We begin this week’s portion with one of the most famous of passages, Jacob’s dream (28). Countless commentaries have been written on this passage, the ladder, the dream and the symbolism of both. Dreams will continue to play a role in our story, especially when we meet the Joseph cycle. This is also the story of Jacob, Leah and Rachel and Laban, the duplicity of Laban and the love story of Jacob and Rachel, along with, as we have seen before, sibling rivalry, infertility and family drama. Again, we will meet the motif of moments of transition played out at a well.
But I want to look at a small passage that appears at the beginning of the Jacob-Leah-Rachel drama. In 29:20 we read that Jacob served for seven years for Rachel “and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her”. Yes, this is before Laban turns the tables on Jacob. So, Jacob, powered by his love for Rachel, had this first seven years fly by. This got me to thinking about how we, as we age, see time. Remember when we were much younger, maybe in school, and how slowly time seemed to go? I do not know about you, but one of the issues that mystifies me is now, as we get older, how quickly that time seems to move. Maybe it is because we know that we have more years behind us than in front of us. Maybe it is because we yearn to do so much more and know that our own mortality awaits. How many of us have thought, upon seeing our children grow into adults, and our grandchildren grow with every visit: “where has the time gone?”
How often have many of us thought of the “Sunrise Sunset” song from “Fiddler on the Roof?” Or how many times have we listened to the classic song from our youth “Both Sides Now” and finally understood the lyrics? Time, for us now, seems out of control, for it truly is the one thing we cannot control. Thus, as we teach a lot, THE spiritual question for us is “what do we with the time we have left knowing we cannot control the time we have left?”
This little verse is often lost among the larger background of the dream and the interplay between Jacob, Laban and the daughters. But take a moment, if you will, to just think about that concept of time; how quickly it goes when we are engaged in something that feeds our passion and how, as we grow older, the more precious it becomes.
Shabbat shalom
Rabbi Richard F Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
There is clinical evidence that the biological clock actually slows down as we age. This means that the concept that time flies faster as we age may not be only psychological, but physiological.