Moving Forward, Slowing — Vayetzei 5781

This is a bit of a self congratulatory episode. My birthday is in December, and at the start of 2021 I had just turned 35, meaning I was in the 36th year of my life—what I called at the time my double chai year.

I set a goal of recording content with my mother for our long planned podcast—72 Miles: One Family’s Journey to Judaism. I wanted to write a Modern Torah book, putting all of these d’vrei Torah into one physical place, with new additional interpretations. And I wanted to grow my business, to formalize it, to build a client base, and end the year with $20,000 in revenue.

For a long time it didn’t seem like any of this was going to happen. My mother and I set aside time to record, but failing health and physical distance quickly became barriers which were hard to overcome. We spent a few weeks together in person, and I’m fortunate to have hours of interview content from which to build the podcast, but as the year went on and her health deteriorated, our recordings became more and more fragmented.

Modern Torah went on hiatus twice in 2021, and almost didn’t make it back both times. The book never happened, and neither did my plan for 5782, to focus less on weekly Torah portions and more on holiday celebrations, including all the minor holidays that show up on our calendars, but which most of us don’t celebrate or really know anything about, at least not deeply.

Coming back to Modern Torah after my mother’s death has been hard, but valuable, and hopefully my ramblings the past few weeks have made sense.

And then there’s the business side of things. I spent most of the year chasing clients, trying to land a first contract, something to build from. It didn’t seem possible, but to my own surprise I’m set to reach and even exceed my goal of $20,000 in revenue for 2021, all of it coming in the final quarter of the calendar year. Now it feels like I’m succeeding at reaching my goal, winning at life so to speak, even if the road there has been bumpy.

This week, our Torah portion offers the story of Jacob, and his quest to marry Rachel. Jacob’s road to the chuppah is long, and arduous. It involves trickery, betrayal, and acceptance. To marry Rachel, Jacob agrees to serve as a laborer for her father Laban, Jacob’s uncle. But after seven years of service, Laban tricks Jacob by switching Rachel for Leah, his daughter who had, as the text says, “weak eyes.” Jacob marries Leah without removing her veil, and too late discovers his wife is not the woman he planned to marry.

Genesis 29:16

Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older one was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.

Leah had weak eyes; Rachel was shapely and beautiful.

Jacob loved Rachel; so he answered, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”

Laban said, “Better that I give her to you than that I should give her to an outsider. Stay with me.”

So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.

I want to note, right now, how much Leah gets short changed in this exchange. Laban clearly doesn’t believe he’ll be able to marry Leah off without tricking the groom. He seems to view Leah as a burden, and Rachel as a blessing. He tells Jacob he’s rather marry Rachel to him, rather than an outsider, but he makes no similar declarations about Leah. Instead he seeks to unload the burden of his elder daughter onto Jacob, in return for later bestowing the blessing of his younger daughter on him as well.

We shouldn’t ever forget the sacrifices made by others on our road to success, how one person’s pursuit of their goal so often means stepping on, or over, someone else and their goals. Leah probably had her own life ambitions, but she’s given no voice here, and we don’t know them. We’re left with the narrative of Jacob overcoming the obstacle of Leah in pursuit of his goal—Rachel, whom he loved.

Jacob’s love for Rachel sustained him, even if it caused him to overlook the way Laban dishonors Leah. He overlooks the way Laban swindled him, changing their deal at the last minute, and he even overlooks Laban’s demand that they wait a week before even discussing a new marriage contract, and Laban’s final offer for another seven years of labor before he will allow Rachel to join her sister as Jacob’s second wife, and the three of them can return home, together.

Taking the story metaphorically, and with my own experience this year as context, I can see how hard it is to balance the competing priorities of achieving your goal, whatever it is, and doing it the right way. Who’s to say if Jacob’s approach is right. He gets what he’s after, in the end, although it requires him to look past the wrongs done to his first wife, and those done to himself. It requires him to accept these wrongs as normal, which is how bad behavior becomes normalized in society. But if he’d stood up for himself, or for Leah, he might never have married Rachel. Joseph might never have been born, and the Jewish people might never have ended up slaves in Egypt.

This morning I finished a rewatch of Game of Thrones , and while I hate what they did to Dany’s character, and pretty much everything that happens after you know who offs the Night King. But there’s a moment in Season 8, Episode 3, The Long Night, when Theon—who’s had as complicated a character arc as anyone in the show—seeks redemption from Bran. Theon has done unspeakable things to Bran and his family, but he’s here now at the end of the series protecting Bran when it matters most. In the quiet just before the battle Theon turns to Bran and apologizes for how his actions have hurt Bran.

Bran, who let’s just say is super wise and weird, replies, “Everything you did brought you where you are now. Where you belong. Home. ” He forgives Theon, the person whose ambition nearly wiped our Bran’s family.

Whether you’re building a business, like I have been this year, chasing love as Jacob does in the Torah this week, or serving as the shield that guards the realms of men, the road is probably longer, and hard, and more twisted than you might expect.

You’ll definitely find yourself in challenging moments, and it’s likely you’ll find yourself making a choice between honoring yourself and your hard work towards an important goal, and respecting the fact that everyone around you is also working hard, towards a goal, which is objectively no better or worse than yours. The truth of life is that not everyone wins, but unlike this week’s Torah portion we should give voice to those who seem to be losing, like Leah, to understand their perspective.

There’s still a lot of time left in 2021, and 2022 will bring its own unique challenges. I only keep moving forward, working towards a goal I know is good, and honorable, in a manner that leaves me feeling good about my work, and my role in the world, at the end of the day. I’ll remind myself of what Bran says to Theon—“Everything you did brought you where you are now” and hope that like Theon and Jacob I’ve ended up where I’m supposed to be, home.

Shabbat Shalom