The Rabbi Midrash Archive
Jackson Snyder Biblical Literature ArcCenter
Vayetze 5762 "And he dreamt, and behold a ladder was set earthward and its top reached heavenward, and angels of God were going up and going down on it." …Genesis 28:12.
There are many midrashim on this fascinating verse about the dream of Jacob's ladder. One obvious question about this verse is why do the angels go up first? Don't angels come from heaven, which would imply they should first descend? One explanation in midrash says that the angels in the land of Israel stay in Israel, so they went up, to be replaced by the angels that take the shift to escort Jacob on his journey outside Israel. Another explanation in midrash is that the angels going up symbolize the rulers of various powerful nations on earth; they go up heavenward, but however high they get, they don't stay up there, they always come back down--their place is not in heaven with God, only Israel merits to go all the way up the ladder.
What does Jacob's ladder symbolize? I believe it represents the connection between God and man. We are planted in the earth, but we have heavenly aspirations.
But why does the action start on the "earth" side? An interesting analogy can be drawn from nature.
We have all witnessed the awesome power of a thunderstorm, with its impressive flashes of lightning and the powerful noise of thunder. I've seen thunderstorms from the cockpit of a small plane, and in that environment you are even more aware of the fragility of people compared with the awesome power of the storm. I’ve sat in amazement at the controls of an airplane with the power all the way off and the plane still climbing 2,000 feet per minute, all from the power of the updraft from the storm.
All of the energy in the thunderstorm seems to be in heaven, and the force seems to charge down toward earth. However, although it happens too fast to be readily noticed by the naked eye, that bolt of lightning from heaven starts from the earth. All of that energy in the heavens remains only potential, until a charge called the streamer goes up from the earth toward the cloud. Only after the streamer has “paved the way” is the energy in the cloud released to create a lightning bolt.
Just as the lightning bolt starts on the ground side, communications with God starts on the ground side. God no longer taps people on the shoulder the way He tapped Moses; if we want to communicate with God, we need to initiate the conversation.
The Hebrew word used for angel, malach, in simple translation means messenger. Angels are God’s messengers. Three angels visited Abraham to deliver the message that Sarah would get pregnant and Sodom and Gemorrah were slated for destruction. There is also a teaching that says whenever we do a mitzvah, and whenever we say a bracha, WE create an angel. That angel carries the message of our good deed to God.
Combining these ideas, we can say that by doing mitzvot and by saying blessings, or responding “amen” to blessings, we create the angels that go up the ladder. We send a messenger to God. When we do that, God returns the favor and sends “angels,” sends messages, our way.
God sends us messages all the time; the problem is that most of the time we are oblivious to the messages. We can find meaning and messages in almost anything that life sends our way. It is of course very common for people to examine their lives and see if there is some kind of “message” in it when they are struck by a tragedy. A columnist for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal some months ago was struggling with cancer, and she wrote a column in which she said she didn’t want to look for any meaning in her cancer, she just wanted to get rid of it. An understandable sentiment; none of us would want to have friends like Job’s, who when he was in the middle of tremendous suffering told him he must have done something really bad and he needed to examine his deeds.
However, the truth is, that it is most often times of tragedy when we go looking for those messages from God. When we ask why is this happening to me. It might be very helpful as an exercise to ask those same kinds of questions when things are going well. Why am I having such an easy life? Did I really do anything to deserve all the blessings I am enjoying? If you can’t understand why you are so well off, perhaps you’ll see God in a new and kinder light. Maybe you’ll even be more inclined to share some of the bounty that God has provided you even though you didn’t really do anything to deserve it.
May we all work together to send many angels bearing messages of our doing mitzvot and good deeds up that ladder toward God, and may the angels, the messages, that God sends your way all be good ones!
Shabbat Shalom.