Parshas Vayeitzei
I couldn’t help but wonder, “What took so long?” When I arrived at yeshiva that morning, a series of faces greeted me in the stairwell. There were still a few minutes to go before Shacharis began, and the students were still in “chill mode”—phones on, headphones out. I settled into my seat in the Bais Medrash, talis and tefillin on, and watched the steady trickle of students arrive for davening. But absent among them were the students I’d seen earlier upon my arrival. They’d made it to the building with time to spare, but didn’t make it to Shacharis until after Pesukei D’Zimrah was well under way.
So what took them so long?
But as I replayed the morning’s events, I actually found myself pondering another question altogether.
“How did they make it in to davening so quickly?”
If you follow the narrative contained in the pesukim, it would appear that when Yaakov leaves home he travels immediately to Charan, barring the one short night he spends under the stars, dreaming of angels and ladders. But in making the calculation, Chazal find that fourteen years go missing, unaccounted for in the chronicles of Yaakov’s escapades since he’d left his parents’ home. For these fourteen years, they explain, Yaakov hid himself away in Yeshivas Shem V’Ever, hitting the books for a deep dive in Talmud Torah before entering into the spiritually compromising atmosphere that would pervade his destination, the home of Lavan.
Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky wonders why this was necessary. Yaakov, after all, had already studied under the tutelage of Avraham and Yitzchak, his saintly grandfather and father. What more would be gained by studying in the Yeshiva of Shem v’Ever? Why not complete the mission he was instructed to complete by his parents without delay?
Rav Yaakov explains that the Torah Yaakov learned from his father and grandfather was of a different variety than that which he would now study. Until now, Yaakov was enveloped in a spiritual cocoon—the home of Yitzchak and Rivkah. Heading to the house of Lavan, Yaakov was now about to face far more antagonism over his beliefs and way of life than he had ever previously experienced. And that demanded a different brand of Torah, of preparation, of education.
Shem lived during the Flood, a time when the world’s population was considered by Hashem so morally vacuous that they deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth. Ever lived during the Dor Haflagah—the generation responsible for building the Tower of Bavel, a direct challenge to Hashem’s sovereignty. The Torah that would be shared in the Bais Medrash they founded would be of a unique variety, one that would speak to the immense challenge of insulating oneself against a harsh environment of immoral influences. This was a Torah that Yaakov had not yet learned, so he took the time to do so.
Different situations, different generations, call for education of different varieties and tones. The challenges of Yaakov’s youth are not the challenges of his adult life, and he needed to re-educate himself accordingly.
Which is the realization I had when I saw my students dragging their feet a bit. What did my morning routine look like when I was in high school? Didn’t we basically head straight for Shacharis as soon as we entered the building? Isn’t that just what you do?
And it occurred to me that they have something that I didn’t: A smartphone. An endless stream of entertainment at the ready, all in the palms of their hands. When I was in high school, how difficult was the transition from putting my things down in my locker to going to daven? Not nearly as challenging as prying myself away from a phone and surrendering it for the remainder of the school day upon arrival at Shacharis.
Which left me more impressed by their behavior than disappointed. How quickly they made that pivot. How quickly they transitioned from mindless entertainment to davening.
The challenges our teenagers face today are not the challenges we faced when we were their age. And that should motivate us to periodically replace annoyance with admiration. No, perhaps we didn’t act like that, talk like that when we were kids, but these kids are up against a lot more, are influenced by a world at odds with our sensibilities and values in a way we thankfully never were.
But it must also motivate us to do what Yaakov did. To realize that while the environment of growing up in Yitzchak and Rivkah’s home demanded one form of education, standing on the threshold of Lavan’s house, a new form was now needed.
If the only lesson we draw from the challenges of today’s world is how impressed we should be by the accomplishments of our children, we’re doing them a disservice. It’s critical that we recognize those difficulties and do everything we can (even while they kick and scream) to help alleviate those challenges.
If we found tefilah boring when we were younger, how much more lackluster must it feel for a teen today? After a bus ride spent watching YouTube and TikTok videos? How can we expect kids to successfully pivot from screens to sefarim in such close succession? What can we do to widen the gap between the two, to allow for some space for their minds to recalibrate, to ready itself for something more intellectual and contemplative?
Rare is the teenager who freely relinquishes the opportunity to own the latest technology, to have free access to whatever apps and content he or she so fancies. In a moment of honesty, they may well recognize the detrimental effect such liberties have on what they wish to accomplish in life, but teenagers cannot provide themselves with the education and precautions they need; that is for parents to do.
We want our children to engage with Tefilah and Torah. In the best of circumstances, it’s an uphill battle. What’s made it uniquely more challenging in this generation is that so many are being asked to so engage against the backdrop of devices that do anything but prime their minds for these holy activities.
Yaakov recognized that new times and new situations called for a new mode of education. And he was old enough to provide himself with it. Children are not so capable. If we’ve found that they are growing up in a different, more hostile world, if we recognize that they need guardrails not part of the educational package of a generation ago, it is up to us as parents to provide them.