Vayetzei: Closing the Tabs

Gen. 28:10–11: “And Yaakov left Be’er Sheva and went toward Charan. And he encountered ‘the place’ and slept there…” This “place” is none other than the mountain called Moriah, better known as the site of the Mikdash. The stories of the fathers are signs for their children. The story of Yaakov and his dream signals our past and present history and gives us a glimpse of what is yet to come in the future.

Throughout our history we have seen two Temples that stood for 830 years altogether, and we have been exiled from our land twice. Think about it as a marriage. The first time we were exiled to Babylon we were technically separated, but after we failed to learn the lessons of the past we were broken up with, seriously. Yerushalayim, as all the Prophets note, feels like a divorcee who longs for her husband to take her back, and we as a nation are compared to a daughter who has been neglected. We pray and hope for the day of His return so that we can once more live under our Father’s roof.

Let’s take the story apart. Yaakov leaves Be’er Sheva going to Lavan’s house in Charan. The name Be’er Sheva is introduced twice in the previous Parshiot: once (21:31) when Avraham Avinu and Avimelech swear an oath of peace to each other, and again (26:33) when Yitzchak and Avimelech swear an oath of peace. Why did Avimelech need this peace treaty with Yitzchak, wasn’t the one with Avraham valid for four generations? The answer lies in the words of the Torah (26:28): “Ra’o ra’inu… – We saw at the time of your father and we see again with you that Hashem is with you.” At first, Avimelech saw Yitzchak as the prodigal son of the great Avraham and didn’t respect him for who he was; but after seeing his successes he couldn’t help but admit that Yitzchak was a man of value in his own right.

The blessing Hashem gave to Avraham (26:4), “…and all the nations of the earth will bless themselves through your offspring,” is the greatest blessing that can be given. Once the child is recognized for his own greatness, the name of the father lives on forever. And now, as Avimelech sought a bond with Yitzchak, it cemented and affirmed the bond made with Avraham. Now, Yaakov leaves Be’er Sheva, the place where his father gained recognition for his own achievements and brought glory to the family, and sets his sights on Charan, a new place where he must start life anew. He knows that it is upon him to continue the legacy of his grandfather and father and bring glory to the family name. He carried the lessons of Be’er Sheva with him, as he left to begin his new life.

He encounters the place of the Mikdash and goes to sleep. We learn that when King David searched for this mountain he swore (Tehillim 132:1–5), “I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for Hashem, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Yaakov.” The Gemara in Zevachim 54b tells the entire story of how David figured out the exact location together with Shmuel HaNavi; yet as he swore, he would not allow himself to fully sleep until he had accomplished this goal. Yaakov, on the other hand, encounters the place, prays, and then immediately goes to sleep. This explains why David mentions the name of Yaakov while on his quest to find “the place.”

What exactly is sleep, and what happens to us during that time? Our brains have many things to keep busy with while we are awake: schedules to keep, responsibilities to attend to, promises to fulfill, and so on. But at night our brains need to process. This is why, when the brain finally calms down, we suddenly remember more things to do, because the first place the brain goes when processing is to all the open tabs. It closes the tabs that were accomplished and brings up thoughts about the milk we forgot to pick up for tomorrow’s coffee or to call our mother. Even more so when it comes to tabs that are long overdue to be closed, like forgiving those who hurt us and asking forgiveness from those we hurt. All thoughts, whether they are the longings of our daydreams or just fleeting thoughts we had throughout the day, have to be dealt with before real dreams can kick in.

As long as we have heavy tabs open we will have trouble falling asleep, but the smaller ones are easier to lay to rest as the brain makes its usual excuses: “We’ll deal with this tomorrow” or “It’s not really important.” With our inner vision we can watch those thoughts being processed, and it is with that same inner eye that we later observe our dreams. So as long as the processing continues we see a mixture of waking thoughts merged with dreams. This is what the Gemara (Berachot 56a) means when it says, “He thought about it all day, and at night he saw it.” But once the processing is over we become fully immersed in dreamland, which requires a whole new level of presence to truly observe while experiencing it.

Most of us are sucked into our dreams but lack the consciousness to control our movements within them. We are swept along by the script and narrative and feel like pawns in the story of our inner mind. This is because we have not yet become conscious enough to control our waking mind, we still have things left to process when we fall asleep. But if we were to close all tabs in our mind on our own before bedtime and fall straight into dreamland, we would have trained our brain’s muscles of focus to such a degree that we could truly participate in the dreams we are dreaming. (It is at this stage that lucid dreaming, dream-summoning, clairvoyance, and even prophecy are accessible easily.)

Now it is clear why David swore not to sleep until he found this mountain: he swore that this tab would remain a non-relenting open tab in his mind, which in turn would not allow him to sleep properly. Yaakov, on the other hand, was completely clear in his mind about his next steps; he saw his goal and knew what was required of him. So without hesitation he went straight to sleep, and he dreamed.

The “place” that we so long to return to is one that can be found with hard work (like David). It is a place where all fakeness is stripped away and the focus of the mind is completely obsessed with the goal. People may laugh at such individuals, but as we know, “Those who laugh have much to be laughed at.” The true goal is to be like Yaakov, one who is clear in his mind about his purpose: to live with clarity, knowing that all I want in life is to rise, bring glory to my family, and continue the great legacy of my fathers. It is so that we can ascend the ladder and consciously reach the greatest heights, living among the angels. To live like Yaakov is to carry such singular clarity that even our sleep becomes a conscious ladder, so that every night we lie down already standing on Moriah, and every morning we wake up one rung higher.

David leveled up our nation to work hard toward their goals. He showed that with relentless focus we can close all tabs and find everlasting, Godly solutions to life. During the period of the First Mikdash we lost that ability and stopped processing properly; Hashem sent us a short wake-up call as he exiled us to Babylon, hoping we would remind ourselves of the goal of Charan, true freedom. But we didn’t. Now, as we await the Third Mikdash, we know that the tabs of two thousand years of night are closing, one by one, and our processing is almost over. We are about to wake up for good!

Shabbat Shalom

David Lemmer

LemmerHypnotherapy.com