December 4, 2022|י' כסלו ה' אלפים תשפ"ג Yaakov, Lavan and Cultivating an Openness to Listening By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger and its crew set out on a mission to space. Just 75 seconds after liftoff, tragedy struck. Before a watching world the space shuttle suddenly exploded overhead, disintegrating the cabin and its crew. Debris of metal, blood and bones plummeted to earth. It was a tragedy. What went wrong? Teams of researchers examined the wreckage and the specific cause was found. The problem was with the O-rings, the circular rubber seals, which had been designed to fit snugly into joints in the sections of the booster engine. But apparently, the O-rings became defective under the adverse conditions in space. This resulted in a mechanical failure and led to the disaster. Was that the whole story?

 

Imagine a world when we learn how to listen. In this week’s parsha we read one story of two people going down the wrong path. Both saw the signs of their impending demise staring them in the face, but they ignore those signs. In the end, one person loses everything and the other person almost loses everything, and only the difference was an explicit command by God.

 

Both Yaakov and Lavan are going down the wrong path. Lavan is about to lose everything. He tries to trick Yaakov out of getting paid for his work by paying him only in spotted sheep, or speckled sheep or some other type of sheep. In fact, according to Yaakov, he changes Yaakov’s salary arrangements ten times. But as Yaakov amasses more and more wealth and Lavan keeps on losing more and more wealth, Lavan doesn’t realize what’s happening before his very eyes until his children assert that Yaakov has stolen everything from him. Lavan ends up losing everything and he blames Yaakov. He doesn’t even realize that his loss was due to the fact that he gambled on making shady salary arrangements and he lost. Lavan doesn’t even realize that he was the cause of his own undoing.

 

Yaakov’s story in some ways is similar to Lavan’s story, with one major exception. Make no mistake about it. Yaakov is also going down a bad path. Now it may not seem that way because he is amassing a tremendous fortune, but he is becoming so enmeshed in Lavan’s household that it seems impossible to leave. Yaakov hears that his brothers-in-law are spreading false rumors about him, but he doesn’t plan to leave. Yaakov sees that Lavan is looking at Yaakov very differently, but he doesn’t plan to leave. We could very well imagine that had Yaakov remained by Lavan, Lavan would have been overly hostile and he may have tried to harm Yaakov or at the very least take his property. But Yaakov finally leaves. And why does he leave? Only because God specifically tells Yaakov to leave. Had God not spoken to him, I’m not sure if Yaakov would have taken the appropriate action to leave Lavan’s house until it was too late.

 

What’s fascinating about Yaakov’s decision to leave is that the Torah tells us that God tells Yaakov to return to his homeland so Yaakov, like a good husband, asks Rachel and Leah for permission and he tries to convince them by telling them what happened. When he speaks to Rachel and Leah, Yaakov not only tells them that God told him to return, but he also tells them about a dream he had when an angel appeared to him. The angel told him “ki ra-eetee et kol asher Lavan oseh lach,” or “because I see everything that Lavan is doing to you.” This message can mean one of two things. The angel may be warning Yaakov, as many meforshim explain, that if Yaakov remains any longer, then Lavan may try to harm him or steal from him. Perhaps, though. the angel is warning Yaakov that if he remains any longer, his character may suffer permanently based on his surroundings. After all, Yaakov used to dream about angels going up and down ladders, and now he’s only dreaming about sheep and material wealth. Whether the danger to Yaakov is internal or external, it’s time to go home. 

 

And yet, that’s not enough to convince Yaakov to leave. Yaakov sensed Lavan the trickster was being hostile to him, his brothers-in-law were openly accusing him of taking everything from Lavan and just in case Yaakov wasn’t convinced, an angel clarifies that indeed Lavan is trying to harm him. However, none of these reasons convince Yaakov to leave. What motivates Yaakov to leave is “vayomer Hashem el Yaakov shoov el eretz avotecha.” God tells Yaakov to return to the land of his ancestors. What emerges from this story is that the only difference between Yaakov’s fate and Lavan’s fate is that God never told Lavan what was happening, that Lavan’s deceit is backfiring so he needs to stop, and God did tell Yaakov that he needs to leave before anything bad happens to him.

 

Why does Yaakov refuse to leave until God commands him to do so? The Midrash Tanchuma excuses Yaakov for not returning home earlier, even after getting the message that Lavan is hostile to him. The midrash states that Yaakov actually needed permission from God to return home. God told Yaakov in the beginning of the parsha that He would protect him and He will bring him back to his homeland. Perhaps Yaakov needed permission to return and that’s why he waits for God. The midrash is obviously struggling with the question of why Yaakov must wait until God tells him to return. Perhaps, though, Yaakov couldn’t even imagine leaving Lavan. In theory, yes, but in practice, no. Lavan would never allow him to leave with his family and his wealth. It’s hard to uproot ourselves from our surroundings even if those surroundings become very challenging.

 

Parshat Vayeitzei tells a story of two people, a righteous person and a wicked person, who both refuse to see the signs of danger and harm, or they see the signs but they are unmoved by the signs to take action, and one of them only finally takes action when he receives an explicit command by God. When I reflect upon this story, I reflect upon the fact that it is often so difficult for us to listen, to see the signs and to act on those signs. Lavan was not open to realizing that he lived a life of sheker, of falsehood and deceit. Yaakov was perhaps too scared to admit that he needed to leave before it was too late.

 

Often, we are just not open to listening, to acknowledging that maybe we need to change. After much investigation as to the cause of the space shuttle disaster, the truth eventually got out. The real cause of the space shuttle disaster was pride and a failure to listen to criticism. A group of top managers failed to listen carefully to the criticisms, warnings, and corrections given by others who were concerned about the reliable functioning of the O-rings under conditions of abnormal stress in space. Failure to listen led to a catastrophic disaster.

 

But it is natural for us not to be open to listen, to change our entire approach. We don’t like to admit that we were wrong, that we need to make a change. What’s holding us back? We know what’s holding us back. When a close friend says, “I have something that I want to talk to you about,” we instinctively cringe and we put ours defenses up. The question then becomes, how do we cultivate a willingness to listen to criticism or to the fact that we need to change?

 

First, acknowledge the problem. Normalize the difficulty. Embrace how challenging it is for us to really listen, to really accept that we need to change. Second, let’s work on our humility. Be humble enough to understand that we don’t always know all that we need to know and we can benefit from the perspective of others. Finally, humility sets the stage for curiosity. Curiosity is the desire to learn more, about ourselves and those around us, and it is the desire to want to grow as individuals. At a minimum, we need to train ourselves to instinctively respond to a critique with the following phrase, “Thanks for sharing that with me. I’d like to grow.”

 

I am well aware that it is often very difficult to be open to criticism because of the way that people criticize. Once, Rav Ovadia Yosef was walking in the street with one of his sons on Shabbat. Along the way, a driver pulled up alongside them and asked, “Excuse me, how do I get to such-and-such a place?” Rav Ovadia’s son who was appalled by the driver’s audacity in asking such a question jumped up and replied, “Continue straight, then make a left, then make another left, and then you will arrive straight to Gehinnom!” When Rav Ovadia Yosef heard this, he became very upset and told his son, “That is not the proper way to behave! You must rebuke others in a pleasant and relaxed manner!” Unfortunately, many people are not so tactful when they criticize. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be more open to really listening to others and seeing the signs when we need to make a change. 

 

Imagine a world when we truly learn how to listen. Let us all think about a time when we may have reacted badly to criticism that we received and maybe let’s think about what we could have learned from that criticism that would help us improve. Acknowledge the challenge and difficulty of listening, but then be humble and be curious. We may never have the benefit of an explicit command by God like Yaakov did to tell us to change direction, so let us consider being more open to the art of listening in our own lives.