VAYEITZEI | Shifting from Conflict to Shared Dilemma

וַיִּיקַץ יַֽעֲקֹב מִשְּׁנָתוֹ וַיֹּאמֶר אָכֵן יֵשׁ יְהֹוָה בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה וְאָֽנֹכִי לֹא יָדָֽעְתִּי: וַיִּירָא וַיֹּאמַר מַה־נּוֹרָא הַמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה אֵין זֶה כִּי אִם־בֵּית אֱלֹהִים וְזֶה שַׁעַר הַשָּׁמָֽיִם

Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely Eternally Present is present in this place, and I did not know it!” With awe, he said, “How awesome is this, this place! This is none other than the abode of Elohim, Godding of Creation, and that is the gateway to heaven.”

Genesis 28:16-17

 כִּי כָל־הָעֹשֶׁר אֲשֶׁר הִצִּיל אֱלֹהִים מֵֽאָבִינוּ לָנוּ הוּא וּלְבָנֵינוּ וְעַתָּה כֹּל אֲשֶׁר אָמַר אֱלֹהִים אֵלֶיךָ עֲשֵֽׂה

[Rachael and Leah together responded:] “Truly, all the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. Now then, do just as God has told you.”

Genesis 31:16

From beginning to end, Torah, like other spiritual paths, is clear that conflict will arise within families and between people. This is true even for the future in the Promised Land. This week’s Torah portion continues to highlight the conflicts and journeys to reconciliation among the third generation from Abraham. It recounts and deepens the physical and spiritual journeys of Jacob and his twin brother Esau, who compete with each other for their parents’ love and attention.

Here, too, is the story of sisters Leah and Rachel, who I want to celebrate as models of the healing of generations that can take place, so that conflict is transformed into shared dilemma. The story highlights many of the conditions that give rise to conflict, beginning with the unexamined passing on of collective ancestral trauma. Rachel and Leah, too, are switched by their father on Rachel’s wedding night to Jacob, giving rise to jealousy and strife between the sisters.

Jacob and Esau wrestle in their mother Rebecca’s womb and are birthed in stress. Jacob/Yaacov, clings onto Esau’s heel as they struggle through the birth canal. The trauma of loss, separation, competition, is their shared birthing story and karma. Their parents continue the karma of favoritism and trickery which spits them out from their parent's home.

They set off in different directions, Esau to their father's lineage, to the house of Ismail/Ishmael. Jacob toward his mother's family. The unhealed karma of conflict and separation between them continues.

Jacob comes to a place new to him, where he sees a "gateway to heaven," a gateway to new unlimited possibilities. In this place he has a vision that brings together healing of past and future.He gives a new name to the awesome place of his vision, Bethel, House of God. And then Torah tells us that this is the same name and place that had been revealed to Jacob's grandfather Abraham.

Jacob is awakening from the karmic trance of competition and jealousy. He journeys on to the place known as Kedem, a name that itself brings together past, present and future. In biblical times, kedem usually connotes time that has gone by; in modern Hebrew, it is a cry for forward movement. In the consciousness where past, present and future meet, here is the possibility of healing the trauma of the past, and changing future karma.

Kedem is where Rachael and Leah live, where they too transform from jealousy and bargaining over their shared husband and resources to speaking in one voice. They stand together and speak in one voice to protect their children and proclaim their trust in Oneness. They have shifted from “me and mine” to “ours and we,” a vision of sharing the future.

Healing our family pain is possible when we heal what’s present right here. When we heal relationships in the present, the wounds of the past heal. As Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present. The wounds of the past and the unfolding of the future only exist in the present. They don’t exist anywhere else.

A Story

About 15 years ago, 70,000 people gathered on the Great Lawn of Central Park in New York City to listen to the Dalai Lama. I remember him saying that you lock your car door, not out of the tendency to punish or fear another person. Rather it is your opportunity to prevent another person from taking on the bad karma of an action such as breaking into your car. “Don’t fear bad things happening to you,” he said, laughing, “Welcome them because when bad karma comes your way, it offers you the opportunity to stop the continuation of the bad karma.”

As human beings we have the capacity to choose whether to take up violence and hatred that comes our way, or to meet it with compassion and healing, thereby changing the karma of the world. Indeed, he mused, perhaps this is the very moment that we were brought into this world to fulfill.

A Healing practice

• Call to mind someone in your family with whom you have a less-than-wonderful connection.
• Write down in one or two sentences the most recent stimulus/specific occurrence for your dissatisfaction, pain or hurt. (This is the process of differentiating what happens from what you are telling yourself happens.)
• List your feelings and thoughts in relation to the stimulus. (Don’t hold back from writing down your judgments, your shame, your blame. Make room for all of your experience.)
• Reflect on how all of your thoughts and feelings about what happened made up the meaning or narrative you made about what happened. Use them all to understand what is important to you.  You are thinking and feeling in this way because there is something so important to you.
• Sit for a while with the energy of what is so important to you, how precious it is to you. Take in the beauty of this life energy, whether it is met or unmet by what happened.
• Practice communicating from this beauty to the other person, without blame or shame, just conveying what you are feeling and that you feel this way because of what is so important to you.