“He had a Dream; a Stairway was set on the Ground and its Top
Reached the Sky”
On Dreams and Reality
Pinchas Leiser
The ladder
in Jacob’s dream is perceived, starting with rabbinic literature, as a
significant symbol that depicts two different worlds, and this is the language
of the Midrash in Breishit Rabah (part 68):
Here is the
stairway - - This is the ramp “set on the ground” –This is the altar (Exodus
20) “You shall make an earthly altar” And its top reached the sky –
these are the sacrifices whose scents ascended to the sky. “And here
are God’s angels.” These are the high priests “ascending and descending, etc...They
ascend and descend the ramp.”(Amos 9:1) “I saw the Lord standing by the
altar.”
Our sages
deciphered the symbol of the ladder in the dream, as Sinai, “And he
dreamt and here was a stairway”- This is parallel to Sinai, “was set on the
ground” “And they encamped at the base of the mountain (Exodus 19)
and the mountain was on fire up to the heart of the sky” (Deut. 4).
Another interpretation is gematria –sulam=Sinai, both equal 130. (Baal Haturim)
The Midrash
actually describes two possibilities for a connection between “the ground” and
the “sky”:
The world of
the altar, the temple and the sacrifices, and the world of revelation
at Sinai.
On the one
hand, it can be seen that these two images are signs that connect to the
historical possibilities. While in the eyes of the sages who lived after the
destruction of the temple, they do not have the chance to experience the
connection with the spiritual world through the temple and altar, but also the
world of prophetic revelation is also not open to them..
It could be
that specifically because both the “altar” and “Sinai” are not concrete terms
for our sages, it is necessary to interpret their metaphoric meaning of these
images.
The altar
is a factor that is a part of the elements that atone for man’s sins.
“Atonement altar” is presented by our sages (Bavli Berachot, 5:2) in the
context of the trials and tribulations that man is subjected to. The Zohar
compares fasting to the altar of atonement. It could be that when man is confronted
with hardship and suffering, by choice or by circumstance, he is given a chance
for closeness (and maybe here is the linguistic kinship of (קירבהandקורבן).
Or maybe here we see the explanation that sees in suffering, relinquishing possessions,
pleasures and needs as a way to bring man closer to his God.
Sinai is certainly the place in the
wilderness where the revelation of God is established, but the expression also
serves as a metaphor for renewal and development of the tradition of
revelation.i A scholar who served as abundant
and reliable source of
information, in an era where there were no available libraries or computerized
information resources, is called Sinai by our sages.
In addition,
we are reminded of the Midrash in Viyikra Rabah (parasha 32): “And even what an advanced student will
say to his teacher, has already been said at Sinai.”
That is to say,
enlightenment and newness are included in the tradition and is part of the
revelation.
And Rabbi
Haim from Vilozhin (a student of the Vilna Gaon, 1749-1821) expresses similar
thoughts in his book “Ruach Haim,”, and this is what he says:
“Our sages
come to teach us that we should not think we are made from crass raw materials,
we are not worthy of being building blocks. On this it is said, “and the stairway
was set on the ground” –that is Sinai and its top reaching the sky” –The essence
of life and being is that they come from above. There are god-fearing souls
that are higher than God’s angels, and that is why the soul is worthy to
join with the Torah. The complete person is like a tree planted
upwards and its body below—this is the body attached to the upper roots.
Rabi Haim
from Velozhin, the undisputed representative of the world of Lithuanian Torah,
sees in the study of Torah “Sinai”, which is the ladder that connects between
the sky and the earth, where it is possible to ascend and descend, and those
who are ascending these stairs are likened to angels and even surpass them in virtues.
Emmanuel
Levinas (1906-1995), sees in the ethical dimension, the stairway to revelation,
and he writes:[i]
“I said this
from the start: My work has endorsed
the fact of revelation, to attribute it to what is external to man
(my emphasis-P.L.), that he emerges himself with the knowledge. He does
not become simple content of internalization, but remains “not able to
contain,” eternal, but still in a relationship with it. The thought that this
relationship, that is first and foremost, paradoxical, can be found in the
model, impassivity to the other, responsibility
to him, that, exactly in this relationship, man becomes “I”: appointed
without an opportunity to opt out, chosen, special, irreplaceable and in this
sense, a free agent – freedom meaning answerability to a cause that I am the
only one who can respond to it; or I can
respond to the place I am called to-[ii]
This is the way I have chose to resolve
the paradox of revelation: Ethics are the model for the transcendental dimension,
and as an ethical message ,(kerygme ethique) the Bible is the revelation.
It seems to
me that Levinas, in translating revelation to ethics, has “laid down” the
ladder and has transformed it from vertical to horizontal. The “sky” is not
above but in relation to the other who I am committed to.
It seems to
me that each of us can dream his own spiritual dream of “a stairway … set on the ground and
its top reached the sky,” to delineate for himself the defining experiences
that “altar” and “Sinai” mean to him, to
think about the ascending as an
opportunity for internal introspection and commitment, whether personal or
social, and on the descending, as an opportunity to transform the real world,
the earth and the human environment that
he lives in, to a better and more beautiful one, as in the words of Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk: “The heavens
are the heavens of God, and the earth was given to man” – to make the
earth into heaven.
Notes
iThe Revelation in Jewish Tradition, in Beyond
the Sentence,” p. 194, translated by Dr. Elizabeth Goldwein, Shocken, 2007
ii Or maybe here
there is a translation to modern philosophical language of traditional ideas of
our sages, like sworn before Sinai, One is not a free man until he studies Torah,
If I am not for myself, who is for me, and when I am for myself what am I, You are
not obligated to finish the work, but you are not free to desist from it, etc…
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