Parshat Vayetzei summary: Jacob's ladder, two wives and Laban

What is Vayetzei, this week's Torah portion?

Jewish communities read the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, one portion a week, so the whole thing gets read every year. Vayetzei is the seventh portion of Genesis.

The name means "and he left," which is the first word of the portion: Jacob leaves home. He has a good reason. He just tricked his twin brother Esau out of their father's blessing, Esau wants him dead, and their mom Rebekah sends Jacob to her brother Laban in Haran.

Part 1: Jacob's ladder dream

Jacob is Isaac's son and Abraham's grandson, and right now he's a guy alone on the road. The sun sets, he grabs a rock for a pillow and falls asleep in the middle of nowhere.

He dreams of a ladder planted on the ground with its top in the sky, and angels of God going up and down it. God stands over him and makes a promise: this land is yours, your family will spread in every direction, and I'm with you. I'll protect you wherever you go and bring you back.

In the morning he stands his rock up as a marker, pours oil on it, and names the place Bethel, "house of God." Then he makes God an offer: keep me safe, give me bread and clothes, get me home in one piece, and I'll give back a tenth of everything.

Part 2: Love at first sight, then the wedding switch

Jacob reaches a well near Haran. The shepherds are waiting around because the stone covering it is huge and they only roll it off once everyone's there. Then Rachel walks up with her father's sheep, and Jacob rolls the stone off by himself, waters her flock, kisses her and bursts into tears.

Rachel is the younger daughter of Laban, Jacob's uncle. Laban welcomes him, and after a month he asks what Jacob wants to be paid. Jacob, totally in love, offers seven years of work to marry Rachel.

Laban throws a wedding feast, and that night he brings his older daughter Leah instead. In the morning, surprise: it's Leah. Laban shrugs it off. Around here, he says, we don't marry off the younger one first. Finish the wedding week with Leah and you can marry Rachel too, in exchange for seven more years of work.

Jacob once fooled his blind father by posing as the older brother. Now he gets fooled in the dark, with the older sister standing in for the younger one.

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Part 3: Two sisters, eleven sons and a getaway

Leah has son after son, and she names her first few after her hope that Jacob will finally love her. Reuben, Simeon and Levi all come with lines like "now my husband will love me."

With her fourth son, Judah, something shifts. She stops talking about Jacob and just thanks God.

Rachel still has no kids, and she's jealous of her sister. "Give me kids or I'm dead," she tells Jacob. Each sister gives Jacob her maid as an extra wife (Bilhah for Rachel, Zilpah for Leah), and the babies keep coming. There's even a fight between the sisters over some mandrakes Leah's son found in a field.

By the end, Jacob has eleven sons and a daughter, Dinah. Rachel finally has a son of her own, Joseph.

Meanwhile Laban keeps changing Jacob's pay, ten times by Jacob's count. Jacob still gets rich through a deal for the spotted and speckled sheep and goats, and Laban's sons start grumbling. God tells Jacob to go home.

He leaves without a word, and Rachel secretly takes her father's household idols. Laban chases them for a week and searches every tent. Rachel sits on the idols in her camel saddle and says she can't get up because she has her period.

Jacob finally explodes: twenty years of heat by day and frost by night, and this is how you chase me down? The two men pile up stones as a border marker, make a pact, and Laban kisses his grandkids goodbye. Jacob heads off and meets angels of God, the same way the portion began.

The moment worth slowing down for

Go back to that first night. It's the lowest point of Jacob's life so far. He's lost his home, his parents and his brother, and he's sleeping on a rock. That's exactly where he wakes up and says God was there all along, and he missed it.

In Hebrew the verb for "I knew" already includes the "I," but Jacob adds an extra one anyway (anochi). It sounds like someone kicking himself: and me, I didn't even know.

The text also mentions that the town used to be called Luz. A random stop on the way out of town becomes "house of God," just because he finally looked around.

Most of us know a place like that. The late bus home, the hospital waiting room, the year everything fell apart. It's almost never the spot you'd pick for anything to matter.

A question to think about this Shabbat

Shabbat, the weekly day of rest from Friday night to Saturday night, is a good time for this one.

Where in your week have you written a place off as nowhere, and what would you see if you looked at it the way Jacob did that morning?