Parashat Vayeitzei is the first of the final six parashiot of the Book of Genesis, which are all exclusively devoted to the life of Jacob. As we shall see, Jacob was the first and only patriarch who succeeded in raising all his children to be wholly committed to God's will and mission; it is for this reason that he earned the distinction of being the eponymous father of the Jewish people. Throughout the Torah, the Jewish people are referred to almost exclusively as Benei Yisrael, i.e., "the Israelites" (or literally, "the descendants of Israel"), "Israel" being Jacob's other name.
Jacob is thus the last of the patriarchs. Only Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the progenitors of all the Jewish people; only they embody the elements of Divine living that all of us must emulate. In contrast, Jacob's children passed on their unique, individual emphases in disseminating Divine consciousness only to their respective tribes.
Jacob succeeded in ensuring that all his children remain loyal to his legacy because he was the synthesis of the best of Abraham and Isaac. As we saw, Abraham personified loving-kindness (chesed); he exposed his disciples to Divine concepts and experiences regardless of whether they were appropriately qualified to receive them, but he did so at the expense of conditioning them to absorb this Divinity. Isaac, on the other hand, personified restraint (gevurah); he elevated his disciples so they could absorb Divinity, but in doing so had to forgo letting them experience levels of Divine consciousness beyond their ability to reach on their own. Jacob personified reconciliation and harmony (tiferet); as such, he was able to blend these two diametrically opposed approaches, bringing the highest levels of Divine awareness down to people of even the lowest spiritual caliber, on the one hand, and ensuring that they absorb them as well, on the other.
Jacob was able to reconcile the mutually exclusive approaches of his father and grandfather by relating to God in a more transcendent way than they did. Abraham's relationship with God was based on logic: he arrived at his awareness of God through logic and convinced others of God's existence through logic, as well. Isaac, too, based his relationship with God on logic: he understood that in order for reality to be able to absorb Divine revelation, it had to be fit to do so, and he based his lifework on this premise. Jacob, in contrast, related to God from the outset in a less calculated, more naïve way, bypassing the limits of rationality. His commitment to God was therefore unconditional and unassailable, even when it flew in the face of logic.1 Because he himself related to God in this way, he was able to inspire others to relate to God in this way, as well. He was therefore able to raise all his children to be devoted to God, notwithstanding their differing personalities, and was likewise able to bring his disciples to levels of Divine consciousness that were beyond their ken while simultaneously teaching them how to integrate those lofty levels into their own lives. Jacob is therefore not only the last of the three patriarchs; he is the patriarch par excellence. It is his life, more than either Abraham's or Isaac's, that constitutes the model after which we all are to fashion our own.2
Nowhere is it more evident that Jacob synthesized his father's and grandfather's approaches than in the first segment of the Torah's chronicle of his life, parashat Vayeitzei. In this parashah, we watch Jacob marry, establish his family, and amass his wealth, all in faithful adherence to his father's instructions. But he pursues all these goals in ways that seem to contradict the ways in which Isaac had pursued them: Whereas God did not allow Isaac to leave the Holy Land, He allows Jacob to do so freely; whereas Isaac married only one wife, Jacob marries two—in addition to their handmaids!; whereas Isaac avoided his detractors' provocations, Jacob actively confronts them. In all these cases, Jacob emulates Abraham more than he does Isaac.
And just as Abraham was not at all fazed by the fact that his son Isaac was his virtual antithesis, so, too, is Isaac not at all fazed by the fact that his son Jacob is his; in fact, he is the one who sends Jacob away from the protective cocoon of his household and into the idolatrous milieu of Padan Aram and the clutches of Laban the deceiver. Once again we are witness to the father's tacit acknowledgement that in order for the son to truly continue in his father's footsteps, he has to strike out on his own and forge his own path. In Jacob's case, Isaac fully understood that because of Jacob's transcendent commitment to God, it was not only fitting but also imperative that he undertake the challenge of venturing forth to bring the message of God to the widest-possible public.
This is the message implied in the name of this parashah, Vayeitzei, which means, "he went out." In order for Jacob to begin his own chapter in the saga of Genesis, he had to "go out," to leave the material and spiritual comforts of home (not to mention the easy path of simply imitating his father) and face the challenges of a hostile world. Only thus—by putting his commitment to the test and awakening his latent prowess—could he mature into the father capable of raising the chosen family as well as into the patriarch capable of setting the chosen people on its course through history.
As it was with Jacob, so is it with each of us. Once we have imbibed the cultural heritage of our past, we must accept the challenge of maturity, setting out to follow our destiny and making our unique contribution toward bringing the world to its ultimate fulfillment of God's plan. Only in this way can we awaken our latent prowess and utilize our God-given talents and potentials to their fullest advantage. Furthermore, only thus can we ensure that the power God gave us to sanctify all facets of mundane reality manifest itself to its fullest, enabling every corner of life to become His true home.3
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