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Dr. Yitzhaq Hayut-Man.  This Parashah contains issues of Geomancy. Ya‘aqov gets involved with three marking stones and his trajectory, backward of the one Abraham took, and then return establishes the route for all the Tribes of Israel to form and to return.

At the first night of the exit/exile of ya’aqov “he lighted/hit upon the place” – vayifga baMaqom ויפגע במקום –  as if he stumbled into it. But he is about to discover the awesome importance of that place – Maqom.

The verb vaYifga יפגע comes from Pgi’ah פגיעה means “hitting” – and also Prayer for getting divine help. Like in almost of the Torah text, the verb is in “inverted future tense” that hints that the Torah is a prophetic book. The identification of the place is for fixing the future Temple as “House of Prayer” as is written: “Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be acceptable upon Mine altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7).

The term Maqom מקום already appears in Abraham’s (and Yitzhaq’s) trial of the Aqedah, where it was indicated, roughly, to Abraham and he set to get to the Maqom; and “on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the Maqom from afar” (22:4). He then reached this Maqom with Yitzhaq (22:10), presumably to perform the supreme sacrifice, and then he gave a new name to that Maqom – YHWH Yir’eh – “YHWH will see”.

Now in the case of Ya’aqov, he retrace Abraham’s steps backwards, from Be’er Sheva towards Haran, and by his first night he already reached, or stumbled into, “The Maqom” – the place appointed beforehand. Like in Abraham’s case, the word Maqom appears four times in the short account, and the final fourth is again for naming the place.

The Term Maqom became eventually the name for with the divinity that surrounds our space (Sovev Olamim in later Hasidic teachings). As the sages explained “why is the Holy One called Maqom (Place)? Because He is the Maqom (the surrounding space) of the world whereas the world is not His Maqom ” (e.g. Yalqut Shim’oni for vaYetze, 117).

The distinction between Space and Place is a fundamental issue for architecture and Human Geography (see Tuan, 1977) and also in sociology (Lefevre, 1991). This very week there was launched a new book by Professor Havivah Pedaya called Merhav uMaqom מרחב ומקום – “Space and Place” that gives a deep Jewish perspective on the theological-political issues of space and place.

In terms of geographic space, there is difference between Bet-El and Mount Moriah. Rashi claims it was the same place, but the Midrash says the ladder went up diagonally, its feet at Bet-El and its top over Mount Moriah.

The distance in geographic terms between Be’er Sheva and Bet El was more than a one-day journey and a Midrash claims he had “Qefizat haDerekh” – a Shamanic flight along a straight path.[1] If so, Ya’aqov’s journey established a sacred axis leading between Bet El and Jerusalem.

Bet El (“The House of God”) was actually the place of the Israelite Temple that was built by King Yerov’am (of the Yosephite tribe of Ephrayim) and included a Golden Calf, in order to stop pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A similar later event was the building of the golden Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem by Caliph Abd el-Maliq (685-692 C.E.) in order to stop pilgrimage to Mecca (Elad, _____). It seems fitting that Ya’aqov, who preferred Yoseph from all his sons including Judah, got associated with the Temple to be built in the Israelite Kingdom.

The Gematria of the word Maqom gives some further clues: its Gematria value is 186, which is 6 X 31. Now 31 is the value of El, which means both the noun God /Power and adjective “towards” and hence “direction”. Maqom is thus the extension of a space in six directions: the horizontal ones of Left-Right and foreward-backward (or East-South-West-North) and the vertical one of Up-Down. The horizontal expansion is attested by the blessing Ya’aqov received: “… the land on which you lie, to you will I give it, and to your seed. And your seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in you and in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (28:13-14). The vertical dimension is attested by the ladder connecting earth and heaven. We might note that this dimension is not actually the 3^rd dimension, the vertical of 3D space but that the “heaven” (Shamayim) is in a higher dimension, perpendicular to all the three dimensions of physical space. This is hinted by the Genesis account of the ladder being perpendicular to Ya’aqov as he was lying horizontally and the Midrah

Lavan’s Name means “White”. Beforehand (and later) Ya’aqov had his contention with Esau or Edom – “The Red One”, with clear red-hot intentions to kill and later have emotional reunion. But Lavan is White, more subtle, using “white lies”. Instances of struggle symbolized by Red and white abound such as the English War of the Roses, the Red and White armies of the Russian Revolution and the Queens of Alice’s

 

The Names of the Children of Yisra’el:

In this Parashah we learn of the genesis of Israel of the Twelve tribes (though here we meet 11 of the dozen). Their names are explained explicitly, so we need not explain them. The question we’ll take is about their place in Space and Soul as hinted by their names.

The Torah lists the tribes of the children of Ya’aqov 16 times – 13 of them different and three in the ideal positions around the tabernacle. But there is also another arrangement of the tribes marked by the Hoshen – the High Priest’s breastplate with twelve precious stones, inlaid in a matrix of three columns and four lines (or the opposite by some accounts). The order of the tribes in the Hoshen matrix is not given, and commentators have argued it. Here we make a somewhat original pattern, which is hinted by the names of the tribes and the Gematria of those names and their connection to the number 37.

The Gematria value of all the letters that comprise the first verse of the Book of Genesis is 2,701, and 2,701 = 37 x 73. The last two numbers have a common geometrical patterns – that of the six-pointed star known also as “Magen David (“The Shield of David) and recognized all over the world as the symbol of Israel. So these numbers are “star numbers” which is a series with the first 13, the second 37 and the third 73.[2] Interestingly, the name Yisrael ישראל has Gematria value of 541, which is also such a Star Number.

 

                                                                                                                                           73                                                               37                                           13

Let’s arrange the names of the tribes in the Hoshen Matrix according to the order of their birth, with the two tribes of Joseph’s sons (born last of the twelve), and thus that the Tribe of Levi is not among the territorial tribes, all with their Gematria values we get the following:

 

 

We then find that the Gematria values of contiguous tribes are multiples of 37

The sum of the Gematria values of all the names of the 12 tribes in the Hoshen comes to 3700 – which equals 100 x 37. Hundred has a whole lot of symbolic meanings. Yitzhaq found hundred “Gates” (She’arim) in the Land of the Philistines, and I have found that the Dome of the Rock contains 100 gates (including the “Gates of Light” of stained glass windows).

References:

Paul Devereux: Shamanism and the Mystery Lines – ‘Ley Lines’, Spirit Paths and out-of-body travel. London, Quatum, 2001.

Mircea Eliade: Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004

Lefebvre, Henri: The Production of Space, Blackwell 1991, ISBN 0631181776.

Moshe Idel: Ascensions on high in Jewish mysticism: pillars, lines, ladders. Central European University Press, Budapest, 2005. On line download.

Yi-Fu Tuan: Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience 1977. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. ISBN 0816608083.; and Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values 1974. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. ISBN 0139252487.