As a child, I spent many Shabbos afternoons playing board games with my older brother. Those games helped shape my view of the world. One of my favorites was Risk, which taught me world geography. Another game we played was Chutes and Ladders. The exciting part of the game was that one player could be way behind, but land on the bottom of a ladder, allowing his piece to move straight to the top of the ladder near the top of the board. Conversely, another player close to the top could land on a chute, sliding his piece down towards the bottom of the board.

Those ladders remind me of Parshas Vayeitzei, which opens with Yaakov having the famous dream of “Jacob’s Ladder.” Yaakov saw angels ascending and descending a ladder going from earth to heaven and heaven to earth. Who were these angels, and why were they going up and down the ladder?

Rashi says that Yaakov was about to cross the border, leaving Eretz Yisrael. Moreover, Yaakov had angels escorting him on his journey. But angels assigned to Eretz Yisrael could not leave the country. These angels had to ascend to heaven, and new angels had to come down to escort Yaakov on his journey outside Eretz Yisrael. Why the change? Rav Dessler explains that the challenges of living outside Eretz Yisrael are different from those experienced living in Eretz Yisrael, so different angels were needed to help Yaakov with those unique challenges.

Targum Yonasan ben Uziel gives a different explanation: The angels climbing the ladder were those sent to overturn Sodom and Amorah during the time of Avraham, but they were forced to remain on earth until it was time to escort Yaakov to Beis Keil. When they ascended to heaven, they excitedly told all the other angels that they had just seen the face that’s carved onto a leg of Hashem’s throne—the face of Yaakov! The angels in heaven wanted to see Yaakov in real life, so they went down to see for themselves. This is alluded to by the last word in the pasuk. The angels were going up and down “bo”—because of him, Yaakov.

The concept of the face of Yaakov etched on the leg of the throne of Hashem comes up once again in Parshas Vayishlach when Yaakov returns to Eretz Yisrael. Yaakov had left Eretz Yisrael 20 years earlier as a single, penniless man. Now, he returned with his matriarch wives and their children…and a large fortune as well!

Yaakov is attacked by a man in regard to whom the pasuk says, “vayei’aveik ish imo.” The Ramban explains that the word vayei’aveik is similar to the word vayeichaveik, which means to wrestle. Rashi quotes the Gemara Chullin 91a which explains that the word vayei’aveik is from the word avak, dust, which is “kicked up” when people wrestle. The Gemara says that the dust ascended all the way to the throne of Hashem. It wasn’t a human who attacked Yaakov, but rather it was the ministering angel of Eisav. The Kli Yakar says that the name of this angel was Sama’eil, otherwise known as the Samech Mem. The name is a compound word, Sam-Keil, which means to blind a person from Hashem. Sam also means poison. The yeitzer hara (evil inclination) attempts to blind and poison us to prevent us from connecting with Hashem.

Rav Gedalia Schorr explains that the emphasis of the dust rising until the throne of Hashem is to teach us that the angel was attempting to blind Yaakov from seeing that his face was etched on Hashem’s throne. Even though Yaakov had passed all the tests during his 20-year tenure in the house of Lavan, the yetzer hara attempted to make him feel that he failed—like sending him down the chute from the top of the ladder.

The angel realized that the only way to overpower Yaakov was to blur his vision from seeing his own greatness. There is a pasuk in Tehillim that says, “Do not have a foreign god in your heart.” The Gemara says that this foreign god is referring to the yetzer hara, which is in effect an alien inside of us.

Remember: Yaakov is the patriarch of the whole Jewish nation. This means that every Jew’s face is etched on the throne of Hashem! The Torah is teaching us that we need to envision ourselves there—to see it and feel it each day when we say “Shema Yisrael.” Our vision may be clouded at times, but we do affirm daily that we have that connection to Hashem.

With this daily affirmation, may we ascend the ladder and reach our spiritual goal.

Rabbi Baruch Bodenheim is the associate rosh yeshiva of Passaic Torah Institute (PTI)/Yeshiva Ner Boruch. Rabbi Bodenheim can be reached at [email protected]. For more info about PTI and its Torah classes, visit www.pti.shulcloud.com