AVROHOM YAAKOV
Arriving in Charan, Yaakov encounters a group of shepherds relaxing around a well which is covered by boulder.
His interest in their lack of productivity is piqued.
"The day is yet long, it is not yet time for the sheep to be gathered, water the sheep and go pasture them." (29:7)
Clearly Yaakov saw the blocked well so why the question?
And from a broader perspective, no words in the Torah are extraneous, so why go into such detail about this encounter, even if it is to set the scene for Yaakov’s meeting with Rachel, the love of his life?
There are a number of delicious explanations.
The Gerrer Rebbe answers that Yaakov wasn’t ignoring the boulder on the well but he was challenging the shepherds to have go. Get up and try to remove the blockage. Don’t just give up.
R’ Shimshon Refael Hirsch has a different spin on the situation. Yaakov knew that the shepherds themselves put the rock on the well and reasoned that they did this to restrict uncontrolled access to the water.
They didn’t trust that some of the shepherds would get more water than others so they placed a rock that only could be moved when all got together. (They would be in trouble if some of the shepherds took sickies!)
The shepherds effectively stopped anyone for gaining an advantage – sort of like enforcing equal opportunity at the expense of the shepherd’s employers.
So Yaakov was calling the shepherds out for dereliction of their jobs.
WE NOW UNDERSTAND why the details of Yaakov’s meeting with the shepherds is covered in detail since the attitudes embodied by the shepherds are an anathema to a functioning society.
For society to progress, people need to make effort even when confronted with challenges. A challenge is merely an opportunity for a person stretch and grow. Saying it is all too hard or not my job is simply not good enough.
Similarly, restricting people from achieving to create a ‘level playing field’ stops progress. It is sort of like the employee who won’t do his job but gets upset when someone else does it instead.
The shepherds represented equal opportunity failure.
