The Three Lives of Jacob

“Everything that happened to the Patriarchs,” writes Nachmanides in his commentary on the Book of Genesis, “is a signpost for their children. This is why the Torah elaborates its account of their journeys, their well-digging and the other events [of their lives] ... these all come as an instruction for the future: for when something happens to one of the three Patriarchs, one understands from it what is decreed to occur to his descendants.”[1]

The Torah devotes more than twenty-five chapters (Genesis 25-50) to the life of Jacob, the third and “choicest of the Patriarchs”[2]—a life which spanned three lands:

a) The Holy Land, where he spent the first half of his life[3] secluded in “the tents of Torah.”[4]
b) The Mesopotamian city of Charan, where he spent 20 years in the employ of “Laban the Deceiver,” fathered 11 of his 12 sons, and amassed “much sheep, as well as maids, servants, camels and asses.”[5]
c) The land of Egypt, where he resided for the last 17 years of his life.[6]

Many events, triumphs and tribulations crowd each of these three epochs in the saga of Jacob. But each period also represents a particular state of affairs in Jacob’s life and in his relationship with his environment, providing us with three major “signposts” by which to negotiate our own lives’ reiteration of the lives of our ancestors.

Sovereignty, Struggle, and Subjugation
To what extent are we the master of our circumstances? Rare is the individual who could offer a single, consistent reply to this question. Rather, we recognize various states of dependency and control, various degrees of mastery over our lives. Generally speaking, we experience three such states: sovereignty, struggle, and subjugation.

We each harbor a vision of a transcendent self, of a soul, pure and inviolable, at the core of our being. This self, we are convinced, is not subject to the caprice of circumstance, remaining forever aloof from the shifting dictates of society and convention. And though this core self is not always accessible to us, there come moments in our lives—“moments of truth,” we call them—in which it asserts its will over every and any influence save its own internal truth.

But these moments, for most of us, are few and far between. More often, we are in a state of struggle—struggle with our environment, with our own habits and behavior patterns, with the passions of our divided hearts.

While a state of struggle indicates that we have not attained full mastery over our existence, it is also a sign of life: we have not succumbed. We are resisting the forces that seek to sway us from our internal truth; we are engaging them and battling them. Indeed, this is life at its fullest and most productive—even more so, in a certain sense, than those “moments of truth” of resolute perfection.

But we also know times of powerlessness and subordination. Times when we are faced with circumstances which we have neither the ability to control nor to even resist; times when it seems that life has been stopped dead in its tracks, arrested by an impregnable wall of helplessness and despair.

Jacob
Jacob was a tzaddik—a perfectly righteous person who never for a moment ceased to exercise a full and unequivocal mastery over his life.[7] But within the context of his perfect existence, he experienced the equivalents of all three states of life described above.

His years in the Holy Land were years of tranquil perfection—years in which nothing alien to his quintessential self intruded upon his life of Torah study, prayer and service of G-d.

His Charan years were characterized by challenge and struggle. There he locked horns with Laban the Deceiver and bested him at his own game;[8] there “heat consumed me by day, and frost at night; and sleep was banished from my eyes.”[9] In the words of Esau’s angel to Jacob upon Jacob’s return from Charan, “You have struggled with G-d and with men, and have prevailed.”[10]

For the last seventeen years of his life, Jacob lived in the land of Egypt. If Charan was “the object of G-d’s wrath in the world,”[11] Egypt was “the depravity of the earth”[12]—the most G-dless and debased society of all time. In Egypt, Jacob was forced to pay homage to Pharaoh,[13] the arch-idol and demigod of the land. Upon Jacob’s passing in Egypt, his body was in the possession of the Egyptian “physicians” for 40 days, who embalmed it after their custom.[14] Indeed, the reason why Jacob commanded Joseph to bury him in the Holy Land (a feat which required much maneuvering and manipulation to secure Pharaoh’s consent[15]) was that he feared that, in Egypt, his body and gravesite would become an object of idolatry.[16]

Jacob’s Egyptian years thus represent what, in the context of his perfectly sovereign life, were a time of subjugation to an alien power. Yet the Torah regards these as the best years of his life![17] For Jacob knew to exploit the very circumstances which, on the face of it, inhibit and arrest one’s vitality and achievement, as circumstances to foster the strivings of his soul and further its aims. Indeed, it was here in Egypt, under the rule and subsequent enslavement of the Pharaohs, that Jacob’s descendants were forged into the people of Israel.

The Signposts
“Everything that happened to the Patriarchs ... is decreed to occur to their descendants.” Not that they occur in exactly the same manner. Our own moments of transcendence seem fleeting and inconsequential in comparison with Jacob’s decades of tranquil perfection in the Holy Land; our own struggles seem wan and inept when measured against Jacob’s Charan years; our own lives under circumstances of subjugation and oppression seem black indeed when set against Jacob’s Egyptian period. Yet the three lives of Jacob are “signposts” that guide, inspire and enable our own.[18]

Jacob’s life in the Holy Land empowers us to experience moments of true freedom—moments in which we assert our true will over all forces, both external and internal, that seek to quell it.

Jacob’s Charan years inspire and enable us to not only persevere in our struggles but to revel in them, to experience them as vibrant and exhilarating periods in our lives.

And Jacob’s Egyptian period teaches us how to deal with those situations in which we feel overpowered by forces beyond our control. It teaches us that these times, too, are part and parcel of our lives; that these times, too, can be negotiated with wisdom, dignity and integrity. That these times, too, can be realized as vital and productive seasons of our lives.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Shabbat Vayeitzei 5750 (1989)[19]