Hello HawkTorah peoples!  Welcome back to another exciting week.  This week we read Vayeitzei so our focus is on Hosea 12:13 to 14:10.  

We were drawn to 14:2-10.  It begins with “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your G-d for you have fallen because of your sin.”  This verse, and the eight that follow, have become a classic text in Jewish liturgy and tradition.  It is read on Shabbat Shuvah (the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and on Tisha B’Av in some traditions.  Once the Jewish people repent for their sins and return to G-d, G-d takes them back lovingly.  This is evidenced by the line, “I will heal their affliction, Generously I will take them back in love; for My anger has turned away from them (v. 5).”  The act of sincere repentance is enough for G-d to forgive the people and take them back lovingly.  

Shouldn’t sincere repentance then be enough for us?  When someone hurts us and genuinely apologizes, we should be like G-d and forgive them lovingly.  We do not have to have the same relationship with them as we once had, for sometimes the hurt is too intense.  With that, some acts can never be forgiven.  One cannot be expected to forgive someone who has killed someone they love or who has committed great acts of injustice, hate or violence.  However, we need a find a way to let go of even some of our grief.  Holding onto a grudge for something small, or thinking about the injustice too much will only cause us more pain.  If you can, forgive.  If you cannot, try your best to not let it cloud your future happiness.  Let others into your life lovingly and live your best life.  Life's too short to be anything less than happy.  So, find a way to make it that way and surround yourself with joy and love.

Sometimes, it’s not about forgiving others or having others forgive you.  Sometimes, you have to forgive yourself.  Peter Parker knows a thing or two about this.  That’s right, this week we’re going to be talking about our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

For those of you who don’t know the origin story of our favorite web-slinging hero, here’s a quick run-down.  Peter Parker lives with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May.  One day, Peter gets bitten by a radioactive spider while visiting a science exhibit.  He gains super-human strength and agility, and soon creates his alter-ego, Spider-Man.  However, Peter doesn’t just jump right into becoming a superhero.  He instead becomes a wrestler.  In the 2002 film starring Tobey Maguire, Peter does this to earn enough money to buy a car to impress his crush Mary-Jane.  One day he ignores a thief, refusing to step in.  This turned out to bite him in the butt because the same thief goes to later on kill his Uncle Ben.  Peter feels guilty and believes it’s all his fault.  If he had been less selfish and stepped in when he had the chance, Uncle Ben would still be alive.  Eventually Peter catches the thief/murderer and leaves the wrestling scene.  Instead, he becomes the superhero we all know and love.

But why are we telling you about Peter Parker?  It is because he is the perfect example of a different kind of forgiveness.  A forgiveness we often forget about.  We need to learn to forgive ourselves.  Peter was consumed by guilt after the death of his beloved uncle.  His guilt is the reason he fights crime.  He wants to stop the bad guys because he knows what can happen if they are left ignored.  And through all this, he learns forgiveness and healing.  He forgives himself.

It is ironic that the week we chose to talk about Spider-Man, is the same week the Marvel community suffered a massive blow.  The creator of so many of our favorite characters, Mr. Stan Lee, has passed away at the age of 95.  He was a great influence and inspiration to so many.  So this week, we leave you with some of his famous words, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Love,

Vayeitzei

Vayeitzei

What is the meaning of the ladder in Jacob’s dream? The chasidic sage Simchah Bunim  teaches that in spiritual pursuits we have to go step by step. We cannot leap past a step. The work is slow and gradual with each step of our personal development following ineluctably from the previous step.   

He adds that simchah-joy is a requirement for the ascent.  Joy?  Jacob is heading into years of suffering. He will be tricked into working for twenty years for his deceptive uncle, he is deceived into marrying a woman he does not love. His two wives are jealous of one another, and one will suffer childlessness for years.  And to top it off - in the coming week he will confront a brother who he thinks wants to kill him. What kind of happiness is this?

What do we do when we see the world around us broken into little pieces? What do we do with the hurt and suffering?  What is Simchah Bunim pointing towards with this? 

As we survey the wreckage around us. Not only our personal hurt, but the hurt that we have caused to other, of a world broken and twisted, we are sometimes offered a ladder.  We can’t skip a step, as Simchah Bunim points out, of our ascent. The pain might be that critical next step.  Our own mistakes are not incidental to the ascent, then, they are part of it.  The world’s pain is not in the way - it is on the way.  

(54Mosaics/Shep Rosenman)

Click Play to hear Shep’s Song/Answer to the 54Mosaics question for Vayetze, Tender Eyes.

Photo - Courtesy of www.unsplash.com and www.seandbrown.com

Question - If you want to read the question on Tumblr, click here.

Lyrics/Sources - If you want to see lyrics or sources, click here.

Soundcloud - If you want the link to the song on Soundcloud, click here.

Question: Vayetze 5776 - Some traditions say that the eyes are windows to the soul.  What makes eyes tender?  How might you expect tender-eyed people to act?  

Source: And Lavan had two daughters; the name of the older one was Leah and the name of the younger one was Rachel.  Leah had tender eyes; but Rachel had an attractive figure and was beautiful. Genesis 29:16-17

Vayeitzei – 5774

NOVEMBER 8, 2013 MEIR ANOLICK 5774, 

In this week’s Parsha, Yaakov travels to Charan to find himself a wife. He ends up working for his prospective father-in-law, Lavan, for a total of fourteen years a means of earning the right to marry his two daughters Rachel and Leah. During this time, all of Yaakov’s work was for the sake of Lavan’s flock and Lavan’s wealth, but he had not started working on building up his own assets. Finally he arranges a business deal with Lavan by which Yaakov can start earning for the sake of his own household, and works for another six years.

The Torah explains in great detail (30:37-42) how Yaakov used speckled and striped rods and placed them in front of the sheep when they were in heat in order that they would bear the type of sheep that constituted his wages. After all this, Yaakov “became exceedingly prosperous” (30:43). A little further on, however, when Yaakov is speaking to his wives in the field, he tells them of how Lavan was constantly changing his wages. He explained how God has protected him from Lavan’s attempts to harm him, (31:8) “If he would stipulate: ‘Speckled ones shall be your wages,’ then the entire flock bore speckled ones; and if he would stipulate: ‘Ringed ones shall be your wages,’ then the entire flock bore ringed ones.” Here the way Yaakov explains it, you get the impression that he had nothing to do with it, rather it was all a direct act of Hashem, and yet we have so many verses explaining in detail how Yaakov worked to achieve this goal. What changed in the interim?

Just like with his forefathers, Avraham and Yitzchak, Yaakov was blessed with great success in his endeavors by Hashem. However, He did not give this blessing immediately; it is apparent from the verses that the blessing came only after he put in all this hard work to earn for himself. Chazal teach us the importance of putting in our own Hishtadlut, effort, to achieve our goals. While Hashem has infinite blessing to bestow upon us and can choose to do so unconditionally, like a father does with his children, He wishes for us to learn to work for ourselves. He knows that we do not gain from the products of blessing if there were no toil that came with it; it is in the hard work that we put in that we learn and improve. Only once we have started the process and are trying to earn for ourselves, then God intervenes and blesses us with success (assuming we are on the path that is correct for us).

Even Yaakov Avinu, as great as he was, still needed to work for himself before God would grant His blessing. Once He did, however, the success seemed to come of its own accord, as though his efforts were no longer needed and everything came straight from Hashem. This does not mean that he stopped working, as we see later on when he is arguing with Lavan, but the success came so easily he recognized that it was not his efforts, but Hashem’s blessing that made it so.

It is the same with all of us. If we want success in this world, and we are traveling the path that is intended for us, then we must first put in the necessary effort before asking God to help us along. Be it in work, Torah learning, finding a Shidduch, or raising our children, we cannot sit back and wait for Hashem to take care of it for us, but rather we should start working on it ourselves and only then can God’s blessings follow. Shabbat Shalom.