Yaakov the Laborer
Now, Yaakov however, he was a different story. He had a different role; he was a different kind of builder. Because what was Yaakov laboring for? Why was he working so hard? What was the purpose? The answer is to build a family! Most of what we know about Yaakov Avinu, we know from the sedras that talk about the time he spent with Lavan. And he spent the time there for one purpose—in order to gain a family.
Look what Yaakov said. He said to Lavan, “I have been twenty years in your house, I worked for you fourteen years for your two daughters.”
Imagine a man wants to get married and the shver tells him, “Work for seven years and then I’ll let you take her out.”
“Forget about it,” you’d say. “Keep your merchandise.”
Building a Family
But Yaakov Avinu knew what it was about. He had a tafkid now, to build a family. And therefore for fourteen years he labored—hard labor—to earn those glorious wives that would be the mothers of the Jewish people!
Then he had to work six more years to support the little children. Lavan was an old time shver—he didn’t support Yaakov. No kest. He took his son-in-law into the business and put him to work. And so Yaakov Avinu spent the best years of his life laboring for his family. When he left Lavan, he was already an old man, and not much is left to tell about him in later sedras. It means his main accomplishment in life was spent in raising a family.
Now, I’m sure in these twenty years, he was also meditating on the teachings of his father’s house. Yaakov Avinu received the teachings from his great fathers, and he certainly spent time learning in his parents' home and also in Shem v'Ever. He had an extremely great mind and there’s no question that during the time he worked, he was mechadesh chiddushim—he added to the teachings of Avraham and Yitzchok. But nothing is said about that! The Torah concentrates only on the great task of toiling to get his wives and to support his large family.
Building our Foundation
And that’s because there are two kinds of achievement that the founders of our nation had to achieve. One was the greatness of ideology, of understanding the world, of establishing and developing the principles of emunah; to come close to Hashem, to make contact with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and to see His ways in the world, to see His kindness and wisdom.
That's a very great function, a very important part of the nation. It’s the foundation of our people and we needed great thinking minds to do that. And so Hashem said, “To have such original minds, minds that will think along these lines and discover all the secrets of the universe, so how can I have these minds taken up with other things? I want it to be a free mind.”
That’s why for so many years Avraham Avinu didn’t have any children. Of course, he wanted children very much. But because he was such a great and original mind, Hashem said, “I’ll leave him alone for now.” When he was a hundred years old, then Yitzchak was born. He had Yishmael before that, but it was one child; he wasn’t occupied with tzaar gidul banim. He had the freedom to build an ideology.
On Avraham’s Shoulders
And Yitzchok, same thing. Yitzchok took all the studies of his great father, and he built on them. The Medrash states that Yitzchok was a bigger chochom than Avraham. You hear that? The Medrash says that. But he was only a bigger chochom because he was sitting on Avraham’s shoulders, like a dwarf on the shoulder of a giant. If a little man sits on your shoulders, so he’s bigger than you only because you’re underneath. Avraham made Yitzchok great, but Yitzchok took all of his father’s teachings and enlarged them.
And so, Yitzchok too, was needed for building the foundation of the Am Yisroel and therefore Hashem didn’t bother him much with children. He had a small family. He had wealth. He didn’t have to labor. Instead, he was busy all the time walking in the fields, thinking and talking. The glorious majesty of Your splendor and Your wondrous deeds I will speak about (Tehillim 145:5). I’ll speak about it. That’s what Yitzchok did: He was thinking and talking to himself, developing and growing.
And it was done for us. Someone had to do the hard work of developing the ideals of our people. And so, we are forever indebted to Avraham and Yitzchak because they gave their lives to establish the ideology of the Jewish people with which we live today.
Building People
But there's another aspect that a nation needs—a very important matter still remains, and that's the matter of having a nation. It's not enough for you to be a philosopher or even a great Torah thinker, and you're sitting in your beis hamedrash all by yourself, and you're writing seforim, and you're thinking noble thoughts. That’s good, but it's not everything. A nation needs families. A nation needs families to live out those principles, to live that ideology in the world.
And that’s what Yaakov did. Hashem said, “Since your fathers already worked out all the great truths of life, the two avos discovered all the great secrets of life, now you get busy raising children.” And that’s what Yaakov was occupied with; raising a family. Not that Yaakov was devoid of greatness of the mind, but while his forefathers never had to interrupt their studies, Yaakov was forced for twenty years to work very hard. He was busy on the second aspect; he was making the Jewish nation, and that took up his life.
In those days, you didn't work nine to five. Even in my days, I remember as a boy, you didn't work nine to five. All the stores were open six o'clock in the morning. All the stores. The grocery store was open at six o'clock in the morning and it closed twelve o'clock at night. No exaggeration. Six in the morning to twelve at night.
And workmen worked every day of the week except Sunday in America. Saturday all day long. You had to work all day Saturday; otherwise no job, no parnassah. That's why it was so hard to be a shomer Shabbos in the olden days when immigrants came here. Unless you became an organ grinder. I know an old Jew who became an organ grinder; he bought a monkey and a little hand organ and he was a shomer Shabbos all his life. It wasn't easy, however, to be a shomer Shabbos in the olden days because you had to work all day, every day.
Busy Parents
And so Yaakov labored day and night. Not only in the fields. He and his wives were very busy in the house, raising the children. You know what it means to bring up a boy? Yaakov had a houseful of boys. Don't think it was easy raising those boys. They weren't born old men with beards. They were born boys. They were climbing on the tables. No question—they were boys after all.
A boy is a mazik, a sheid. He breaks windows. Girls are a handful too, but a boy makes real trouble. No matter what the feminists tell you. They’ll try to persuade you that girls are the same as boys, but it’s only false persuasion. It's not so. Anybody who raises children knows that boys are mazikim. And a woman who raises a houseful of boys knows that boys are troublemakers. No question about it.
And when the shevatim became bigger, so bigger boys make bigger tzaar gidul banim. You think it was a small tzaar what he had with Reuven, the episode of Reuven and Yaakov's maidservant Bilhah? That was some trouble—Yaakov Avinu went through a lot with his children.
Even when he came home to Eretz Canaan. That's when the real trouble began, when he came back home. The story of Dinah. The story of Yosef Hatzaddik going lost—he mourned many years for him. And then the story of Binyamin, of maybe losing Binyamin. And much more is not told in the Torah. Only a minimum part is related in the Torah.
