misleading him into thinking she was Rachel. However, this feeling of hatred was minimized by Yaakov Avinu to such an extent that the only thing Leah felt was a lower level feeling of love from Yaakov. The only one who truly recognized that there were actual feelings of hatred was God.

 With this idea the Ohr Hachayim answered his second question also. When Leah merited having her first child, (while Rachel did not merit having children), since she was so righteous she assumed the reason she had the child was to add the missing level of love to her relationship with Yaakov, thereby naming her child after that fact. It was only after she merited having a second child that she realized that not only was there a lack of love but also there must have been a level of dislike also, so it was necessary for God to give her two children; the first to remove the hate and the second to increase the love. This is why the order was switched.

 The question we can ask on these two ideas in the Ohr Hachayim is that on the surface they seem to be contradictory. The first one seems to imply that the reason that Leah did not feel the hatred was that it was so small that it was not discernable to anyone but God. The second Ohr Hachayim seems to imply that it was her righteousness that caused her to give Yaakov the benefit of the doubt and assume that he really did not hate her which implies that there really was a feeling of hate that Leah felt but because of who she was she didn’t believe that it was hatred. The first Ohr Hachayim seems to imply that the greatness was on Yaakov’s part and the second Ohr Hachayim implies that the greatness was on Leah’s part.

 The answer is that the greatness was on both of their parts. If it were not for Yaakov Avinu’s efforts to minimize the feelings of hatred that he had for Leah those feelings would never have been small enough for Leah to give him the benefit of the doubt that there were no feelings of hatred.  On the other hand there was still a small feeling that could have easily been construed as hatred if not for the greatness of Leah that gave Yaakov the benefit of the doubt.

 We see from here the importance of both minimizing any feelings of hatred that we may have for a person and for a person to always give someone the benefit of the doubt. 

 5769 פרשת ויצא

  In this week’s Parsha we learn of the marriage of Yaakov to Rachel and Leah and the subsequent birth of the Shevatim. The Torah tells us that the first four children of Yaakov were born to Leah while Rachel remained barren. The Torah describes the reaction of Rachel to her state of childlessness as follows:

 Rachel saw that she did not bear any of Yaakov’s children and was therefore jealous of her sister Leah. She said to Yaakov give me children or else I will be considered to be dead.

 Yaakov then responded to Rachel, “Am I in place of God that I am withholding from you children?”

 The commentaries all try to explain the dialogue between Yaakov and Rachel. The Rabbeinu Bechai at the end of his commentary brings down an answer from which we can learn a very important lesson. He says:

 Rachel in the end davened to God as is written in the Pasuk, God remembered Rachel and God listened to her prayers.”

 From the Rabbeinu Bechai it seems that this entire time Rachel was not davening to God and only later when she began to daven for children did she merit having children. This was what Yaakov was telling Rachel, don’t look at me daven to God.

 This is very difficult to understand. Rachel Imaynu who was a tremendously righteous woman, would not have thought to daven to God when she saw she was not having children? Prayer is one of the most fundamental tenets of belief in God. It is inconceivable that Rachel Imaynu would not have davened for all those years. 

 The answer can be that Rachel certainly davened to God during those years; however on a certain miniscule level she put her faith in the prayers and power of Yaakov Avinu to enable her to have children. With this idea we can now begin to understand the dialogue between Yaakov and Rachel. Rachel wanted Yaakov to pray for her to have children and seemed to despair of having children if Yaakov did not intercede with God on her behalf. Yaakov responded to Rachel that he is not the one to rely on since he is not keeping her from having children. All the Tefilos and feelings should be concentrated solely to God.

 From this Rabbeinu Bechai we can learn a very valuable lesson about prayer. When we pray we must realize that everything is in God’s hand and we must not put our faith in other intermediaries. For example if someone is sick, he should certainly go to the doctor but he must realize that his final cure is based on God allowing the doctor to make him healthy. He should turn all his energy towards prayer to God. The same thing applies to Segulos. Even though they are wonderful things, we should nevertheless remember that everything that happens is from God and we must turn our hearts and prayer only to Him.

 If we can improve our prayer to God, we should merit seeing the Geulah and davening to God in the Beis Hamikdash.

5768 פרשת ויצא

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah tells us about the birth of the sons of Yaakov Avinu. The Torah when telling over the name of each child tells us why each one was given that particular name. Regarding the name of Yehudah the Pasuk says the following:

 Now I can thank God that I gave birth to four sons.

 The Gemara explains this idea the following way:

 And Rav Shimon bar Yochai said “from the day that God created his world there was no one that thanked God until Leah came and thanked him and then quotes the pasuk about the naming of Yehudah.

 The obvious question is how do we understand this Gemara? We know from Chazal that the Avos thanked God, so how can the Gemara say that Leah was the first person to thank God?

 In order to better understand the Gemara we should look at how the midrash explains the reasoning behind the naming of Yehudah. The midrash brings the following parable:

 Rav Berachya said in the name of Rav Levi it is compared to a kohein who went down to the storehouses and one person gave him a large measurement of maaser while another man gave the kohein a small measure of chulin. The Kohein gave special thanks to the man who gave him the small amount but not the man who gave him the large amount. The man who gave him the large amount asked the kohein why he gave special thanks to the person who gave him the small amount but not to me who gave you so much more. The Kohein responded that you who gave me a lot gave it from my portion but the person who gave me a small amount gave it from his. The same thing occurred to Leah. All the Imahos thought that each would give birth to three of the shevatim and when leah gave birth to her fourth son she was able to say “now I can thank God”.

What it seems from this midrash is that there are two types of thanks that a person can be required to have depending upon the situation they are in. The simplest type of thanks is the simple definition of the word which is appreciation of the good someone did for me. For example, if you go to a store and buy something and you give them a big bill and they give you change we say thank you or if someone passes you something at the table we say thank you. The reason we are thanking them is that we appreciate that they did something for us. However, in the vernacular of the Torah that would be considered recognition of the good someone does for you. This is a most important mitzvah as the many statement of Chazal stress how far we must appreciate the good someone does for us even if it is indirect and even inadvertent.

This is the concept of thanks that we see from all the Avos. However, we can see from the midrash that there is another even higher level of thanks which is called “hoda’ah. The concept of hoda’ah is that there are times that we get something that is totally unexpected and not within the logical parameters of what should be coming to us. This is what made Leah special. She knew that technically she should not have received the fourth son and it was a special gift from God. This was exactly what the Kohein said that when this person gave him Chullin it was something totally unexpected and something that he did nothing to deserve.

 The question is how does this apply to our lives? The answer is that we should constantly look at our lives. God is constantly doing tremendous chesed for us on a daily basis for which we must constantly thank him. However, there are times that God gives us things that are so out of the ordinary that it requires us to thank him with the higher level thanks of hoda’ah.

 5767 פרשת ויצא

 We know from Chazal that we are supposed to learn from the actions of the Avos and Adam Harishon and Noach etc and that when the Torah rebukes the Tzadikim for their actions we are supposed to learn from them. However, when we discuss the sins of the Avos we are talking about sins of the smallest degree which for us would not even be considered sins but only because of their tremendous levels of holiness are they taken to task for these miniscule infractions. Even though we are not on their level of holiness we can still learn from them the important Torah ideals that we need to apply on our own levels. With this in mind let us discussParshas Vayatzei.

 There are times when we can look at an explanation of a commentary on the Parsha and the lesson they are trying to give over is so clear that it just can’t be missed. Most of the ideas we have brought down in the prior parsha sheets were very much like that. However, there are times when the explanation of a commentary is not so clear and in those cases you have to try and be Medayak as best as we can in his words and then by going through the other commentaries on the Parsha you try to bring out what the commentary is saying This week’s Parsha has in it a prime example of this idea.

In this week’s Parsha we see a very interesting Daas Zekainim that can teach us a very important lesson on how to deal with people.

The Torah describes to us how Lavan instead of giving Rachel to Yaakov for a wife instead gave him Leah.  The Torah says as follows:

And it was the morning and it was Leah.

The midrash explains why it was only in the morning that Yaakov realized it was Leah. The midrash  relates the following:

 That entire night Yaakov called Leah by the name of Rachel and Leah answered him that is why Yaakov did not realize that it was Leah until the morning. Then the midrash  describes the conversation between Yaakov and Leah. Yaakov said to Leah you are a cheater the son of a cheater did I not call you Rachel during the night and you answered me. Leah responded did you not do the same thing to your father when he called you Eisav and you answered him.

That is where the midrash ends but the Daas Zekainim adds the following line:

And through the words Yaakov began to hate Leah.

 Let us examine this Daas Zekainim a little more closely.

 It seems that Yaakov did not hate Leah for not telling him during the night that she was Leah. We see this from the fact that the Daas Zekainim does not say due to the trickery rather he said due to her words .In fact Chazal tell us that everything Leah did was for the sake of Heaven in order to be the mother of some of the shevatim. However, it was her response to Yaakov that caused Yaakov to hate Leah.

The question is what about the response of Leah caused Yaakov to hate her? If she was correct in her response to him then why was he angry at her she was right and even if she was mistaken, why should that cause him to hate her, he should just explain to her why it was incorrect?

Furthermore, we see from the commentaries that Leah did not even feel this hatred, it was something so subtle and located deep in the heart of Yaakov that only God  knew about it. Let us try to understand what this “hate” was a little better. As we mentioned above, Chazal tell us that everything Leah did was totally for the sake of heaven because she wanted to be one of the mothers of the shevatim. However as we see from the Sipurno on the Pasuk that says “and he lay with her that night” the following statement:

Yaakov was with Leah willingly when he saw her fervor and the good intentions in this endeavor.

This was said right before the birth of Yissachar.  This seems to imply that up to that point Yaakov didn’t fully appreciate that all of the actions of Leah were only for the sake of heaven.

 The answer I believe relates to how a person responds to  rebuke. There is a famous Chazal that says that King David did two sins and did not have the kingdom taken away from him however King Shaul who only did one sin had the kingdom taken away from him. One of the reasons given is that when Shaul Hamelech was given rebuke by Shmuel he first tried to defend his actions before admitting that he sinned, while Dovid Hamelech was given rebuke by Nassan Hanavi he immediately said “I sinned” .

However, the way Leah responded to Yaakov was to blame the whole thing on him. Her response that I learned to do it from you was for Yaakov not the proper response. A person who would blame the person, who gave them rebuke, even though it may be true, will have trouble growing in spirituality since they are not open enough to accepting rebuke.

This could be the idea here also. The hate that Yaakov felt towards Leah wasn’t personal but rather that he felt that her response wasn’t 100% proper for someone who was going to be the mother of the shevatim and it could be that he felt that the actions of Leah weren’t totally for heaven’s sake.

From this Daas Zekainim  we see the importance that the Torah puts on the ability and the necessity of taking rebuke properly and acting upon it to change ourselves for the better.

This is very important for us. Admitting that we made a mistake is one of the most difficult things we have to do in our lives, but also one of the most important. Only by admitting our mistakes can we grow in our spirituality since without saying we did something wrong we will never feel any need to change.