So Ya’akov sets out for Padan Aram, ostensibly to find a wife, but everyone knows (except for Yitzchak) that’s he’s fleeing for his live. The quick, post-blessing departure was arranged by Rivka, who told “her son” (as he is repeatedly termed in last week’s parashah) that Esav was consoling himself for the lost blessing by plotting to kill his brother as soon as Yitzchak, their father, is no longer around. “Get up, go to Padan Aram”, says Rivka. She insists it will be but a brief sojourn by Lavan, her brother. Just until Esav’s anger passes. And so, after receiving yet another blessing from Yitzchak, as well as a charge to find a wife there (Rivkah has dissembled to her husband regarding why she wishes Ya’acov to “visit the family”) is sent out by his father and goes to Padan Aram.
Esav also believes that his marriage to Canaanite women might indeed have upset Father and Mother, perhaps to the point of denying him blessings? Therefore he takes a “Jewish” wife – well, a daughter of Yishmael, his uncle – close enough! End of Parashat Toldot.
And what’s become of Ya’acov? That’s the story of this week’s parashah. We would expect to pick up the action with Ya’acov’s arrival in Padan Aram. It is strange, therefore, that at the outset of the parashah, we are told, “And Ya’acov went out from Be’er Sheva” – again, for Ya’acov has already been sent off by his father. How do you leave a place twice?
Rashi brings two explanations: First, he tells us that since the Torah interrupted the account of the journey with the brief recounting of Esav’s reaction to Ya’acov’s departure on marital grounds, it needs to resume by reminding us of what’s going on. It’s as though Hashem is saying, “where was I? Oh yes, so Ya’acov leaves Be’er Sheva”. Rashi considers this the pshat meaning of the text. On another level, he makes the famous statement that when a tzaddik leaves town, all of that towns luster, glory and splendor depart with him. The place is become a ghost-town.
But we’ve got a bigger problem. It’s not just that we’ve been told already that Ya’acov left Be’er Sheva. We’ve also been told that Ya’acov came to Padan Aram! So why are we told that again? Ibn Ezra explains that the Torah is now relating to what befell Ya’acov during his journey from Be’er Sheva to Padan Aram. The Midrash explains the repetition of departure and arrival in a similar, but more picturesque manner – it seems that, upon speedy arrival in Padan Aram, Ya’acov suddenly realized that he had passed by the place of his father’s Akedah, where the Temple was destined to be build, without stopping to acknowledge the place. So he went back.
And smacked into The Place. The real article. The definite article. The Hebrew uses the definite article marker on a noun which has not been previously introduced. You would have expected the indefinite article – he chanced upon A PLACE. Why “the place”. It must be previously known, it must be “the place”, “this place”, “that place”, as in fact the place is referred to over and over again in a space of a few short verses.
We know the story of that place: he gathers stones, makes a shelter, dreams a dream - Jacob’s ladder, angels clambering up and down, Hashem atop it, revealing himself to Ya’acov and reassuring him, he awakens and is blown away, “How awesome is this place, the House of G-d - I had no idea”.
Time after time, the word “place” repeats itself. How many times? Six.
Wait a second – what happened to the seventh usage? Don’t we always see significant words repeated seven times?
Indeed. In fact, there ARE five more appearances of the word “makom” in our parashah. The next two, by Lavan, are to be discounted – they are deceptive, as is Lavan himself. He gathers the “men of the place” for Ya’acov wedding feast, in order to dupe Ya’acov, and when confronted by his nephew, he justifies by claiming, “it is not done in our place”. The six inintial occurrences, paralleling the six fundamental directions (N,W,E,S,U,D), defined the parameters of Hashem’s revelation; Lavan uses place to conceal. Neither usage can truly be a candidate for the seventh occurrence, the occurrence of completion.
The ninth occurrence is after Yosef’s birth, when Ya’acov says to Lavan, “send me, and I shall return to my place and my birthland”. The usage of the word place in this context would be odd, were it not for the opening passage we have referred to above. However, this is still not a reference to THE PLACE. It’s rather, a reference to a subjective place, not the definite and absolute place when he departed.
We have to wait for the final verses of the parashah to identify our candidate for “seventh place”. We are told that Lavan returns to his place, and Ya’akov went on his way and angels chanced upon him ( a reversal of the opening of the parashah). When Ya’akov saw them, he called THE PLACE “double-camp”.
Why do we need to wait until this point to complete the set of seven place-invocations? Why do we need to consider and discount several other occurances? To answer this, we need to consider what makes a place a place? What, in fact, makes it THE PLACE? In English, the word “place” come from a word meaning “broad”, “flat”. The focus is on what’s not there. In Hebrew, the word “makom” is a noun derived from the root “kum”, meaning, “to rise, to stand up”. The verb doesn’t mean “to stand still” – that meaning in conveyed by a different word “la’amod”. “Lakum”, rather, means, to rise up from a prone or sitting, and in any case, still position. Thus, “kum”, the command form, initiates action. Place, in Hebrew, isn’t stasis, but, rather, “where it’s all happening”.
And that’s why Ya’acov had to go back. Because his mother told him “Kum, lech”. Get up and go – stand on your own two feet, I’ll always be your mother, but if you’re ever going to be able to encounter Esav and prevail, you’ve got to initiate. You’ve got to take a stand to make a stand.
And where did Ya’acov do that? At the end of parashat Vayatze, when he faced down Lavan, he didn’t back down, he told Hashem's truth to idolatrous power, sent it packing, and took his leave to return to his own place, now vested in the full definiteness of Hashem’s presence and revelation in his life: It’s no longer he who goes bumping, unknowingly, into bands of angels and holy places, but rather they who bump into him, the seventh and central point of the cube as the spiritual geometry would have it – stationed now at the base of the ladder and ready to climb ever upward.
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