It’s hard to be the little guy all the time. I hope you can feel some of my pain. There is research that says that tall men have an unfair advantage over the rest of us. Most US Presidents were tall men. Check this out. Abe Lincoln, the tallest President in history was 6ft 4. So was the “Master of the Senate,” and President, LBJ. All the rest of these men were over 6 ft: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, FDR, JFK, Ford, Reagan, HW Bush, Clinton, Obama. There is all this hype about Tim Tebow and his “davenning” after great plays. He thanks the Lord for his prowess on the field but he’s also 6 foot 3 and 236 pounds. That doesn’t hurt either. Taller is better. Bigger is better.
Unfortunately the Jewish People has always been the little guy. Think of David as he faced Goliath. Think of Isaac and Jacob, smaller and weaker than their older brothers, Ishmael and Esav. Think of Joseph, number 11 brother in a family of 12 boys. Jews, from Biblical times, always felt physically inferior to the ruling powers. Jews weren’t Egypt; they weren’t Babylonia; they weren’t Persia or Greece or Rome. Always smaller and always subjugated. It was not an easy life, to be a Jew. It’s a lot better now, but it’s still not so easy. In many ways, our good life is still subject to the will of world powers bigger than our own. That’s why we remind ourselves to be ever vigilant. The Shoah was just 65 plus years ago. In Jewish history, that is not a lot of time, so we must be ever vigilant.
We see this very concern in the Midrash. There is a particular Midrash I want to look at commenting on our parasha today.
First, the story. Jacob flees the Holy Land in fear of Esav’s wrath. On his way out of the Land, he comes upon a place. Jacob goes to sleep taking a stone as his pillow and has the famous dream of a ladder with its base on the ground, going up into the heavens. Angels are going up and down on the ladder. When Jacob awakes, he is awed by the place and calls it “Shaaar Hashamayim,” the gate of the heavens, meaning, that God and His word enter and exit the world from this place.
Understandably, then, Rashi and others see this place as none other than Mt Moriah, the future sight of the Holy Temple and that rock Jacob laid his head upon as he slept was the “Even Shtiyah,” the Foundation Stone of the Temple. The Muslims believe that they uncovered that stone on the Temple Mount, which they feature inside the “Dome of the Rock.” This, of course, just makes Jews feel even smaller because the Muslims were overlords of Jerusalem on and off, mostly on, since the 7th century and built the mosques on the Temple Mount for the first time in the year 710.
But the point is, Jacob’s stone, became the “Even Shtiyah,” the Foundation Stone of the Temple Mount and according to tradition, Jews from that time forward, had a direct line to God: “Shaar Hashamiyim:” a special gate into heaven; a gate reserved exclusively for the Jewish People.
Let’s go then, to this mysterious ladder. The text says, “and angels of God were ascending it and descending on it,” olim v’yordim bo.” Now that’s strange because if God set up this ladder, you would think that angels of God, originating in heaven, would be first descending (from heaven, down to earth) first. So it should have said, the angels are descending and only then say, ascending. Angels come down first and then go back up. But the text says it’s the opposite.
The Midrash Tanchuma compiled in the 4th century CE, retranslates the word, “melachim,” which we have been translating as angels, to another of its meanings, “messengers.’ The Midrash says these messengers were human, thus originating on earth. So they should go up, first and then descend. The Midrash says that these messengers are princes of the great powers of the world. Listen to the Midrash, “the Princes of Babylon ascended (the rungs of the ladder] seventy steps and then descended. Media, fifty two [rungs up] and [then]descended. Greece, one hundred steps [up] and descended. Edom ascended and no one knows how many.”
These are the great nations of the world, known to the authors of Midrash Tanchuma: Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. They interpret Jacobs dream, therefore, to mean that all these nations ascended in the world, and God essentially defeated them and send them back down. Except for the last one: Edom, or Rome. The authors of the Midrash were living under the cruel whip of the Roman Empire and thus they say, “Edom ascended the ladder and no one knows how many wrungs they went up.” Rome was still around. But the authors of the Midrash were hopeful and thus wrote: “Thus said the Holy One blessed be He to him [Jacob]: ‘Therefore fear not, O my servant Jacob…..neither be dismayed, Oh Israel, Even if thou sees him, so to speak, ascend and sit by Me, [after] will I bring him down. As it is stated in the prophet Ovadia [himself a descendent of Edom, by the way] “ though thou exalt thyself as an eagle [a symbol of the Roman Empire] and thou set they nest among the stars, then will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.” This is echoed by Sforno, a Italian commentator, 16th century, as he writes “Ascending and descending –indeed, ultimately, having gained ascendency, the gentile princes will go down, and the Almighty who forever stands above, will not forsake His people as He promised…”
So these great powers all ascended on the world scene and at least to the Israelites, seemed to control the whole world. But in the Jewish imagination, all these great empires with their power and arrogance would ultimately be defeated by the hand of God. Even the Roman Empire which the Jews had endured for roughly 500 years, would one day fall, according to the words of the 4th century Midrash quoting the Prophet. And of course, the Prophet was right. Rome did fall and the Jews remained.
Jewish sacred literature? The Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash. What is generated in these sacred texts is an image of a People, though physically tiny compared to the nations, has an outsized role in the workings of the world. According to the Jewish imagination, we are a Chosen People. Special and distinct. We were little, but we had a direct line to God and it was God alone who would see to our ultimate survival and even triumph.
Now I guess that makes sense. The little guy pretending in his sacred literature, to be big and important.
But here is the thing. We did survive, in fact, as all those other massive empires fell. You may be familiar with what Mark Twain once wrote about the Jews as he witnessed the rise of Zionism around the turn of the century. He wrote: “The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then . . . passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts. … All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
The secret of his immortality? Perhaps our parasha today with its mysteries points to the mystery of the survival of our People. Perhaps Jacob’s stone was the “Even Shtiyah,” the Foundation Stone of the Holy Temple. God says to Jacob in that dream, “I am the Lord, God of Abraham and your father and the God of Isaac; the ground upon which you are lying, to you will I give it and to your descendants. Your offspring shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall spread out powerfully westward, eastward northward and southward; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your offspring.”
Look: it’s not so great to always be the little guy. But then again……..
