Torah Thoughts
Genesis 28:10 – 32:3 Parshat Va-yetze
December 6, 2008 9 Kislev, 5769
Remember the V-8 commercials? When the guy in the ad would slap his head and say, “Wow, I cudda had a V-8.” This week’s Torah portion always reminds me of that commercial. Jacob, on his escape route, running away from a tricked father and way-too-angry brother, camps out for a night. He has a weird dream in which he sees angels going up and down a ladder. He hears a blessing from G!d, and when he wakes up from his dream, he slaps his head (well, I see him as doing that, the text doesn’t say so) and he says: “G!d was in this place and I, i didn’t know it.” (See Rabbi Lawrence Kushner’s book with the same words as the title for an explanation of the double “i”. )
Lots of us have had that kind of experience. We think a place or an experience is going to be just the usual kind of thing, and then all of a sudden we realize after it is over that it was special, awesome, strange, amazing. We most often see the places where G!d has been. We read and talk about our desire to see God, to respond to some of the awesome nature of our existence, thinking that somehow “seeing is believing”. Many of us ask for and await “a sign” of G!d in our lives, some remarkable, unexplainable feat to convince of us beyond any doubt of G!d’s existence.
Even Moses, our most famous teacher and prophet, asks G!d to allow him to “behold G!d’s Presence”. It’s an odd request from a guy who has been sitting on a mountain for 40 days taking dictation from that very God. But G!d’s answer is even stranger: G!d will allow Moses to see G!d’s Presence, but not G!d’s face, only the back of God, whatever that might be.
Moses is shown that he cannot see G!d directly. He can only see G!d’s Presence in the past tense, where G!d has been. So too, with us. We also are allowed to see G!d in the past tense – where G!d’s Presence has touched us personally and has touched the world. When we are filled with awe and wonder at the world, when we find the places where G!d has been, we are as close as we can be to G!d. That’s what Jacob experiences in this week’s Torah portion.
In another Biblical “wow” moment, Elijah the prophet told of how he experienced the Presence of G!d: The Holy One passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rock by the power of G!d; but the Holy One was not in the wind. After the wind – an earthquake; but G!d was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, fire; but the Holy One was not in the fire. And after the fire, a thin voice of silence.”
G!d is not only in the big deals, the high places, the “special effects”, but rather is present in the voices of silence, touching hearts, shaping souls. According to Rabbi David Wolpe, “G!d does not reach down to remove tumors. But G!d grants courage, helps us to hope, strengthens our souls, and stiffens our spine. G!d helps community cohere. In the stillness and isolation of illness, we can hear G!d’s voice of silence speak to us, and through us.”
We can see G!d’s Presence in our own lives most often and clearly when we look back and see acts of loving kindness, which are reflections of G!d. As human beings, as reflections of G!d’s image, we can see G!d in the work of our hands and the ways human beings reflect G!d’s Presence.
We do G!d’s work with our own hands. We are the vehicles through which G!d’s Presence is experienced on earth, even if it’s in a still small voice, even if it’s just from the back, just in hindsight, even if it’s in weird dreams that will be interpreted and reinterpreted forever.
Jacob has this amazing moment when he realizes that the place where he went to sleep was a holy place, not because of the particular rocks there, but because this was a place where he saw God, where he experienced the holy. Think back in your life. Are there places where G!d has been, and you didn’t know it? Are we the guy in the commercial, realizing, after the fact, that we were in the Presence of G!d?
May we all be blessed with awareness of G!d’s Presence in our lives, in the amazing moments, and in the small, incredible insights we have when we hear the thin voice of silence. May the works of our hands be pleasing to G!d, as they reflect G!d’s Presence.

Rabbi H. Rafael Goldstein, BCC
Spiritual Life Coach
Dynamics of Hope Consultants
www.dynamicsofhope.com
ravrafael@earthlink.net
602-459-1819
