Parashat Vayetze: Glimpses of Fullness

Holding one of my children and stroking her hair, listening to her breathing, I feel a wave of gratitude wash over me. We are both awake and very still. I feel full, fuller than I thought possible. There is nothing more I could want in this world than this child. Thank you, God, for this gift.

Amidst all the scheming and rivalry of this week’s parsha (and the last one) – between Yaakov and Esav, Yaakov and Lavan and Rachel and Leah—amidst all this noise is a moment of stillness and fullness, the birth of Yehudah, Leah’s fourth son.

Leah explains her first three sons’ names in terms of her restless striving for her husband’s love – “Now my husband will love me;” “This is because the Lord heard that I was unloved,” and “This time my husband will become attached to me.” The birth of the child occasions here not a sense of fullness but a reminder of her essential emptiness, of a very basic absence in her life.

Something happens, though, with the birth of Yehudah, her fourth son. His name means “Thank you, God.” “This time,” she says, “I will thank [odeh] the Lord.”

The rivalry between the sisters is by no means over. Leah speaks angrily to Rachel in the next “mandrakes” scene: “Is it not enough that you took my husband that now you have to take my sons’ mandrakes as well?”

The strife continues. But here in the middle of the parsha, we get a glimpse at a possible solution – a sense of fullness so large that it overwhelms all competition. Strife is born out of a sense of internal poverty, of scarce resources. But gratitude grows out of fullness, the emotional equivalent of the cornucopia or the waves of the sea. There can be no fight here; there is plenty.

The Torah offers us a similar glimpse of breadth in the midst of last week’s similarly strife-ridden parsha. On either side are the stories of Yaakov’s wrestling of birthright and blessing from his brother Esav, but in the middle, in the story of Yitzhak and his wells, for one split second, we feel a sense of stillness, of contentment and fullness. Here, too, there is strife – the first 2 wells are called “contention” and “harassment” because of the fights over their possession, but the third is called Rehovot, or “Large Spaces,” for “God has at last broadened our space so that we may increase in the land.” A broadening or opening up of space – the sense that there is more than enough to go around -- this is the antidote to strife; this is gratitude.

Yitzhak says that God has at last broadened the space, but it is really our job to feel, to take note of its breadth, of the fullness of our blessings. Nachmanides suggests that those three named wells of Yitzhak represent the first, second and third temples. The first two are destroyed through strife and contention, but the last – the image of our hoped-for future – will be one of fullness. Indeed, the rabbis say that the in the future all sacrifices will be annulled except for the thanksgiving offering. There is something utopian about gratitude; it is an emotion that draws its energy from the fullness and perfection of a future world. Our ability to catch glimpses of it in this world, as did Yitzhak in last week’s parsha, and Leah in this week’s – to stand still enough to feel that fullness – is what brings that utopian future into our daily lives.