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WWOT: Weekly Words of Torah – Parashat Vayetze

To inspire, guide, engage, enrich, and empower Conservative Jewish Women
By Rabbi Ellen S. Wolintz-Fields, Executive Director, Women’s League For Conservative Judaism

The scenes that commence this week’s Torah reading, Parashat Vayetze, create a magnificent image in Jacob’s dream of a ladder, with angels ascending and descending. The dream continues when God appears to Jacob and promises that the land on which Jacob is lying will belong to his offspring. When Jacob wakes up, he asserts that God was in this place, although Jacob did not initially realize it.

Relationships, learning, connections to God, Torah, and Israel have often been compared to a ladder, as each of these is the same kind of structure upon which we ascend and descend. Perhaps there was a time in your life when you were a “once-a-year Jew”; a twice-a-year Jew; three times; maybe now, you attend once a month. Perhaps you feel as if you live in the synagogue and your name is on the letterhead. Maybe you do not read Hebrew, but you aspire to read Hebrew, and plan to have an adult Bat Mitzvah, and use the Women’s League curriculum Etz Chayim He. Is a Hebrew class in your future? What aspect of Judaism do you want to learn in the future? And how would you describe your relationship with God, especially as it will occur in the future, the atid

WWOT, Weekly Words of Torah will be a brief paragraph prepared weekly by our new Executive Director, Rabbi Ellen S. Wolintz-Fields, presented in our “This Week @ Women’s League.” WWOT will provide meaningful thoughts related to the Weekly Torah Portion, an event on the Calendar, a Prayer, or something of Jewish interest, to inspire, guide, engage, enrich, and empower Conservative Jewish Women. If you have any particular interest in future topics, or want to send Rabbi Wolintz-Fields an email, you can contact her at ewolintz-fields@wlcj.org. Read previous Weekly Words of Torah here.