23 Nov Parshas Vayetzei: How the Omission of a Blank Space Captures the Story of a People Over Millenia

The Blank Spaces

This essay will not dissect a portion of the Torah, nor a chapter, verse, sentence, or word. We will not even focus on a letter or a syllable in the Torah. Rather, we will explore a glaring omission in this week’s parsha.

Any person who has been called up to the Torah, or those who had an opportunity to gaze at a Sefer Torah will note that it does not contain the familiar kind of punctuation which we are used to seeing in books. There are no periods, exclamation points, or question marks; no commas, colons, semi colons, or hyphens.

But there are two forms of punctuation in the Torah to indicate (at least in many instances) the beginning of a new topic—and they are blank spaces between words, marking the end of one “parsha,” or topic, and the beginning of a new one.

[There are two types of spaces in a Torah scroll, one is called “setuma,” which means closed; the other is called “pesucha,” which means open. When a topic in Torah comes to an end, and a new topic is about to begin, the words stop before the end of a line, the remainder of the line is left open. Then the new topic begins only on the next line. This is called a “pesucha,” or an open-ended line. However, when a new, yet related, topic begins, the line is not left open at the end, but a space the length of nine letters is left empty between the words, and the next topic begins on the same line. This is called a “setumah,” or a closed ended line. They are indicated in every printed Chumash with a Hebrew letter “pei” פ) for pesucha) or the Hebrew letter

“samach” ( ס†for setuma).]

Here is an image of a few page in the Torah scroll containing both types of spaces, a “pesucha,” then a “setumah.”

Two Exceptions

All portion of Torah are filled with numerous such blank spaces. (Take a look at any portion in your printed Chumash and you will see at every new topic a letter “pei” ( פ) or a letter

“samach” ( .((ס

There are two exceptions—this week’s portion, Vayeitzei, and Miketz. Vayeitzei contains 148 verse; Miketz—146 verses. Yet they lack these breaks. The entire portion is written as a run-on-sentence, with no “space” to breathe.

This is strange. Toldos is one of the longer portions in the Torah and it covers twenty full years in the life of Jacob, years filled with diverse encounters, experiences, and tribulations. Why is there not a single space in the entire portion?

Leaving Home

It was the Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Altar, the second Rebbe of the Ger dynasty, who offered a marvelous explanation.

The portion begins with these words: “And Jacob left Beer Sheba (where his parents lived in the south of the Holy Land) and travelled to Charan” (Harran was a city in ancient Mesopotamia, located today in Southern Turkey, on the border of Syria and Iraq.) Jacob leaves the cocoon of his parents, an environment infused with the Abrahamic vision of life, and travels to Harran, where he would live with a deceitful father-in-law, Laban, and would endure many a tribulation. The portion ends, two decades later, with Jacob leaving Laban and retuning to the Holy Land: “And Jacob went on his way and Divine angels encountered him.”

What allowed Jacob to maintain his moral and spiritual equilibrium throughout his two decades in exile? Why did the first Jewish refugee not assimilate and forfeit his spiritual identity?

The answer is hinted in the Torah by the omission of any space throughout his journey from the Holy Land and back there. From “And Jacob left Beer Sheba,” in the opening of Vayeitzei, through “Jacob went on his way and Divine angels encountered him,” at the end of Vayeitzei, there was no chasm. Geographically, Jacob left Beer Sheba in the Holy Land, he departed from Isaac and Rebecca and their Divine-centered world; but in his mindset there was absolutely no gulf between the two. He knew he is on a journey, he was sent on a mission, and he will return.

The Secret of Longevity

This portion captures the long drama of Jewish exile. Jacob is the first Jew to leave his parents’ cocoon and recreate Jewish life on foreign soil; his descendants would be forced to do so numerous times throughout their history. What is the secret of the descendants of Jacob to be able to endure millennia of exile and yet remain firmly etched in their identity as Jews?

I will answer the question with a story.

The Mission

The late astrophysicist, Professor Velvel Green, who worked many years for NASA, once related the following story.

Many years ago, Dr. Green shared, a noted scientist delivered a lecture at a Space Science Conference on the broader aspects of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Program in the USA. Among other things, the lecturer drew a parallel between the problems which will face space explorers in the future and our current conditions on earth.

Using a hypothetical manned voyage to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, as an example, he emphasized the remarkable engineering, biological and sociological problems that would be encountered during the execution of this enterprise. Since the star is 4.3 light years away, a spaceship travelling at 1,000 miles per second would require more than 800 years to get there and another 800 years to get back. Any original crew we launched would not survive for even a fraction of the mission’s duration. Instead, we would have to “man” the capsule with men and women who would have children who would carry on the mission. These children would themselves have children, continuing this for 1,600 years. Ultimately, after many generations, the remote progeny of the original crew would complete the mission.

This interstellar spaceship would have to be completely self-sustaining and self-supporting. But the lecturer pointed out that the engineering and technical problems are only one side of the coin. In the spaceship the crew would have to learn to tolerate each other, generation after generation. They would have to learn, and learn quickly, that you don’t blow up only part of a spaceship.

And then the speaker touched on a key topic: Would the fiftieth generation, after a thousand years, still share the aspirations of their pilgrim fathers who set out from earth so long ago? How, indeed, can you convey to a generation still unborn the basic information about where they came from, where they are going, why they are going there, how to get there, and how to get back?

One of the scientists stood up, and to my surprise and delight, declared: “If we could figure out how the Jewish people managed to survive these thousands of years, we’d have our answer!”

What a magnificent answer. Because to a Jew this story is no mere fantastic flight of imagination; it captures our millennia-long narrative. Almost four millennia ago, Abraham heard a call to become a blessing for all mankind. Over three thousand years ago, at Mount Sinai, we were launched with specific instructions and suitable maps. And we were told that we ought to transmit this mission to our children and grandchildren, for generations to come.

What was the mission? To reveal that the universe has a soul, that humanity has a soul, that each of us has a soul. That we are living in G-d’s world, and our mission is to transcend our superficial shells and reveal the Divine in each of us. Our journey, we were told, is not over till we bring Moshiach, when the truth of reality will be revealed and exposed even to the physical eye.

For more than a hundred generations we knew where we came from, were we were going, why we were travelling, who was the Project Officer, and how to get back. We had no real difficulty in transmitting this intelligence unbroken from generation to generation—even to generations who were not physically present during “take off” at Sinai. How? Because the Torah, our Divine logbook, contained macro and micro guidance. Notwithstanding all challenges, this logbook has met the only real criterion of the empirical scientists—it worked. Our presence demonstrates that it worked.

As long as we did not allow an interruption in the transmitting of Torah from generation to generation, the mission and the people remained intact.

The Challenge

But somehow, not too long ago, a “space” emerged in the middle of this long and incredible journey. A generation of “astronauts” arose who decided that they could write a better logbook. They thought the original was old-fashioned, restraining, complicated, and irrelevant to the problems of modern times. They lost their “fix” on the celestial reference points.

Many of them know something is wrong; but they cannot pinpoint the malfunction and cannot get back on course. Our mission today is to teach by example how there is indeed no gorge and no gulf between Sinai and modernity. It is one continuous uninterrupted chain, and—unlike with Darwinism—there is no missing link. The glorious narrative of our people is that we never allowed for an intergenerational gap. The same Shabbos our grandmothers celebrated 2500 years ago, we still celebrate. The same tefillin my great grandfathers donned in Georgia 300 years ago, I still wrap today. The same texts Jewish children in Florence and Barcelona were studying 700 years ago, my children study today.

Abraham began the story, Moses consolidated it, and we will complete it.