The sons of Lavan

In the parashah This week's Torah, Vaietzé (and he came out), recounts the adventures that marked the life of Jacob after he escaped from his father's house to avoid being killed by his brother Esau.

First, he gives all his possessions to his nephew Eliphaz, who pursues him to kill him on Esau's orders. Then he meets Rachel and works for seven years to marry her, but his father-in-law, Laban, tricks him and marries him to Leah. After a week, he marries Rachel and works for another seven years. During this time, he has eleven sons and one daughter amidst growing rivalry between his wives. He then works six more years tending Laban's livestock and finally escapes from Laban's house with his entire family.

Laban, Jacob's father-in-law, was a master of deception. In fact, the Torah calls him Laban. HaAramí, Aramaic, but, when we reverse the letters of the word HaAramí, We'll keep the word HaRamaí, which means the liar.

After working for fourteen years for his wives and having twelve children, Jacob finds that he doesn't really have the means to support his family outside of Lavan's house. The agreement with Lavan was that Jacob would work and Lavan would support him and his family, but independently, Jacob was poor. Therefore, he decides to work for himself.

And the way he does this, in general, is by developing his own herding business, his own livestock, from Laban's flocks. He asks Laban to lend him some sheep and goats (Genesis 30:31 ff.) and, after crossbreeding them, he would keep only the black-spotted goats and the brown sheep. The rest, the white or other colored sheep and goats, would belong to Laban. The deal is done, Laban takes away all the spotted goats and brown sheep (so Jacob had no source of genes to breed spotted goats and brown sheep!) and gives Jacob some old goats and sheep, leaving him to fend for himself!

After six years of work and the help of God (see Bereshit 31:11-12 and Rashi's commentary there), Jacob generates much wealth from Lavan's livestock.

Now, the Torah recounts what Laban's sons were saying (Genesis 31:1): “And Jacob heard the words of Laban's sons, saying, 'Jacob took away all that belonged to our father, and from our father's possessions he amassed all this wealth.'” We, as outside observers, know that Laban deceived Jacob many times (Genesis 31:7), and God was on Jacob's side throughout the process of generating wealth to support his family. However, Laban's sons considered Jacob to have been the deceiver.

In fact, there is a commentary (Kli Yakar) that explains the quoted verse (31:1) by raising a contradiction in the words of Jacob's sons: If Jacob took all about his father, how did he put it together of His father's wealth (it sounds like Lavan still had some; Jacob simply combined his wealth from Lavan's, but didn't take it). all)? And he answers: Jacob took, that is, learned, all Lavan's capacity for deception (that's what they mean by "his father's thing"), in order to then gather of His father's possessions (that is, his father's sheep and goats), his own wealth (Jacob's). In other words, Laban's own sons recognized their father's deceitfulness...

Despite the malicious comments, Jacob, who knew that his actions were correct, paid no attention to them and continued his retreat from Lavan's house (Besides, God Himself told him, in a prophecy, that it was time to return home...)

From this we should draw an important lesson: it often happens in family, work, community, sports, and other settings that someone questions the actions of another, directly or indirectly, in one way or another (I'm referring to objectively unfair and unfounded questions). And the person who was questioned feels very bad because, objectively speaking, they acted well, in good faith, correctly, and so on.

We must understand that the whole world is the house of Laban. The whole world is a kind of illusion, where God, the Source of all Life, is hidden and gives rise to everything that opposes His Will. One might even think that one can live without God—God forbid! And in the house of Laban live the sons of Laban, who have nothing to do with their lives and dedicate themselves to questioning (generally out of envy) the actions of those who want to do good with the best of intentions. The lesson is that we shouldn't pay attention to them, we shouldn't feel affected or depressed; the system is this way because God created it that way, and every question should serve as an impetus to perform more acts of kindness and, from time to time, say a psalm for the sons of Laban, that God may help them...