Papa was a-Rollin' Stones

When I moved into my current apartment, the previous owners (who happen to be friends of mine) left a few items for me: cleaning supplies, some chairs, salt and pepper shakers, a shower curtain. The usual stuff.

Oh – and one other thing: a rock collection.

For over two years, I have walked by the pantry hundreds of times, glanced at this bunch of rocks, and wondered why I don’t just throw them away. I don’t know the specific history of these rocks: where they come from, when they were found, their stories. I don’t have a particular fondness for these rocks (or for rock collections, per se). But I can’t bring myself to discard them. There is something about the intersection of the natural world (rocks) and human agency (the choice of these specific rocks for this particular collection) that makes this gathering of stones special, that gives them added weight. Perhaps, even, it lends them a measure of holiness.

Our forefather, Ya’akov, had some insight into the significance of stones. The stone motif – gathering, arranging, pushing, pulling, wrestling, struggling, and even anointing stones – courses through this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitze. This emphasis on stone imagery sheds lights on the struggles and challenges that Ya’akov faces as he evolves, and points toward lessons that we can draw from Ya’akov’s narrative.

As Vayeitze opens, we find Ya’akov in a moment of transition. His life until now has been filled with grappling. Even before he was born, he struggled with his twin brother in his mother’s womb. His very name, Ya’akov, connects to how he grabbed his brother’s heel as the two emerged into the world. Through deception and manipulation, he acquired Esav’s birthright and Yitzhak’s blessing. Now, to avoid the vengeful wrath of his brother, he flees for his life toward Haran, the birthplace of his mother, Rivka.

Ya’akov is running toward the unknown, and he is caught - literally and metaphorically - between a rock and a hard place. As darkness and the terror of a night alone in the wilderness envelops him, Ya’akov assembles stones to form a pillow (or, perhaps, a kind of protective shield next to his head), and falls asleep.

In this hard place, Ya’akov dreams of a tzulam (ramp/ladder) upon which angels are ascending and descending. The ramp has one end firmly planted in the earth, the other reaching toward the heavens. Here, Ya’akov encounters God for the first time, and God wastes no time in promising the full force of covenantal blessing to Ya’akov. God assures Ya’akov that his descendants will spread out in every direction, throughout the land, in a brilliant image of expansion and fullness.

This experience of revelation might have provided clarity and a sense of decisive calm for Ya’akov, but Ya’akov’s reaction is complex. He expresses awe in recognition that he is standing astride an intersection of the natural and spiritual worlds, and his actions reflect this. Ya’akov lifts the stone that had served as his pillow and erects it as a pillar, and then pours oil upon the pillar to further transform it into a manifestation of gratitude awe toward God. Ya’akov’s posture is heavenward, and this is reflected in his renaming of the place from Luz to “Beit El” – the House of God.

But Ya’akov then does something unprecedented in the Torah: he utters a vow that offers conditional agreement with God’s promise. Ya’akov’s acceptance of God’s covenant hinges on whether God will ensure his physical needs and his safety. As Robert Alter points out, Jacob is “the suspicious bargainer – a ‘wrestler’ with words and conditions just as he is a physical wrestler, a heel-grabber.”

The stone imagery here expresses aspects of Ya’akov’s identity. He is the grandson of Avraham – the founding father, the man of action who is on the move, whose life is on display to everyone around him. But Ya’akov is also the son of Yitzhak – the meditative, contemplative man whose internal life often seems richer than his external one. Ya’akov brings together the external and internal forces, but his is not a simple synthesis; instead, the results are often in the form of struggle, the craggy edges of unhewn stone. It is no accident that the stones represented in Ya’akov’s story denote liminal space; they are landmarks of the liminal nature of Ya’akov’s life.

Two other key episodes in Vayeitze display Ya’akov’s stone motif. The first occurs after Ya’akov leaves Beit El and arrives at a well near Haran. Seeing Rachel for the first time, he responds by hefting a giant stone (with seemingly superhuman strength) from the mouth of the well. The symbolism is palpable: Ya’akov grapples with a stone that closes off the opening to water that is essential to life. In opening the way toward sustaining life, Ya’akov symbolically marks the beginning of his new role as husband and father. But the struggle with this stone may also foreshadow the quarreling that will ensue between Rachel and Leah over their respective successes (and failures) in giving birth, and in particular it links to the closing of Rachel’s womb and the pain and suffering that she will ultimately endure in childbirth.

The final encounter with stone appears at the end of Vayeitze, and signifies a return to the beginning of this story. Ya’akov is, once again, fleeing – this time from the very place to which he had first fled. Lavan confronts Ya’akov, and in the resolution of their tense showdown, he offers to make a pact. Ya’akov’s immediate response is to turn, yet again, to stone:

And Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. And Jacob said to his kinsmen, “Gather stones.” And they fetched stones and made a mound and they ate there on the mound. And Lavan called it Yegar-Sahudutha but Jacob called it Gal-Ed. And Lavan said, “This mound is witness between you and me this day.” Therefore its name was called Gal-Ed. (Genesis 31: 45 – 48)

This encounter with stone is in part an attempt by Ya’akov to create permanence, to leave his mark. But the very use of stones for this purpose creates a tension between transience and durability. Stones can be re-fashioned to form something that has the semblance of permanence, but they remain, essentially and elementally, globs of dust (and molecules and sub-atomic particles and so on…). The Jewish custom of placing stones on a grave marker serves as a profound acknowledgement and even embracing of this insoluble tension between ephemeral reality and the desire for a lasting legacy.

For Ya’akov, these stones at Gal-Ed are also a border, a demarcation of his transition into the next stage of his life. We will see in next week’s parsha that, after having escaped Lavan, Ya’akov is once again between a rock and a hard place. Esau is now coming to meet him. Ya’akov prays to God, makes defense arrangements, and sends gifts to appease his estranged brother. When night again descends upon him, Ya’akov sends everyone with him across the Jabbok, and then he remains, alone.

In the silence, in the darkest place of night, Ya’akov neither sleeps nor dreams. After years of wrestling with inanimate objects, with words and food and blessings and stones and vows and prayers, Ya’akov confronts and wrestles an adversary in the form of an ish (man). Reaching a stalemate, Ya’akov is asked to speak his name, to bear witness to who he has been. He answers that he is Ya’akov – the one who grabs at the heel. He is told that he is not Ya’akov, but Yisrael – the one who struggles with his earthly and spiritual sides and is able to transcend, to reflect the image of God in a human landscape.

Night leaves, and dawn arrives. Ya’akov emerges, battered and permanently wounded, but in a sense more shalem – more complete - than ever.

Throughout his life, Ya’akov did not turn away from the hard stuff, but instead grappled again and again with stones. These conflicts brought him pain, but were also the source of his spiritual energy. In our own historical moment, in a period when it sometimes feels that the night is endlessly deep, endlessly dark, Ya’akov’s struggles point a way toward hope.

That’s what I’ll think of the next time I walk by the pantry.

Shabbat shalom.


(Note: In preparing this D’var Dorot, I drew upon the wonderful translation with commentary of The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter.)



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Michael Simon was a Dorot Fellow in 2001-2002. He is the Associate Director of Harvard Hillel and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Divrei Dorot is an initiative to strengthen the online Dorot community. To volunteer to write one of the Divrei Dorot, please email Andrea Wershof Schwartz (Dorot 2004-5) at andrea.schwartz@mssm.edu.
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