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December 8, 2000/Kislev 11, 5761, Vol. 53, No.11
Monuments signify gateway to God
Torah Study
RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN
Vayetze/Genesis 28:10-32:3
Monuments are a common aspect of religious ritual when we ceremoniously erect them over the graves of our loved ones. The origin of such monuments is to be found in next week's Torah reading, when Jacob places a monument on the gravesite of his beloved Rachel, who tragically has died in childbirth.
But in this week's Torah reading, Jacob erects the first monument in Jewish history. What exactly is a monument?
An understanding of the first monument in Jewish history will help us understand the biblical attitude toward life and death and the land of Israel.
Our portion opens with Jacob leaving his parental home and setting out for his mother's familial home in Haran. That night he sleeps outside Luz and dreams of a ladder standing on land with its top reaching heavenward, "and angels of God were going up and down on it." (Genesis 28:12)
God is standing above the ladder and promises not only that Jacob will return to Israel, but also that this land will belong to him and his descendants eternally.
Upon awakening, the patriarch declares the place to be "the abode of God and ... the gateway to heaven." He then builds a monument of the stones he has used as a pillow.
The message is indubitably clear: A monument is a symbol of an eternal relationship, the ladder linking heaven and earth.
And the land of Israel magnificently expresses the link between humanity and God; the promise of Jacob's return from exile bears testimony to the eternity of the relationship between the people and the land of Israel.
Jacob spends two decades with his uncle Laban, who does his utmost to assimilate his nephew-son-in-law into a life of comfort and business in exile. Jacob resists, escaping Laban and secretly returning to Israel with his wives, children and livestock.
Laban pursues them, and they agree to a covenant-monument: "And Jacob took a stone, and set it as a monument." (Genesis 31:44)
When they take their oaths at the site of the monument, Laban endeavors to get in his licks: "May the God of Abraham and the god of Nahor ... 'judge between us.' " (Genesis 31:53).
Jacob's response is a rejection of Laban's assimilationist lure.
In the next sequence, Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin.
All of our commentaries question why Jacob did not travel the short distance to bury his beloved in Hebron, the ancestral burial place. The midrashic response cited by Rashi is that when the Jews would be carted off to their first exile in Babylon, they would pass by the monument at Rachel's tomb and pray that the matriarch's spirit intercede on their behalf before the Almighty.
Fast-forwarding through history, Max Nordau became the leader of world Zionism after the death of Theodore Herzl. He was a Viennese physician who had no previous connection to the Zionist movement. What made him a committed believer in Jewish return?
He writes in his diary that a poor Chasidic family whose young daughter had been stricken with a mysterious disease came to him for a diagnosis. He diagnosed the malady and discovered the cure. The grateful family returned, promising to pay whatever they owed him because he had saved their daughter's life.
He suggested that she give over to him the Torah lesson she had learned that morning as substitute payment. She cited the midrash about Rachel's gravesite.
Nordau writes in his diary that if after 2,000 years of exile Jewish children still learn about and believe in Jewish return to Israel, the Jews will certainly return.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is the spiritual leader of Efrat, Israel.
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