The Three Steps to Successful Traveling
I travel a lot, as I am sure many of you do. The geographical journeys have been the easiest ones. This applies to the transcontinental ones too, such as my current journey from California, through Europe, South Africa and Australia before returning to California. The harder journeys have been the intellectual, emotional and spiritual ones, and their destinations by far the most exciting and rewarding. On these journeys you are your own pilot; yet often you do not choose your destination. Life is your vehicle; but you cannot control its speed. Judgment is crucial; but you have no map.
I have found three success criteria to any journey, and I will share them with you: i) Truly departing; ii) Not arriving at your destination before you reach it; and iii) Feeling the majestic future in the present moment – wherever you happen to be. I discovered these criteria in the first verse of Parshat Vayetze, and I always try to live by them.
i) Truly Departing
Rashi asks[1] why the Parsha begins with Vayetze (“and he departed”) and does not merely tell where he traveled to: Haran. The Midrash[2] learns from this word, Vayetze, (without explaining how), that Ya’acov’s journey was without fear. Fear is the element most likely to sabotage a successful journey. Fear is what causes us to cling to the past, to nostalgically yearn for that which has been, and to remain attached to our previous assumptions, biases and viewpoints. Detachment is a precondition for movement, and fear prevents detachment. It is hard to let go of something you are holding onto if you fear the next step. Too often our bodies leave a place but our minds and sometimes our hearts remain there.
Detachment does not mean that you cease to value the past, nor that you forget it. It simply means you are not dependent on it for your sense of self and are ready to explore new vistas of human experience confident in your own capabilities and in the guiding hand of Providence. By the otherwise unnecessary use of the wordvayetze, the Midrash sees an emphasis by the Torah of the fact that despite Ya’acov’s deeply spiritual and emotional attachments to his mother, father and home, he was able to depart, to let go and to start on a remarkable journey of pain, growth and joy.
ii) Not arriving at your destination before you reach it
The order in the first two verses is odd: After we are told of his arrival in Haran (Vayeilech Haranah – “and he went to Haran”), we are told of his coming to the spot where he slept and dreamt his magnificent dream (vayifgah bamakom – “and he came upon the place”). The reason, Rashi tells us[3], is that in reality he first went all the way toHaran without stopping at Yerushalayim or Beit Eil. Upon arriving there he was disappointed in himself for not having intuited the spot where his fathers had prayed, a place so saturated already withkedusha; how could he not have noticed them? (For a Tzadik, spiritual reality is as real as physical reality is for us. Just as we would be disappointed if due to our preoccupation while traveling, we missed one of the wonders of the world that we had actually past, so Ya’acov was disappointed at the spiritual wonders he had failed to respond to on his journey.) It is true that he properly detached from his point of departure. But then, committing the second fatal crime of the traveler, he did what so many of us do: his mind arrived at his destination long before his journey was complete – vayeilech Haranah (“and he went to Haran”): his mind went to Haran before his body even past Beit Eil resulting in his obliviousness to the splendor of the places he was passing. Often we start to think and worry about the future to the point that we are totally distracted from the present. We lose the wonder of the present in the fear of the future, if not in the attachment to the past.
He acted on his disappointment. It was important to him. He set about immediately retracing his steps. The moment that he made the commitment to go back on his way, Har Hamoriah (the Temple Mount to be,) miraculously “comes to meet him”. He only realizes this in his prophetic vision during his sleep.
Not once does the Torah explicitly tell us where this place that he slept was. Even Ya’acov in dedicating the spot, refers to it only asHamakom Hazeh (“this place”). Ya’acov realizes that wherever you are, you can access the Divine provided you are entirely engaged in the moment, sensitive to the energies of the present time and place, and dedicated to each moment’s kedusha.[4] By focusing your mind on the future, you will miss the present at an enormous cost to the very future you are trying to craft. (This does not mean one should not plan and make arrangements for the future. Provided there is action in the present, even if the action that is intended for the future is a legitimate engagement with the present.) It is only when the mind is paralyzed in the present by its worries about the future, that it deprives us of the magic of the moment.
iii) Feeling the majestic future in the present moment – wherever you happen to be
Having taken his mind off his physical destination, Haran, and refocused his attention on the journey he was missing, Ya’acov now realizes in an explosive moment of prophetic vision that Haran is not his destination at all. Our life journeys are not designed to take us to different places of geography. They are designed to take us to different places of being. He realized that his destination was a place very close to and protected by G-d Himself. His destination was not one particular place, it was anywhere – hamakom hazeh. Wherever he was had the capacity to be sha’ar ha’shamayim (“a gateway to heaven”) if he made it a makom Torah (“a dynamic place of Torah learning”).[5] And in the vision he feels what it is like to be in that place of intimacy with Hashem, what it feels like to be protected, what it feels like to always be on your way home to Eretz Yisrael andYerushalayim.
This is the third success criteria of journeying, to have a vision of how it feels to be the person you will be after having traveled the journey. To feel the growth and the stature, the depth and the insights, the sensitivity and the empathy that comes from journeying through life.
Traveling with Angels
We have explained why the verse needs to state Vayetze. Reb Chaim Valoshner however asks why it could not merely say that he departed from Beer Sheva to Haran and leave out the wordvayeilech (“he went”). In that case he says there would have been four fewer letters in the verse, normally a desired outcome for the Torah, so deliberately economic with word usage. However in this case those extra letters are kabalistically very telling. The letters arevav,yud,chof, and hey. (The lamed would be needed in place of thehey.) Those letters spell Yohach - a name representative of that dimension of Hashem that accompanies travelers and protects them.
What did Ya’acov do to deserve this Divine protection? His mother Rivkah, we are told in the Midrash, blessed him with the now famous verse: Ki Mal’achav yetzaveh lach lishmor’echah bechol derachehcha (“for He will send forth His angels to protect you on all your ways”). The last letter of each of the first four words of that blessing, also spell Yohach. It was Rivkah who prayed that G-d accompany her son and send His angels with him to protect him. The wording of the first verse of Vayetze assures us that this in fact occurred.
Interestingly, Reb Chaim Valoshner also writes that when the Vilna Gaon was asked for a bracha by a traveler, he would observe the Talmud’s statement that one should always depart from ones friend with a devar halachah (“a halachik thought”). The Gaon would say:Halachah pesukah, yachid verabim, halachah kerabbim (“It is a decided law, that when there is a discrepancy between a majority view and a minority view, the law is like the majority”). Why did the Gaon quote that saying particularly every time?
I believe the reason is that when you travel you understand the basic wisdom of that law. If you are certain of where you are going, you do not follow the majority, you follow your own direction. However when you are lost it is wise to follow the direction taken by most people. So to in halachah (and life), when you are both qualified and certain of what is right, you need not be intimidated into conforming with the majority. However when you are either not qualified or not certain, it is wise to follow the majority; in fact it is the law – halachah pesukah.
But Reb Chaim Valoshner points out something else totally brilliant about that saying of the Gaon: the first letter of each of the first four words of that halachah also spell Yohach! In following that law, and in being mindful about where you are going and why, Yohach – G-d Himself and his Angels will be with you. That was the Gaon’s bracha, the same as that of his ancestor, Rivkah.
We can access angels when we travel. Angels (says the Midrash Tanchuma) are the creation of our own positive thoughts, words and deeds. The positive energy we generate by the positive attitude and actions we radiate, creates a force we call angel. When we are about to travel, whether on a physical journey or an emotional, intellectual or spiritual one, we can access our angels. By applying our minds to Hashem, His Torah and the present moment, by truly departing from the space we were previously in, not becoming distracted with the place to which we think we are going (because we can never be sure of our destination), and by visioning what it might feel like to have traveled this way, we can travel with Divine protection and siyyatadishemaya.
Battling Negative Energy on our Travels
As much as we surround ourselves with our own positive energy, we inevitably encounter the negative energy of others. This happens in the next Parsha, in Vayishlach, when Ya’acov has to battle the force of Eisav. Interestingly he encounters the energy of Eisav when, entirely alone, he retreats back over the Brook of Yabok.
An interesting parallel: once again Ya’acov is retracting his steps. The first time he retracted his steps he was also alone, but no harm befell him. He retracted his steps then because he forgot to experience a moment and a place of inspiring Kedusha, and so he went back to rediscover what he had missed. He was on a spiritual quest. It is proper to embark on spiritual quests alone. Alone with yourself and your reflections, alone with your feelings and vulnerabilities. Alone without social or familial distraction, to hear G-d and experience Him in the silence of that aloneness.
It is not appropriate to go searching for lost material wealth alone. Unlike the world of spiritual journeying, in the world of the material you succeed in collaboration with others, in teams, organizations, and alliances. It was not appropriate for Ya’acov to have undertaken that journey retracing his steps across Nachal Yabok by himself. And so he is confronted with the negative force of Eisav that would not have accosted him had he been alone.
But even this confrontation, Ya’acov converts from a material journey to a spiritual one. He conquers the very spirit of Eisav laying the way for the ultimate conquest of his total being. He is elevated by Hashem afterwards with the name change to Yisrael. For this is at the sole of the Yisrael, the powerful, dynamic Jew who wrestles with the spiritual as others wrestle with the material. The Jew whose every journey is a spiritual one. Even the simple recovery of a few lost odds and ends becomes a spiritual journey of momentous meaning. The Jew, always traveling, always surrounded by his guardian angels, angels he himself creates and G-d dispatches, confronting the forces of evil; and vanquishing them.
