Little Angels - Theme Vayeshev 5775: “Little Angels” The contrast of the וישב עשו and the וישב יעקב (so embedded that it makes the ואלה תולדות כאילו נאמר ואלה של תולדות יעקב as opposed to the entire story of תולדות עשו just completed) is ultimately the contrast between ולעשיו נתתי את הר שעיר ויעקב ובניו ירדו מצרימה which is what happened here! But that is because ישיבה in ארץ ישראל can only be without the ביקוש לשלוה in the moment, but as a עד עתה אל המנוחה ואל הנחלה, a dream which must now be developed through the interrelationships of incredible complexity and detail for which most people simply don’t have the time and patience. What we once thought was a parasha dealing only with the complexities of the creation of a nation out of individuals and the logistics of relationships that needed to be worked out, of the needs for leadership and מלכות, and the challenges of allowing for emergence, turns out to be a parasha of much greater existential and personal import, further redefining the אלה תולדות שמים וארץ through its own missing ווא"ו. For here is the difference between simple תוארים and the דרך השם which is the הודיעני נא את דרכיך which is deeply connected to the הראיני נא את כבודיך which would mean the “persona” similar to איש את רעהו (שמות ל"ג) in his uniqueness as a specific human being. Until now we had no persona of the שכינה in the world; with the transition of Ya’akov into ישראל and the הבשילו אשכלותיה ענבים and the other ז"ה which is the רמז לי"ב שבטים = נסעו מז"ה we now have a שיעור קומה of an actual personality which is the result only of the full interaction, which in its ultimate sense, becomes the Rambam’s כל טובי, which is actual בריאה, i.e. שישיג טבעם והקשרם קצתם בקצת, וידע הנהגתו להם איך היא בכלל ובפרט. ואל זה הענין רמז באמרו, "בכל ביתי נאמן הוא" - כלומר, שהוא הבין מציאות עולמי כולו הבנה אמיתית קיימת. The unwillingness to deal with complexity derives from the sense that the trivialities are entirely הבל הבלים, that the darkness is indeed the very futility of the concerns about foolish jealousies and haircuts issues. But it turns out that the construction of Yisrael is the construction of Self, for the mistake of שלוה is to believe that the internal Self of ויתר יעקב לבדו is more than the depository of dreams that בראשית gives the בריאה, and that תולדות שמים וארץ is a description of how things work themselves out, and nothing is further from the truth, which is the deeper reason of why we begin with רבת העלילה in the midrashim and the story of the פרה and the children. For the תולדות שמים וארץ are the strongest expression of כח מעשיו הגיד לעמו and are exactly what the Rambam refers to when he speaks of all the possibilities being the דרך ה' ויכולו השמים והארץ כי טוב! This is the meaning of human life in כעולם הזה not a נשמה which is the reality that attempts now to impact the world and the persona by acting upon it, but in recognizing that the לבוש הגוף ולבוש הימים של האדם are the actual persona in עולם הבא and that the same נשמה source of deepest ראשית וחלומות may exist simultaneously in many worlds and lives, but that it is רואה ואינה נראית just like הקב"ה in the world! This means that the individual has no choice but to see himself as the total construct, must see his מצוות not as something that he has done, but as a part of himself that has become a מלאך in the world, of his complete presence within the world as a translation of ונשמות אני עשיתי which is the whole point of פריה ורביה. These are the מלאכי אלקים עולים ויורדים as Moshe and Aharon—just as Pinhas sees himself as a מלאך! Once this is clear, then שלוה becomes the worst possible way to effectuate the ירושת הארץ or the ויותר יעקב לבדו. Here the נסעו מז"ה becomes נסעו ממדותיו של הקב"ה and becomes נסעו מי"ב שבטים. Even the second-order story here of ישראל vision as opposed to Ya’akov, who believes clearly that the הנני is an expression of the readiness to deal with the אחוה, to work things out, the very ישראל who is dependent on the sexual identity provided the שיעור קומה of a Yosef, the ישראל who is carried by בני יעקב, who becomes the source of בני ישראל – ויהי שם לגוי, who knows ואם כן זאת עשוand who is the vision of the future and who was the carrier of the dream that becomes Yosef’s and Pharoah’s, who sees Yosef later from an entirely different perspective, even the Yisrael story is unable to penetrate using Ya’akov into the thickets of the moment. But the continued work of all is proven by the fact that there is so little blame historically upon them as compared to other קלקולים. Yet astoundingly there is more here about the underlying dangers to Yisrael from the removal of the נפש from the persona than anything else: it is the masturbation after the removal of Yehuda from his family; it is the religion of ideology that comes to haunt the ישיבה בארץ ישראל which comes from the horrific combination of comfort במגורי אביו שלא נהנה יעקב ממושב עד שנתישב בארץ מגורי אביו and of disassociation that allows the internal vision to impose itself on the self and the surroundings and has no room for relating and listening, the classic fundamentalism that can learn nothing.The difference between the willingness to be מודה at the end as per Yehuda, and the mere integrative mechanisms of the Yosef approach. This is the difference between Thanksgiving and Chanuka: just having more is not a source of הודאה, Steve Jobs was willing to use every resource of Apple 90 billion dollars just to sue Google because they stole his operating system for Android!