Yaakov suffers.. His is a hard lot, symbolized by the rock he puts his head on. He is born into strife with his brother, and it follows him into his marriages and family life. He works tirelessly only to be cheated by his father in law, and, ever lurking in the background, is a brother who wants to kill him. Nor does his story really get better in the coming weeks; it gets worse with the heartache over the loss of his dearest son.
We, too, feel heartache at his woes, and sometimes see reflected in them our own suffering, struggles and sorrow, and the aching reality of hopelessness that surrounds it all. Is this what it means to be a human in this world? It sometimes feels like it is.
And yet. And yet, despite it all, there is one saving grace, and perhaps this is the only thing that can save us, too. Yaakov is accompanied. It doesn’t spare him pain and it doesn’t spare him hardship. Neither the God who promises “I will be with you” nor the angels who bring him into the parsha and then back out again, none of them stop the difficulty, prevent the rocks from piling up (though they do stop Lavan from killing him). What they offer is levayah, accompaniment, a sense of not being alone in the pain.
And this makes all the difference. For us, too, this makes all the difference, to not be alone in the pain. When we can open ourselves to feeling this ever-present divine holding, to trust and rest in its steadfastness, when we can turn towards the angels that surround us – both human and divine – and know they are with us, when we can be such angels for one another, we can bear the pain. Sometimes there is nothing else, but maybe that is enough. Maybe that is all there is.
At the end of his life, Yaakov speaks of the “angel that saved me from all evil.” What angel was that? Maybe once in his life, in this parsha, he is rescued by a divine message to Lavan not to harm him. But “all evil”? Yaakov experienced plenty of evil! Perhaps this is what he means: we are saved from “all evil” by being accompanied. The only true evil is to be abandoned, and we are never abandoned. We are saved, and save one another, by keeping company.
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