FROM WHERE DO WE SPROUT?
Later in the Torah Yisro tells Moshe that he plans on leaving the Jewish people to return ‘to my land and to my birthplace’. This is the natural order because when you leave a place and you go to your birthplace you will first encounter your native land and only later arrive at your birthplace. It is therefore noteworthy in our Parsha when Yaakov tells Lavan that he intends to go home; he inverts the order. He says to Lavan ‘send me and I will go to my place and to my land’. Why does Yaakov invert the order?
Yaakov did not have a land to which he belonged. The Land of Israel was only a prom-ised Land but was not yet his. He was a stranger with no country that he could call his own. The only place to which Yaakov belonged was his family. The reason he wanted to leave the home of Lavan was because now that Yosef was born and the family was just about complete, it was time to create his own place, his own family away from the foreign influence of Lavan.
When Yaakov tells Lavan that he plans on leaving, his message is that his first destination is to go to ‘his place’; to his family independent of Lavan. And then onto his land. The journey to the Land will occur only after he reaches his place, his family and his home.
Yaakov is the father whose face is etched into the Throne of HaShem. Our Sages teach us that Yaakov is the chosen of the three fathers since all of his children were completely dedicated to HaShem. He is the father who lives on eternally as our Sages teach us that Yaakov did not die.
Our Sages teach us that Avraham referred to Temple Mount as a mountain, Yitzchok referred to the Temple Mount as a field and only Yaakov recognized the Temple Mount as a house. “This is the House of HaShem”. Yaakov’s scope of vision included our final destiny which recognizes the Temple Mount as the eternal Home of the Shechina. This begs the following question.
If Yaakov is the immortal father of our people and he is the chosen father and he is the one who recognizes our ultimate destiny, why is he the father that has no land that he can call his own? Why is it that the only place he can call his own is his family and his home? Even the Land of Israel is only a promised Land but not yet realized?
All nations sprout from the soil of their country. They call their native land their motherland for she gave birth to them. All the nations of the world belong to their land. We, the Jewish people, the nation of HaShem did not sprout from our Land. We were already a nation before we reached our Land. We sprouted from the soil of the Jewish home. The Jewish home is Yaakov’s ‘place’. Already in Yaakov’s adolescence the Torah’s contrasts Eisov and Yaakov as the former being a man of the field and the latter as being the one who sits in the tents of Torah. Eisov sprouts from the ground a nd Yaakov from the home.
Only when Yaakov returns to his ‘place’ and builds the House of Yaakov will we then be able to return to our Land.
It is because of those reasons mentioned earlier; Yaakov’s immortality, and his face etched into the Throne of HaShem and that he was the chosen of the fathers, that he had no Land. He was going to first build his home, the house of Yaakov in this world and only then would he go to his Land.
Whereas the French home is the product of the French people and the French people are the product of their land. They begin with their land and only later arrive at their family. We are different.
The Jewish Land is the product of the Jewish people and the Jewish people are the product of the Jewish home.
Have a wonderful Shabbos.
Paysach Diskind