VAYEITZEI: Finding Light Amidst Darkness

Three times a day?!? 

The fact that Jews pray three times a day is part of the international smear campaign of the yetzer hara to make Judaism look as burdensome, repetitive and pointless as possible.

We do not pray "three times a day."

We pray three different prayers.

("Oh man... here he goes swinging his talmudic thumb around and speaking semantics...")

Not to fear -- we will explain.


The complex Self


It is in the nature of words that context is critical.  For example, the "I love you" that you would say to your mother is not the same as the "I love you" that you would say to your spouse.  The "I love you" you said on your honeymoon is different than the "I love you" you will say after 25 years of marriage.  Furthermore, the "I love you" you say before you have to leave on a business trip is not the same as the "I love you" after a fight.  Words don't just appear out of the void; they come from somewhere.  Their source is deep in that wordless place in the heart.  From there, an inner voice is clothed in words, and therefore, very different expressions can lend up looking the same on paper.  So too, depending on the situation from which words emerge, their inner content will differ.

Just as the human being is not a one-dimensional, monolithic entity, the mitzvahs that give him access to himself are similarly multi-dimensional.  We see in the Sh'ma that a person has three aspects to give: his body, his consciousness and very existence, and his material resources.  This is what the verse means when it says:

ואהבת את ה אלקיך בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאדך

"Love Hashem your G!d with all your hearts, with all your soul, and with all your meodecha" 

The talmud explains that "hearts" means the creative desire to give and the creative desire for take (Berachot 54a).  The part of a person which thinks only of itself is the body, which is of course very useful, but very self-centered.

"Soul" is more or less as we can intuit -- it is the non-physical part of us that animates our otherwise lazy body (we will add a little more nuance to this definition shortly).

Lastly, the mysterious word "meodecha" at the end, literally means "your very-ness."  "מאד" means "very much," "overflow."  The aspect of us which is not our body and not our soul, and overflows beyond us, is our property.  The classic image of this is your dog damaging someone's garden while you're asleep.  You had nothing to do with it, but you're responsible.  How can this be?  You have to serve G!d with your dog too.

It happens to be that the Almighty set up our day to access these three parts of the self.

This is one of these many things that are so pervasive to our existence, that we would never stop to think about it -- it's like the smell of air.

No matter what we do during our day, we all start it with our faces plastered into a pillow.  Probably drooling.  When the alarm goes off, you most likely feel like your body weighs around 2000 lbs. with most of the weight localized in your head.  Nothing is sweeter at that moment than sleeping even a few more heavenly minutes.  At this time of day, your body is boss, actively employing your brain to plot and scheme why it actually makes logical sense for X and Y reasons that you should stay in bed.  The triumph of putting your feet on the floor, downing a coffee, getting dressed and out the door, all the way to the minyan, wrapping tefillin, sharpening your cloudy thoughts to be able to cogently speak to G!d -- this is the triumph of tefilat shacharit (the morning prayer).  Those words of prayer are the sweet aroma rising from the sacrifice of your bodily struggle.

This is not the battle we face in the afternoon.  No longer is our mind hazy, nor our body heavy -- quite the contrary -- there's a lot to do!  There are about 300 e-mails to sift through and answer, phone calls to return, projects to finish, projects to start, and a precarious pile of papers next to the blackberry that hasn't stopped buzzing since 10 in the morning.  And time is money.  To pry oneself away from work in the middle of the day -- more specifically, to pry one's mind away from work in the middle of the day -- is the challenge from which the tefila of mincha (the afternoon prayer) draws its power. 

As the sun sets, that the obligation of tefilat arvit or maariv engages.  The נפש soul/mind, which just spent the entire day animating the body, getting involved in all sorts of mundane tasks seeks nothing more at this point than to simply be alone and rest.  While the desire for relaxation comes in part from the inertial body, as we saw in the morning, it also comes in a large part from the mind that needs quiet, needs peace, needs to defragment.  It's clear that at night, at least in the early night, a person is not necessarily physically tired, but still, he longs for tranquility.  The same words a person tried to direct his heart towards twice already, he does so one last time, but from an entirely different context.  It is at a time when one wants his scattered thoughts to come back to him, with all the "would-of's," "could-of's," and "should-of's" of that day, from which maariv rises up with one last push (Maharal Netiv haAvodah ch. 3).

The same words, but three different tefilot.  This is why you can't just "knock off all three" in one shot if you just wanted to get them out of the way.  Each has its specified time.

The three tefilot access different parts of the self.  A Jew who, for example, only serves G!d with his body, but not with his money and soul, is like a disproportioned, caricatured person with huge arms and legs, and tiny head and chest.  G!d wants us to be balanced people.  Only through balance can we see the big picture, and have a relationship with G!d that is whole.


At exile's doorstep

Yaakov Avinu at the opening of parshat Vayeitzei is on the run between a rock and a hard place.  His parents had sent him off to Padan Aram to live with his uncle Lavan, and marry his daughter, far away from his brother Eisav who had vowed to kill him.

Don't be fooled by Lavan's name (לבן meaning "white").  If you're not careful, you may even miss it yourself as you read the parsha.  Be forewarned: He is a white-collar, white washed criminal.  With Eisav, at least, what you see is what you get.  Eisav is an unrefined, blood-thirsty, soup-guzzling guy.  But living with such a dignified individual as Lavan is a much more subtle danger -- the type of evil which creeps in through osmosis.  It is precisely this evil which the Torah calls "darkness" (Bereishit Rabba 2:4).  True darkness.

On the precipice of descending into this exile, we learn that Yaakov prayed and established tefilat arvit (maariv, the evening prayer).  The pasuk says:

"ויפגע במקום וילן שם כי בא השמש וגו"

"He was struck in/by the place and stayed [the night] because the sun had set..." (28:11).

It could have just said "he came" or "he arrived" -- no, he encountered something (check Jeremiah 7:16 for another usage of פגע to connote prayer).  This transpires as the sun was setting -- as the light was drawn back and the world faded to black.

The Talmud says that all the Avot (our forefathers) established tefilot: Avraham - Shacharit, Yitchak - Mincha, and Yaakov - Maariv (Berachot 26b, Rambam Hilchot Melachim 9:3).  I will leave it to you to map the first two here to our explanations of Shacharit and Mincha above, but we will see that through the lens of Yaakov, we can see a further depth into what Maariv is, and through the lens of Maariv, into ourselves and the Jewish people at large.

Nighttime is a time when the light has been sucked out of the world.  The connections between us are dissolved.  A society is turned into individuals.  At some point at night, maybe even in those last moments before he drifts into sleep, a person must face who he is alone.  This is what exile is -- a loss of vision of the big picture -- how we each fit into the whole.  This is what Yaakov had ahead of him on his way to Padan Aram.  He was going far away from the sources of spiritual clarity he had been weaned on.  He would have to survive alone.

But if we take a step back, we see clearly that exile is more than this.  Like a parent who is teaching his child to walk, he lets go to allow him to experience being alone.  It is only when the child feels that he is alone, that he must depend on himself -- that is the moment of growth.  All the while, the parent is there to catch him and move obstacles out of his way.

The Avot are called "Avot" "fathers" and not "החסידים הראשונים" "the first righteous people" because they paved the path for us (Maharal Netiv haAvodah 3).  Their actions literally gave birth to the Jewish people.  Yaakov is the first Jew to go into true exile.  As such, he decided that a connection with G!d must be established at the root for exile to be a process of growth and not downfall.  The child who believes his father abandoned him is bound to despair, but the one who knows he is there has the confidence to take those steps alone.


In the thick of exile 

The vast majority of our history can be accurately described as "exile."  The rabbis actually identify the root of exile in reality in the 2nd pasuk of the Torah -- well before the Jewish people even came to be (B"R 2:4).  Each exile more subtle and therefore darker than the previous one...  until we arrive at our current exile -- the last exile -- one so dark that it is characterized by our total lack of awareness that we are in exile (*this last concept especially requires contemplation*).

The Meshech Chochma (R Meir Simcha miDvinsk) points out: in the same way that we know that prophecy can only come to the prophet outside of the holy land, once he has received prophecy in the holy land, so too, only when the Jewish people deeply recognize that we descend from greatness -- from intimate connection to the Almighty -- from kings, priests, prophets and righteous people -- and live a continuation of that legacy, then we will see light amidst the darkness of our exile (vayiGash 46:2).  This is the pathway of connection that Yaakov sought to open before his exile and his children's exile by going to המקום "the place," the place where his father and grandfather had the most intimate connection to G!d, Jerusalem.  That connection is there, we just have to realize it.  It is much closer to us than we can imagine to realize that our Father is here to catch us.