The New Shul

Weekly Message

In this week’s parashah, Vayetzei, Yaakov dreams of a ladder rising up to heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it. The Degel Mahane Efrayim drew a lesson from that dream about how we grow as human beings.  There are times when we feel stuck and immovable.  But  that “stuckness” can be like that of the ladder, which needs to be fixed in place on the ground in order for us to be able to climb higher on it.  Every low point in our lives can be an opportunity to grow.  And, just as the angels both ascended and descended, the same is true for us.  Going down is sometimes a pre-requisite for going up.

The setbacks that we suffer in life are often out of our control.  We do not choose them.  What we do have control over is how we respond to them. The key is not to try too quickly to escape those dark moments, but, like Yaakov, to explore what we can learn while we are there. If we can learn from adversity, then our descent will have been for the sake of climbing higher.