Maintaining The Proper Headspace.
Maintaining The Proper Headspace.
This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.
In the beginning of Parshat Vayetze, we read about how Yaakov leaves his parents’ home in Be’er Sheva and heads to his uncle Lavan in Charan, where he will spend the next 21 years working as a shepherd, marrying, and building a family.
At the beginning of his journey, the Torah describes how the sun set just as he reached Mount Moriah, the future site of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple.
As Yaakov prepared to go to sleep, the Torah describes how he took a few stones and put them around his head for protection before lying down.
A seemingly obvious question that comes up is, why did Yaakov find it necessary to protect only his head? What about the rest of his body? Wasn’t he worried about that?
The Lubavitcher Rebbe OBM gave an interesting answer.
Yaakov was leaving his parents’ home where he was able to spend most of his time “sitting in the tents” of study. Indeed, the Medrash tells us that Yaakov had spent the previous 14 years learning in the Yeshivah of Shem and Ever.
Now Yaakov was getting ready to leave it all behind and enter the workforce, and as preparation, he was teaching us a valuable lesson.
The verse in Tehillim says:
“יגיע כפיך כי תאכל, אשריך וטוב לך”
If you eat the toil of your hands, you are praiseworthy, and it is good for you.
-Tehillim 128:2
Working and making a living should involve only your hands, your head should remain free for the things that are important in life; your relationship with G-D, your family, and yourself.
This advice can be harder for those of us who’s work specifically requires that we involve our heads, and that makes it that much more critical to maintain proper boundaries between our work lives and our personal and spiritual lives!
A story is told about Rabbi Shalom Ber of Lubavitch (the 5th Chabad Rebbe), who once noticed that one of his disciples looked preoccupied. When Rabbi Shalom Ber asked the Chassid what the matter was, the Chassid started telling him about the problems he was experiencing with the galoshes factory that he owned.
The Rebbe looked at him and said, “I have heard of people putting their feet in galoshes, but to put your head in galoshes…?”
So let’s try and take a lesson from our grandfather Yaakov and, even as we go out in the world and create amazing things, let’s make sure to maintain our safe-space around the things that matter most.
Shabbat Shalom!
Yechiel