Parshas Vayeitzei 5784
If anyone deserved a good night’s sleep, it was Yaakov Avinu. Lonely, travel-weary, and frightened by the prospect of leaving Eretz Yisrael, Yaakov could surely be forgiven for sprawling out in the first location suitable for making camp and getting some well-deserved shuteye.
Yet as the sun set and the world grew dark, Yaakov did not turn in the for the night. He had a job to do.
“ויפגע במקום—And he encountered the place.” Chazal interpret this encounter as one of tefilah. It is the last of three oblique references to the prayers undertaken by the patriarchs, each at a different time of day, that set a framework of daily prayers into place that we continue to follow to this day. Avraham established Shacharis, Yitzchak Mincha, and Yaakov gifted us with the evening prayer of Maariv, referenced here in this episode at the beginning of Parshas Vayeitzei.
In each of these three instances, a word other tefilah—prayer—is used. In the case of Yaakov davening Maariv it is the term “Vayifga—and he encountered.” The word is used in a number of contexts and is a tricky one to pin down, but at least on one level it connotes a sense of something accidental, something one did not quite plan for. Consider, for instance, one of the Torah’s references to the mitzvah of returning a lost object:
כִּי תִפְגַּע שׁוֹר אֹיִבְךָ אוֹ חֲמֹרוֹ תֹּעֶה הָשֵׁב תְּשִׁיבֶנּוּ לוֹ׃
שמות כג:ד
When you encounter (tifga) your enemy’s ox or his donkey wandering, you shall surely return it to him.
Shemos 23:4
A pegiah is what occurs not through planning, but chance. (Or more accurately, through providence.) At a point of unimaginable exhaustion, Yaakov Avinu chances upon a set of circumstances that demands prayer. If he had things his way, he’d be tucked away in the home of his saintly parents, with no thoughts of departing the Holy Land. If the home of his scheming, idolatrous uncle was indeed the best place to find a bride, surely a servant could be hired to undertake the task without needing to be personally exposed to that environment. After all, it worked for his parents.
But due to a series of unexpected events, Yaakov finds himself where he does. And he so desperately needs Hashem in his corner. So before he yields to exhaustion, he davens.
The legacy of Yaakov Avinu and his tefilah is that of a prayer that is expected and demanded of us even though we may not feel like uttering it. We may be exhausted—perhaps by prayer itself—having already davened as much as we can muster. We may be frustrated by the whole process, “Hashem I didn’t ask for this dismal situation; everything was just fine the way it was before. Why is it my job to pray for it to end?” We may be tired, cranky, annoyed, or in any other state that seems to choke heartfelt prayer from coming out.
To this, Yaakov responds, “Pray.” The Vayifga that he experiences is an unplanned, unpleasant state. It is not the Shacharis recited with the rising sun on the morning of your son’s bris. When joy and gratitude are the tailwinds blowing you into shul. It’s the Maariv of darkness and confusion when you don’t feel like davening because you wish the whole situation that demands your tefilah would never have happened in the first place. And you’re tired and exhausted and just want to go to sleep and have someone wake you up when it’s all over.
We find ourselves in a challenging time for prayer. It’s a time when the words and feelings and tears don’t seem to flow as easily as they did a few weeks ago when news of those massacred and those taken captive and those called up to fight first hit our ears. There’s the reality that human beings simply tend to move on and find it difficult to stay focused on any given issue for a prolonged period of time, even if that issue is of grave importance. And there are feelings that we’ve davened so much already and we’re exhausted from it—can’t we finally just go to sleep and be woken up when it’s all over?
Vayifga is the prayer that demands us to size up the situation at hand, more than how we feel about it. It’s the prayer that we say because we know in our hearts how meaningful and important prayer truly is. It’s the prayer we recite because of how desperately we need Hashem in our corner, despite the fact that we’d far prefer it if the bell had already rung and the fight was already over.
The unfortunate reality is that things are not better today than they were on Simchas Torah. Following the pogrom of that day, or within the first few days afterwards, those who’d been killed were already lost. Those taken captive were already imprisoned in enemy territory. Where we are now is worse. Now those captives have weeks of suffering under their belts. Now chayalim are actively in harm’s way. Now families have already endured nearly fifty days of absence from their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons who have been called up to fight. Our prayers should be even more fervent now than they were then.
Emotion on demand is a very tall order. And perhaps one that’s beyond us. But Vayifga teaches us that even if we can’t daven with quite the same meaning and kavannah as we did a month and a half ago, we can still take it as seriously. We can continue reciting the Tehilim we signed up for. We can continue treating shul with reverence. We can continue coming minyan on time.
We may wish it was already over, but, Vayifga, we’ve encountered a different reality. When it comes to the demand to call out to Hashem in prayer, we do not have the luxury of setting the stage, only of acting upon it. The situation we encounter today demands prayer only more urgently than the one we encountered six weeks ago. Let’s respond to this encounter as our forefather did.