Out of the depths. What did Jacob add to the Jewish experience? What is it that we find in him that we don't find to the same measure in Abraham and Isaac? Why is it his name, Jacob Israel, that we carry in our identity? How was it? That all his children stayed within the faith. Is there something of him in our spiritual DNA?

There are many answers. I explore one here and another

next week in Vaayshlach.

Jacob was the man whose deepest spiritual encounters happened

when he was on a journey alone and afraid at the dead of night,

fleeing from one danger to another. In this week's parish, we see him fleeing from

Issa and about to meet Lavan, a man who would cause him great grief. In next week's

parish, we see him fleeing in the opposite direction from Lavan to Issa, a meeting that filled

him with dread. He was very afraid and

distressed. Jacob was supremely the lonely man of faith. Yet it's precisely at these moments of

maximal fear that he had spiritual experiences that have no parallel in the lives of either Abraham or Isaac nor even Moses.

In this week's parishee has a vision of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven with angels

ascending and descending, at the end of which he declares, surely God is in this place,

and I didn't know it. How awesome is this place? This is nothing other than the house of God

and this the gate of heaven.

Next week, caught between his escape from LaVan and his imminent encounter with Esau, he wrestles with a stranger,

variously described as a man, an angel, or even God himself, and receives a new name Israel,

Israel, and that is when he says,

naming the place of the encounter Peneal, Kirayti Elkhim El Panim, Vatina Tselnavshi,

I have seen God face to face, and my life was spared.

This was no small moment in the history of faith.

We normally assume that the great spiritual

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