By Rabbi Avi Heller
My favorite image of OJ Simpson is a commercial he did for Hertz. Some poor woman has forgotten her ID at the checkout counter and is getting on the plane. OJ sprints broken-field through a crowded airport and hurdles a block of chairs ? in a classic Heisman trophy motion ? to catch up to her and perform a random act of kindness. Here we have a powerful record-breaking athlete, among the first elite black athletes in the NFL, handsome and charismatic. And he was using his super-human talents in an act of kindness to a stranger.
The reality of OJ is a huge disappointment. Of course, he was never really that righteous runner, he was just lending his star name to someone else?s business. I know that. But, more enduringly, the great ?Juice? has been revealed as a bizarre and deeply troubled individual, barely acquitted of murder and once again facing serious criminal charges that could send him to jail for the rest of his life.
Should we really be disappointed when our star athletes or movie stars stumble and fall? Perhaps we need better strategies for choosing our role models (Hence, Rebbe cards with learning and chesed statistics to replace RBIs and touchdowns) Maybe it is overly optimistic to apply the ?downfall of the mighty? to OJ Simpson, who was never really ?mighty? in the first place. But the fires of disappointment, leading to the shame of cynicism, pursue us relentlessly. Bill Clinton, Larry Craig, Catholic priests and our own Rabbis, Enron. A thousand others. Even if they have admirable qualities ? as many of them certainly do ? it is often overwhelmed by our disappointment in their flaws.
Disappointment is a powerful and dreadful force. I remember the hollow awful feeling I had when one of my closest mentors was revealed to me in all his human frailty as a self-serving scam artist whose actions did not live up to his ideals. Sadly ? for him and for me ? everything else he ever did (and there were many good, possibly even heroic, things) were reduced to a question mark. They became meaningless to me because of my profound disappointment in his actions.
Conversely, the prospect of disappointing my teachers, my wife, my children, my students, terrifies me. In my role as Rabbi I sometimes feel like a fraud not, I hope, because I am one, but because I wonder if I can live up to what my students and congregants might expect of me. When they have unrealistic expectations of me and believe I am a saint, that may be their problem. But what if I have led them to believe I am more virtuous or learned than I am? What future black bread of disappointment will they be forced to eat?
The core of real disappointment stems from the loss of reasonable expectations, not unreasonable ones. It is unrealistic to expect our parents, teachers, mentors to be perfect, to never be insensitive, wrong etc. There is also room for error and, when it occurs, the shouldering of blame and teshuva. Disappointment can be reversed, undone, turned back into pride when it is confronted.
This issue is brought home powerfully in this week?s sidra. As Ya?akov (Jacob) flees the Land of Canaan to escape his brother?s wrath, he spends a night in an obscure location near the border of the holy land. There, he witnesses an incredible vision of a ladder (Jacob?s ladder) reaching towards the ground, with its top hidden in the Heavens. Angels are ascending and descending the ladder. God appears either at the top of the ladder or at its foot (next to Jacob?s sleeping form) and promises him that He will protect young Jacob in the difficult days ahead. Ya?akov awakes in awe at the vision he has just experienced and consecrates the location ?for God was in this place and I did not know?. The commentators say that Jacob was embarrassed to have fallen asleep in such a holy location.
There is a classic ambiguity in the text here about the location of God in the dream. The Torah says ?And, behold, God was standing alav?. Alav (literally ?on it?) can mean ?above it?, meaning God was at the top of the ladder, which is how it always sounded to me as I read the story. Or it can mean ?above him?, meaning God was standing above Jacob?s sleeping form. (see B?reisheet Rabba 69:3). Now, it sort of makes sense that God would stand at the top of the ladder (i.e. in Heaven), but why would He be standing over Jacob?
Rashi explains in one word: ?l?shamro? i.e. God stood over Jacob in order to protect him. The Talmud (Chullin 91b) amplifies that God was protecting him from the angels themselves:
?they were ?ascending? and looking at the Heavenly visage and ?descending? and looking at the earthly visage. Then, they tried to hurt him, but immediately, ?and behold God was standing above him.??
In other words, according to the Midrash, these angels were not friendly, cuddly angels. They were trying to hurt ? even kill ? Ya?akov and they would have succeeded if not for the direct intervention of God. God?s role in the dream was to keep the angels away from Ya?akov!
According to this reasoning, the angels were judging Ya?akov. When they went up the ladder and gazed upon God?s throne, our tradition teaches that there were four faces engraved on it, one of which was a human face. Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (a great 19th c. rabbi) interprets this to be the ideal face of humanity, representing all its greatest ideals and aspirations. When the angels ascended the ladder, this is what they saw: humanity in its perfection.
When they came down the ladder, they found Jacob asleep. In their eyes, Jacob asleep in this holy place represented all the flaws and weaknesses of human beings. The human being they found at the foot of the ladder did not live up to their expectations; the reality of humanity disappointed the angels. (This is not the only time that we find in Midrashic literature a sort of scorn for humans and human affairs on the part of angels. They also lobbied against the giving of the Torah to human beings.) Their disappointment is so great that they want to destroy him. (Keep in mind, this human was Ya?akov our fore-father, not some schlepper like you and me.)
However, God sees it differently. Surely, Ya?akov does not conform perfectly to the ideal state of humanity. Perhaps that state is not even attainable. Still, Ya?akov is doing the best he can to aspire to that role. Ya?akov is fulfilling much of the task that God has intended for him. Moreover, his recent life has been a series of bewildering events that have left him scrambling to even understand what God wants of him. I think there are times when all of us wonder what it is that we are doing here and what role God wants us to play. God stands over Jacob to protect him as if to say to the angels: ?Do not be so disappointed in Jacob just because he is not perfect.? He does not allow the angels to destroy Jacob just because he does not live up to the Platonic ideal of Jacob.
But the burden remains upon Jacob. And upon us. We may not expect perfection from ourselves or others, but are we even living up to the reasonable expectations that we, others, or God may expect of us? If there is an image in Heaven of the ideal us, are we working toward that ideal? Are we deserving of God?s forbearance and protection at the foot of our own ladders?
Shabbat shalom!
For further study:
1) Rashi in Chullin interprets the reason for the angels? animosity as ?out of jealousy?. This is almost a reverse reading of the above. What is it about Ya?akov that makes the angels jealous?
2) The Rashi immediately before the one in which he says that that God was there ?to protect him? presents the famous midrash that the angels who protected Ya?akov in the land of Israel were going up while the angels who were to protect him outside the land of Israel were coming down. The motion was a changing of the guard. If the angels were Ya?akov?s bodyguards, isn?t it a contradiction to then say that God was protecting him from them?