Meeting God at Night

For some reason, Jacob’s most memorable encounters with God occurred at night.

                  First, when he left home, running away from his twin brother Esau, the hunter, who had said in his rage that he would kill Jacob for having taken his birthright and then his blessing.   Jacob left home heading for his mother’s family, with whom he would wait until Esau’s anger subsided.  On the road alone at night, in the wilderness, beneath the star filled sky and the Milky Way, Jacob dreamt a dream of a stairway stretching from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending, and God speaking to him.  Jacob awoke and exclaimed “Achen yesh Adonai bamakom hazeh v’anochi lo yadati.  God is in this place and I did not know it!”  That was Jacob’s first nighttime encounter with God.

                  The second occurs in this week’s portion, twenty years later and Jacob is returning home and preparing to meet his brother Esau, not knowing whether Esau is still bent on murder.  Jacob is alone, again, and knows only that in the morning, he will meet his twin brother….from whom he fled twenty years earlier.  There alone in the night, suddenly Jacob is set upon by a mysterious man and the two of them wrestle together all night long.  The man injures Jacob and at last says: “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.”  Jacob replies “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  The man replies “what is your name?”  and Jacob replies “Jacob,” to which the man says “no longer shall you be called Jacob, but Israel…God wrestler…for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”  Alone in the night, Jacob experiences his second unforgettable encounter with God, and receives a new name “Israel.”

                  On the first of June 1986, I was alone at night.  I had recently turned twenty-nine, having moved out to Santa Barbara from New York a year earlier to be the rabbi of Santa Barbara Hillel.  I was single, having recently ended a long-distance relationship, and there I was lying awake at 3:00am, wondering whether I would ever find the right woman to marry.  How would I find her?  I asked myself, or you might say I asked God, “if geography were not a factor, is there anyone, anywhere in the world, who I would want to marry?”  And as I wandered the globe in my mind, in the middle of the night, the answer came to me clearly:  Marian.

                  Who was Marian?  Marian was a friend whom I had first met when we were both five years old, in England.  Marian’s mother Fran and my father had known each other as teenagers in Rochester, New York, back in the 1940’s.  In the 1960’s, Fran was living in England, a young widow with three little children, and my family was there for a year, and we got together.  Here is the photo to prove it.  Marian and I are standing next to each other, with our mothers and our siblings, in front of the Tower Bridge of London, in 1962. 

                  Neither of us remembers that; we were five years old!  But we have the picture.  We met again 16 years later, when Marian was working at a summer camp in the States and came to Rochester to visit her cousins.  She remembered my parents from one of their previous visits to England and she came to dinner.  I happened to be home from college and driving back to Boston the next day.  She was going to Cape Cod and I offered her a ride.  That seven-hour car ride when we were both 21 was the beginning of our friendship.  We really liked each other, and both felt a deep comfort and easy communication, but she was returning soon to England and we were both still in college.  There was no possibility of a budding romance, but we did end up spending five days exploring Boston together. 

                  Over the course of the next eight years, we saw each other from time to time.  In Israel, in England, in New York, and each time we connected deeply, but the timing was never right.

                  Now it was the middle of the night, June 1st 1986, and I was asking: who is the woman?  And the answer came to me:  Marian.  I got up and sat down with pen and a yellow legal pad and wrote her a letter, saying that it seemed that we were both at the age where we would like to get married, if we could find the right person….and I had always felt that we were really compatible.  I was coming out east in a few weeks.  Would she like to get together and see if there was a possibility?  I finished the letter and went back to bed.  I woke up in the morning, re-read the letter, decided that I still believed everything I had written, and that I really had nothing to lose, and mailed it off.  Here is that letter. This was long before email.  I mailed it off and I waited; it took a week for her to call and to tell me that she was willing to give it a try.  She suggested a trip to Quebec City, which might be the most beautiful city in North America. 

                  It went well.  We were head over heels in love, and after two days, we got engaged, and we began to share our news with our families and friends.  They reacted with a range of emotions.  Shock.  Concern. Puzzlement.  Happiness.  Dismay.   Hope.  A few weeks later, Marian moved out to California and we began to get to know each other.  I got cold feet.  Freezing feet.  It was a difficult, stressful time for both of us, but we went through with it, and we both feel that we still don’t fully understand how we got so lucky.  That is the story of how Marian and I got married.

                  There is a famous legend about Rabbi Yosi ben Halafta, living in the second century in the Land of Israel, who was asked by a Roman noblewoman: “How long did it take your God to create the world?”  Rabbi Yosi replied “Six days.”  The noblewoman then asked “and since then, what has He been doing?”  To which Rabbi Yosi replied “matching couples for marriage.”  The woman retorted: “That’s all?  Even I can do that. I have many slaves, male and female. In no time at all, I can match them for marriage.” To which R. Yosi countered, “It may be an easy thing for you to do, for God it is as difficult as splitting the Red Sea.”

She went out and the next day she lined up a thousand male and a thousand female slaves and paired them off before nightfall. The morning after, her palace was like a battlefield. One slave had his head bashed in, another had lost an eye, while a third hobbled because of a broken leg. No one seemed to want his or her assigned mate. She summoned Rabbi Yosi and acknowledged. “There is no God like yours and your Torah is true, pleasing and praiseworthy. You spoke wisely.”

It's an amusing story, but it leaves us wondering:  What does it mean to say that God arranges marriages?  And what does it mean to say that this work that has been occupying God since the creation of the world is difficult for God, more difficult than splitting the Red Sea?

Here is what I think:  In this legend, Rabbi Yosi ben Halafta expresses one of the most mysterious and most important paradoxes in all of Jewish tradition.  

On the one hand, the unfolding story of our lives happens beyond our control.  We never know what is around the corner, and we can never know or understand the vast array of causes and forces all around us and inside of us that guide the unfolding events. 

But if we look at the beauty of the world around us, we see something like wisdom at work.  The magnificent, miraculous order and harmony and splendor of the cosmos.  We and our families and our lives are part of that.  This is what it means to say that God arranges marriages; beyond our understanding, and yet somehow, with wisdom and love.

On the other hand, we choose.  We make choices, freely.  Sometimes we choose life and blessing and sometimes we choose death and curse.  Our human choices are notoriously out of God’s control.   We humans and our free will are difficult for God.  It is not difficult for God to arrange matches between birds or wild animals… but human matches are more difficult for God than the parting of the Red Sea.

Whenever I tell the story of Marian’s and my engagement, I always hasten to add that I do not recommend this as a model to follow.  We did not know each other!  It was crazy and impulsive.  I got cold feet and we very nearly broke up.  It was incredibly stressful for both of us

But I do think there was one thing we did right.  I asked for guidance in the middle of the night… a time when my mind was clear, and open.  We both trusted our deepest instincts.  We allowed God to enter our lives and to guide us.  It was difficult, for God and for us.  But we did open ourselves to the wisdom of the Creator.  I would recommend that to any couple.

Just five months after our trip to Quebec City, we got married, in Rochester New York, on a Saturday night in the middle of a blizzard.  It was December 13, 1986. Tonight is our 38th anniversary, and that’s why I’m sharing our story with you tonight.  Happy anniversary Marian.  Shabbat shalom!

 

 

                 

                 

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