In addition to the liberty the preacher has allowed himself in arriving at what he claims to be the real contrast between the two men, he added what might be a humorous nuance in locating a shared formula at work in terms of each of the two groups: each follows the same basic formula, one which, however, is interpreted in terms of distinctly opposing sets of values.
69. Maʾor va-shemesh, I, 17a.
70. Based on Rashi’s comment on b. ʿAbod. Zar. 11a.
71. b. Ber. 55a.
Vayetze
Jacob’s Dream-Episode72
“(Jacob) came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night . . . . Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head (and lay down in that place).” (Gen 28:11).
Rashi explained that the stones began to argue with one another (each seeking to serve as Jacob’s pillow) and the Blessed Holy One immediately made of them a single stone, and hence “Jacob took the stone . . .” (Gen 28:18). [Two rabbinic texts,73 providing different backgrounds, explained that the twelve stones were merged into a single stone.]
But one might interpret Rashi’s words as intimating a deeper thought. . . .
Our holy Torah comes to teach us the ways of the worship of God as we are to praise Him through Torah (study) and prayer. And in doing so, it is important not to corporealize any word or letter of the Torah or prayer, thinking that these are understandable simply according to their surface-meaning.
Rather, when one is standing in prayer, it is necessary to remember that the very existence and life-energy of thousands upon thousands of worlds depend upon the holiness of the letters and upon every word and letter and even upon a small dot in the Torah-text. This is alluded in the saying of our blessed Sages that God “is the place (makom) of the world,”74 [rather than the world being God’s place; the comment in the Midrash refers to Ps 90:1, “O Lord, You have been our dwelling-place (maʿon) in every generation,” as a prooftext] and that the Torah is entirely one with the Blessed Holy One. Failing to realize this, one might corporealize his prayer, which in that case is not a prayer of tzaddikim. For the core principle of prayer lies in one’s attaching himself to the spirituality of the letters which can awaken higher realms.
“He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky . . . . Jacob awoke from his sleep (mi-sheinato), and he said, ‘Surely the Lord is present in this place (and I did not know it). Shaken, he said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven” (Gen 28:12–17).
The Midrash strangely explained that Jacob awoke from his study (mi-mishnato).75
The Midrash would seem, however, to suggest that the core and goal of human prayer is the fullness of perfection in the worship of the Blessed One as a person grasps God’s blessed Divinity through Torah-study and prayer. This cannot be achieved by one without the other, because “An unlearned person (ʿam haʾaretz) cannot be devout,”76 and through Torah-study alone one cannot cultivate his soul to attain a state of wholeness, as our Sages said, “Anyone who says he has nothing but Torah does not even have Torah.”77 [Deeds are also necessary.]
Certainly through engaging in Torah for its own sake, one comes to a pronounced state of holiness and attaches himself, in the three basic levels of the soul, nefesh, ru’aḥ and n’shamah, to the letters of the Torah. However, even so he cannot fully attain the quality of awe and love and thirst and longing for serving God and cannot attain a true sense of Divinity other than through praying with devotion and enthusiasm, as is said in all the holy books.
Our Sages explained Jacob’s “coming upon a certain place” as his instituting the evening prayer (ʿaravit/maʿariv).78 Until then he did not know the greatness of prayer. While we find that Jacob had previously sought refuge in the Academy of Shem and Ever where he studied Torah,79 and so he certainly came to know the mystery of prayer, nevertheless he did not actually experience a revelation of Divinity until that moment when he truly grasped the mystic significance of prayer.
And this is the interpretation offered in the Midrash: “Jacob awoke from his sleep”—from his Torah-study. Through this prayer he grasped that he had not attained what he did through Torah alone. And he said, “Surely the Lord is present in this place,” indicating that through this prayer he was able more completely to understand how God revealed Himself through his study, “And I did not know” this secret. “This is none other than the abode of God”—meaning that precisely through prayer in a state of inner awakening and enthusiasm, one is able to experience awe of God’s exulted state. . . . For prayer is of the nature of the gate of heaven, the attainment of a sense of Divinity and awe of God.
Comment: Like other Hasidic teachers, Kolonymus Kalman grasped episodes from the Torah essentially not as narrative, but rather as a code, as exercises in need of deciphering. The end-product focuses not upon Jacob and his particular happenings and situation but is nothing less than a vision of being itself. And accordingly, the story revolving around Jacob’s famous dream is deciphered as a statement of a deeper truth.
The motif of the stones fusing together to comprise a single stone, based upon midrashic readings of that episode, invited the preacher to ponder the nature of oneness. Going beyond the midrashic motif of twelve stones, symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel which emerged through Jacob’s own twelve sons and their becoming a single people, the homily directed his attention to the theme of the innerness of the very words and letters of the Torah itself which is understood, in some more ultimate sense, as a manifestation of the Divine. In accord with that sense, one’s understanding of the Torah-text must go beyond the level of its simpler meaning.
The discourse on Jacob’s dream-episode goes on to echo rabbinic statements concerning the role of deeds that must accompany Torah-study. Study itself, unaccompanied by deeds, is insufficient.80 In the Kraków master’s homily, however, the basic contrast is not one between study and deeds, but rather between study and prayer. Building upon a rabbinic tradition that Jacob had studied in a prototypical academy, the Academy of Shem and Ever, the homily attributes to Jacob’s dream a realization on his part that study alone is insufficient without a devotional dimension expressed in prayer (t’filah). The preacher re-carved the account of Jacob’s dream to voice a critique of a total and exclusive emphasis upon study to the exclusion of any real emphasis upon that devotional dimension.
The Letters within All That Exists81
“And the mound was called Mitzpah, because Laban said, ‘May the Lord watch between you and me when we are out of sight of one another.’” (Gen 31:49)
On the level of its plain meaning, this verse is not understandable. But we might interpret it in terms of what it intimates, namely that while it is impossible to attain
