The Ladder

One of the most striking Biblical dreams is that of Jacob and the ladder. Jacob is about to embark on his personal exile from his family and land to enter the world of his corrupt uncle Laban. Just before he leaves Israel he rests on the future Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which was also the site of the binding of his father, Isaac. Jacob falls asleep and dreams of a ladder with angels ascending and descending. Classically, this scene is interpreted as the departure and elevation of the angels that accompanied Jacob in Israel and the descent of the angels that would accompany him in his journeys. Kabbalistically this “ladder,” or sulam, represents the ladder of worlds, the Seder Hishtalshalut, and is the connection between G-d and the ethereal with our physical world. The conceptual ladder suggests that one may both ascend and descend. The purpose of ascent is to gain a higher perspective, a view from above.

The purpose of descent is to fulfill the purpose in creation. In fact, both are essential. Only when one ascends the ladder of creation does one perceive true reality, allowing a sharper and more focused perspective upon re-entry into earthly spheres.

This ascent and descent is traditionally called prayer. On the most basic level, prayer is turning to G-d to request one’s needs. On a Kabbalistic level, the aim of prayer is to attach the soul to its source, and to refine and elevate the crass nature of one’s baser drives and passions. These two goals go hand in hand. Through elevation and attachment—ascent—one may refine one’s character through a deeper understanding of the purpose of creation. Hence the Kabbalists write that the knowledge of this chain of creation is a great Mitzvah, in that it brings man to “know G-d,” love, and stand in awe of Him.

In truth, no mortal being has any notion of G-d Himself. What is meant by the phrase to “know G-d” is to be fully cognizant and sensitive to the Shechinah, and to totally integrate that presence in all echelons of human experience.

This is why we pray each day. Man stands at the crossroads of creation. His body is made from earth while his soul was literally breathed into him by G-d. Man embodies heaven and earth and in his daily schedule oscillates between the two.

At times he is spiritually uplifted and detached from the mundane.

At other times he is totally immersed in the materialistic quagmire. How does he maintain a healthy Human/Divine equilibrium? The mystic approach to this question is from a totally different and fresh perspective.

Kabbalah explains that this fusion occurs in the reactor of prayer. Upon ascending the ladder, and touring the “higher worlds” while rising level after level, the view from above is stunning. The material world below is almost a joke, pathetically insignificant in the huge Divine Light accessible in the higher realms. At the height of meditation the soul experiences a spiritual ecstasy so powerful that it wishes to expire and leave the earthly container.

And then, at the height of the flight, it dissolves in awe, standing before the Almighty Himself. All notions of ego and self are dispelled and the pervading feeling is one of Atzmut only. At that level, one senses that the purpose of creation is for the Nefesh Elokit to descend through the worlds, become enclothed in the earthly body, and immersed in daily routine engagement. In Judaism, action is the main thing. The mystic is not the ascetic with his head in the clouds; rather he understands that a deep knowledge of the higher realms brings one to a much richer involvement in this world. It is specifically in the “lowest of all realms” that one can make a dwelling place for the Divine. G-d desires to have an abode in this world.

This is achieved by the soul’s descent and its transformation of physical darkness into spiritual light, and of the bitter into the sweet.

______________________________________________________________________________

28:10And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

28:11And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.

28:12And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

28:13And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;

28:14And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

28:15And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

28:16And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.

28:17And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

28:18And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.

28:19And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.

28:20And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on,

28:21So that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the LORD be my God:

28:22And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.

______________________________________________________________________________

DON'T LOOK DOWN
Jacob's ladder is a metaphor for prayer.

Let's look at the famous dream in which Jacob sees a vision of a ladder. The feet of the ladder are planted firmly on the ground and the head reaches the heavens, with angels ascending and descending.

G-d is Infinite, yet He created a finite world with finite beings in it. How do we reconcile the finite with the Infinite? Just like the ladder in Jacob's dream, we are provided with our own ladder - the mystical Zohar text tells us Jacob's ladder is a metaphor for prayer.

Through prayer (and the performance of the Torah's commandments), stage-by-stage, rung-by-rung, we are connecting the finite, material world with the Infinite. The base may be rooted on the earth, the finite, but the highest step reaches the Heavens, the Infinite.

Life is compared to a ladder. The deciding factor is not how high you have reached, but which way you are going - up or down. Better to be at the bottom yet ascending than at the top but descending.'

A story is told of a very smart child who, despite being very young, had managed to climb very high up a tall tree. When his father asked him how he had managed it, he told him "simple - I didn't look down".

It is well known that one way to avoid or at least decrease the fear of heights is "not to look down". So too, in our lives, by always aspiring to go one better, looking towards the future and not looking down, backwards, into the past, the task of moving on to the next rung of the ladder becomes far less formidable.

______________________________________________________________________________

The Interpretation Thereof

28:10 The great Torah scholar Rashi says that the reason we are told that Jacob leaves Beersheba is to let us, the reader, know that whenever a city says goodbye to a righteous person - - a Tzaddik, that city loses something special.

In Judaism, the family is considered the holiest place in the world. The religious life of the Jew is centered on family and not the synagogue. This is typified by the Sabbath which is celebrated in the home. Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes and thus the starter of the Jewish family and he is going to begin such by first leaving a city known for its peace and traveling to a hostile place - outside the Holy Land in Haran, the city that Abraham was told to leave. But since Jacob is Jacob, Haran gets a holy person.

According to the Midrash, when Jacob leaves Beersheba for Haran he doesn't go directly there. The Midrash says that he first goes to the famous yeshiva (school) run by his famous great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather Eber and his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather Shem, Noah's son and fellow shipmate in the Ark.

A careful look at the ages of people mentioned in the book of Genesis will show that Shem and Eber were still alive when Jacob was alive. It is interesting to note that when Abraham was alive, Noah was too!

According to the Midrash, Shem and Eber opened a school to teach people the way of the one true God. This school, or academy, was famous.

In Chassidic teaching the verse is said to indicate the journey of the soul. The Soul leaves its place 'above' and descends into the world. The world here is denoted as Haran, a word that denotes anger. The idea simply is that the soul travels to a place where it is to inspire anger against the evil inclination that resides in us all.

28:11It is said that he place Jacob comes to is the place where his father Isaac bound himself and allowed his father Abraham to offer him as a sacrifice.

In the Hebrew a word used in the phrase "And he spent the night there" is v'yalon and the word yalon is a word indicating 'complaints.' Again, in Chassidic teaching this indicates that the soul has complaints about being sent from above to this world.

Chassidic teaching also says that by mentioning that the sun had set we are being told that basically Jacob is in the world because the light of God does not shine as bright here as it does in Heaven. The cure for the soul's pain is to take from 'the stones of the place.' According to the Sefer Yetzirah ( a mystical or kabbalistic document), the word 'stones' represents the letters of the Torah; while the commentators of the Talmud say that the 'place' is indicative of GOD, who is called  "The place of the world."  The stones are therefore the words of the Torah.

28:12 Since the text states first that angels were going up and then that other angels were coming down some say that the angels escorting Jacob throughout Israel were finished with their job and the angels who were to escort him in Haran were coming down to take their place. Other commentators such as Nachmanides and Ibn Ezra show that this is how angels work, they travel up to receive commands form God and then come back down to carry them out.

On another level the ladder represents the connection of Heaven to earth. The ladder shows the need to use the intellect and take a step by step approach to God. The angels represent the emotion involved, Jacob feeling the presence of angels. God, though, is right there. You don't need the ladder and you don't need the emotion - He is simply there. According to the Midrash the ladder had 4 steps. The Kabbalists teach that - The Shacharith,  the Jewish morning service, is divided, according to the Kabbalistic teachers, into 4 steps - The Introductory Readings, the Verses of Praise, the Shema and its blessings, and the Amidah. Some of the great Jewish mystics interpret these steps as the steps one must climb to reach the highest levels of spirituality. The four levels of meditation are action (God created us in His image and through the body we receive blessings), speech (bridging the gap between the spiritual and the physical - we can speak to God, thus transcending our animal nature, thought (the only means we have to 'think' about God) and the level above that which is the experience of "nothingness" (a quiet state where all thought and distraction has ceased and your spirit is ready for a pure encounter with the Divine).

28:13 This expression the "Lord was standing over..." can also be expressed as 'standing on.' In this latter case we can think of Jacob as a Chariot of the Lord. In simple terms, God can use Jacob as a vehicle.

 In this verse God also states that the lineage of His Chosen is through Abraham, then Isaac, and now Jacob. He states that Abraham is his father as Abraham is the spiritual father of the nation. Interestingly, in the Torah this is the only instance where God says that He is the God of someone living, in this case Isaac. Usually, it is not until someone has completed their journey on earth that God will say that He is the God of that person since it is conceivable, like in the case of Solomon, that someone can turn away from Him before their death. It is probable that Isaac merits this distinction since he was consecrated as a sacrifice to God on that day where he voluntarily had himself bound and placed on the altar under his father Abraham's knife.

28:14 God makes a promise to Jacob that his descendants will literally spread out over the world and that their influence will spread, as well. The various exiles alone have fulfilled this promise. God also says that the families of the earth will be blessed by their seed. Interestingly, aside from the probable intent that God is referring to the messiah, it is interesting to make an arguable note that countries that have taken the Jews into their borders have also prospered economically by their presence. As an editorial comment It may be that when Christians embrace Jews, everyone benefits.

28:16Jacob is astonished to find God here. Perhaps he thought that God lived in Heaven only and not also on the earth! Jacob may have not realized fully that "all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD." (Num 14:21) It is also said that when one is busy with worldly affairs that he is on the level of Jacob and that when he has repented and pursued the spiritual that he is on the level of Israel (Jacob's two names were Jacob and Israel). In the former state he is considered to be asleep. When Jacob wakes up from his sleep he realizes that he was and is and always will be standing near the King, since God is everywhere.

28:17Jacob realizes that right here, where he is standing is the Gate of Heaven and appears shocked that he did not recognize it as such. At the same time, Jacob may also be saying that wherever you are - you standing at the Gate of Heaven.

28:18 And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.

Note that throughout the Bible whenever the righteous are going to undertake a task for God that they always wake up early in the morning. On this morning though something strange apparently happened. Back in Verse Gen 28:11 Jacob placed stones around his head, but when he awoke the "stones" had become a single "stone." Jacob anoints the stone with oil. In the Torah oil is associated with thanking God for Holiness. Wine is associated with the joy of food and water with thanking God for nature.

28:19 The word Bethel means "House of God." An interesting note concerning Luz, which is Jerusalem, is that this is the term for that portion of the body that always remains. The Luz is located in the base of the spine and neither decays nor can it be destroyed by burning. It is thought that since this part of the physical body always remains that it will be used in the resurrection. In context, the city of Jerusalem may be buried under, but it will always come back.

28:20 Jacob seems to fear that he will commit some error that will cause him to lose God's protection. He has faith in God, but not himself. There is in Chassidic thought significance that Jacob prays for food to eat and clothes to wear, since after all it appears redundant. Why else would you want food except to eat it and clothes except to wear them? Through comparing the usage of the word "wear" in Hebrew (lilvosh) used here in relationship to wearing clothes and later in the torah in reference to the priests being commanded to "dress up" (lilvosh) in 8 types of clothes on Yom Kippur it is inferred that performing actions, mitzvoth, brings blessing. Placing the show bread on the table in front of the altar brings bread, sacrifices bring meat, and so on. [It is not an example of being 'legalistic', it is simply that performing God's laws and commandments lines us up in proper stance to be able to receive blessings.] Furthermore, it is said that when a righteous person performs various actions he is able to bless the world through those actions. While Jacob lived with Isaac his actions brought blessings, but because he is now leaving Israel and returning to a land of idolatry in Haran he is concerned that his actions won't have effect. Jacob therefore prays that not only will his needs be met but that in turn he will still have the power to bring blessing on the world - - food for eating and clothing for wearing.