First Reading: Unifying Subject and Object
“He became afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the House of God and this is the gateway to heaven.’”
When we pray to God three times a day with the Amidah we begin with the benediction that God is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Immediately after that we say that God is “great, mighty, and awesome.” These three adjectives correspond to Abraham (great), Isaac (mighty), and Jacob (awesome). Awesome (אֲרוֹנוֹ) is very similar to the word for awe or fear (יְרָא). Normally we would associate fear or awe with Isaac. How does Jacob parallel “awesome”? The source for this is in the first reading of Vayeitzei, “Jacob became afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place. This must be the house of God and the gateway to heaven.’”
Clearly, Jacob is very sensitive to the awesome nature of God.
The Ba’al Shem Tov refers to the dynamic displayed in this verse as “the unification of fear and awesomeness” (יִחוּד יְרָא וְאֲרוֹנָה). There is a unification, or yichud in Hebrew, occurring between Jacob’s experience of fear and his father Isaac’s perception of God’s attribute of being awe inspiring. This is a very profound teaching from the Ba’al Shem Tov and is usually noted among his most important. To state it simply, the Ba’al Shem Tov means that by focusing on God’s awe-inspiring omni-Presence, one can come to feel “fear of God.” More philosophically, the unification of the subjective experience of fear with the objectivity of God’s omni-Presence serves to bridge the modern divide created in our experience between ourselves and our objective surroundings. In more general terms, this is the unification of the subject with the object. The Ba’al Shem Tov states that by bridging or unifying the two, we elevate the fallen sparks of Godliness in reality.
One might think that unification of the subject with the object should happen through an experience and sensitivity to love, but from this verse, we discover that the essential unification happens through the middle axis—represented by Jacob and his identification of the location in which he came to this subjective feeling as “the house of God and the gateway to heaven.” Thus, Jacob inherits the left axis’ sensitivity to fear—represented by Isaac—and unifies it with his own experience of the infinite, which lies along the middle axis.
In next week’s parashah, we will learn that “Jacob dwelt in the land of his father’s dwellings” (וַיֵּשֶׁב יַעֲקֹב בְּאֶרֶץ מְגוּרֵי אָבִיו). Although this verse seems easy to understand, a deeper level of understanding can be gathered from “dwelt,” which also means “fear” (מָגוּר). Thus, it is revealing that Jacob was able to experience fear subjectively and yet not let it throw him off balance. This is the unification of the subject with the object.
(Wisdom, Issue 46)
