There is a sweet, poignant story which always moves me.
There was a very famous Torah scholar who was well renowned and highly respected. He adjucated many legal cases in Jewish law and was known for his extensive knowledge. One evening he was studying and was distracted by the sounds of children crying. After a while the crying did not abate. He closed his books and went off in search of the source. He ran up and down his street till he finally identified the apartment from whence the crying was emanating. It was an apartment one flight up. The Rabbi ran up the stairs but the door was locked and no one answered his knocks. He started talking to the children through the door and couldn’t calm them. Immediately he ran down the steps and came back with a ladder. The Rabbi climbed the ladder, appeared at the window of the apartment and proceeded to sing, tell stories to calm the crying children. The parents eventually came home and were shocked to see the face of the holy sage framed in their window and their children grouped around him listening raptly.
(Don’t focus on why the children were left alone. That’s for another story.)
This is a story of how a man knew how to use a ladder to connect to those in need.
He came down from his holy pinnacle yes, but he ascended to meet them where they were.
In this weeks Torah portion, Vayetze, which means and he left, Jacob leaves home running for his life. He is escaping from his brother Esau who has threatened to kill him. It is a very dark and lonely time for Jacob. His future is shaky and uncertain. While on his journey he stops to rest and dreams of a ladder on which angels ascend and descend.
Jacob authors the prayer of Arvit, Maariv, or the Evening prayer at this time. It’s a prayer that acknowledges the challenges of dark times and the potential for light and faith to guide us through.
It is actually only from a dark and scary place of tears and fears that faith can break through and provide a beacon of light.
Light can only be perceived in the dark.
So Jacob paves a path for us. He shows us that even when things look so bleak and uncertain, faith can dispel the darkness.
Nachmanides writes that the ladder Jacob saw was a symbol of the connection transversed from Jacob’s present to his future, providing the vehicle to bring him from a scary circumstance towards a better tomorrow.
Rabbi Judah Mischel reminds us that our own lives our steps on a shaky ladder, a ladder of faith that sometimes teeters.
When you go up or down a ladder there is that moment when your foot is in the air, helplessly grasping for purchase and not knowing if one will be found. Yet we take those dizzying steps and chances again and again as we take on new challenges or cope with the fear of reaching new heights.
When we climb those rungs, we are following the steps of our Patriarch Jacob who taught us that climbing a ladder is a leap of faith and also a necessary skill in the game of life.

Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi shared an experience and teaching that is completely breathtaking.
She met a woman named Meirav who was taken into captivity in the Gaza terror tunnels and released after 53 days.
She shared what kept her going during those 53 days of darkness and utter terror.
Meirav said they were being held in some kind of pit and she was lying on an iron bunk bed.
She was on the top bunk and she continuously held onto the iron ladder that was connected to the bottom bunk.
She kept telling herself, “you are made out of iron you will get out of this pit. Hanging on to that ladder that’s what gave me strength”.
As Rabbanit Yemima says, that’s what Jacob did in his time of terror, he sees the ladder, and it gives him hope.
She goes on to say that our Sages teach us about the women we meet in this weeels Parsha, Bilha , Rachel,Zilpa and Leah, the matriarchs and their maidservants, all four women from whom the 12 Tribes of Israel descended.
Their lives were challenging, wracked with pain, but they climbed through it and created eternity.
The first letter of each of their names spells out BaRZeL which is IRON in Hebrew.
The four of them teach us that in the vagaries of life you must be made of iron, and you can choose to climb.
How appropriate that their daughter Meirav intuited that lesson and was able to literally and figuratively use the ladder of faith to climb out of the pit.
May the DNA of our predecessors give us the fortitude needed in these times to be a ladder to the future and an access way to comfort, strength and peace.
You can use a ladder for good, or you can be one!
Shabbat Shalom and so much love!