Parashah of the week: Vayetze

“And Jacob made a vow, saying: ‘If God remains with me, protecting me on this journey that I am making, and giving me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I return in peace to my father’s house… then, the Lord shall be my God’” Genesis 28:20-21

This week’s parashah opens up with an awe-inspiring vision. A ladder extends from earth to the heavens. Angels move between the realms. God reveals Godself to Jacob and offers covenantal promises. And then Jacob wakes, breathless with revelation, and sets up an altar so that the place of divine discovery.

And then Jacob makes an unusual vow with some uncomfortable implications. If God fulfils God’s promises (including some elements that God doesn’t seem to have promised at all), then Jacob will follow God. Are we to believe that there was a possible unfolding of this narrative in which Jacob would turn away from God?

Many commentators approach this text by softening Jacob’s vow. With respect, I am going to step outside that norm. I think Jacob was being unreasonable. Sometimes, I am unreasonable in my relationship with God, too.

In this week’s haftarah, we may even see the hint of a kind divine response to Jacob’s unreasonable vow. “I will be like dew to Israel,” says God in Hosea 14:6.

In the context of the haftarah, we might miss the rejection. However, this is in response to an earlier request (Hosea 6:3): “Let us pursue devotion to God and become devout; as sure as daybreak is God’s appearance, and God will come to us like rain, like latter rain that refreshes the earth.”

Israel says: “If we turn back to God, then God will come to us like the rains.”

And God responds, in our haftarah: “No. I will come to you like dew.”

According to Rabbi Berekhya, the problem with Israel’s formulation of the bargain is this: when there is drought, we want rain desperately. And when there is drought, we forget that we don’t always want rain (Talmud Taanit 4a).

God rejects the comparison to rain because it comes from the place of longing that has forgotten what it’s like to live in a healthy world. No, says God — I will be like the dew, which is always healthy, and not the rain, which you might think you want to come forever, but which holds the potential to drown you.

It is, I think, an incredible reminder that what we feel desperate for and what we need are not always the same thing.

May God always be like the dew, even when we request that God be like the rain. And may God listen to our more unreasonable prayers and then dutifully let them go unanswered.

Rabbi Natasha Mann