In Toldot, last week’s Torah portion, Yakov steals the blessing and the birthright from his brother Esav. In the beginning of Vayetzeh, this week’s portion,Yakov is running to his uncle’s house to evade his brother’s wrath. As he is leaving, he stops for the night. Here we read, “And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.” (Genesis 28:12) What is the significance of this vision of Yakov’s Ladder?

This is not the first time we are seeing angels among us in the Bible. A couple of weeks ago Avraham was sitting in his tent when he was visited by three angels. According to the Talmud each angel was sent with a unique mission (Bava Metzia 86b). In the words of Rashi, it is not possible that one angel is sent to perform two missions. Every individual thing in the universe seems to be sustained by a unique angel. As we read in the Midrash,

Rabbi Simon said: You will not find a single blade of grass that does not have its angel in the heavens that strikes it and says to it “Grow!”” (Midrash Rabbah Bereshit 10:6)

The Rabbis were fascinated with the single-minded nature of an angel because it serves as a foil for the multivalence, creative, divergent, and willful nature of human beings. In this sense, an angel might just be nothing more than a human perception of God’s will. We assume to ourselves a certain agency and power of our own perceived free will. How is the image of Yakov’s ladder affected by this understanding of the nature of angels and human beings?

From his birth, Yakov’s nature is as a homebody. We read last week, “Yakov was a pure man, dwelling in tents.” (Genesis 25: 28) For him to undertake this journey  away from home Yakov will have to transform himself totally. To his father Yitzhak he was not worthy and maybe it was for the same reason that Rivka loved him. To his mother Rivka, he was an angel. For him to inherit the blessing of Avraham he has to leave the comfort of that tent and recreate himself.

This dream represents his willful transformation. On one level Yakov will need new angels to sustain him in the rest of his journey. On another level he will need to stop being an angel himself and develop other ways of being. This transformation culminates when he returns to confront his brother. In that moment, it is not just a vision of the changing of the angels in his life, but physically wrestling an angel. Would that boy in the tent have been able to confront that angel? Adulting by nature is not just complicated, it is actually complex. We will not be successful if we just do the one thing we are told when we are children. This image of Yakov’s Ladder is his coming of age with many divergent angels. It reflects the words of Walt Whitman, “I am large, I contain multitudes”.