There is a story in Elie Wiesel’s book ‘Souls on Fire’ attributed both to Rebbe Nachman and to Simcha Bunim of Pshisecha, but since I’m a fan of Simcha Bunim, we’re gonna go with the story belonging to him.
There once was a man in Krakow, Itzik son of Yekel, a poor Jew, with a wife and kids. Every day he would pray that God would ease his families suffering and make him not so poor. He would go to shul morning and evening and pray, and he would pray in between just as hard. It went on this way for months, and then years.
And then one night he had a dream. In the dream, he was in a far away place. A voice told him: this is Prague. This is the Vltava River. Here is the castle. And here is the stone bridge over the river. Dig under this bridge, and there is a treasure. It is yours. Your problems are resolved. He awoke from his dream, and he did the same thing we all do when we awake from a dream. He said ‘what a silly dream.’ And he went about his day, praying, and worrying, and scratching to get by for him and his family. And that night, he had the dream again. This time the voice added ‘would you rather be rich? Or would you rather be worried?’
Itzik again ignored the dream, because it would be sheer madness to travel from Krakow to Prague, a 400 mile trip, because a dream told him to. Moreover, Itzik had no money, and what little he had he would need to leave with his wife and kids so that they could get by while he was gone. Nope, he would not go. But the dream persisted, night after night, taunting him. The voice would say ‘what? You haven’t left yet?’ What is stopping you?’ Finally, he made up his mind. He would go, if only to get the dream out of his head.
Itzik set off on foot with not a penny in his pocket and only the clothes on his back. He walked for days, eating what he could forage or begging for bread, sleeping by the road side. Finally, after two weeks, he arrived, filthy, exhausted and starving, in Prague. He went to the town center near the castle, and there he saw the great stone bridge. He saw the exact spot from his dream where the voice told him to dig, and even though he felt silly doing it, he began to dig. But no sooner did he put his head down for a minute to put his effort into digging, but a soldier, the captain of the watch, saw him from the bridge, and came down to detain him. This captain accused Itzik of spying and began to batter him with questions. Who are you? Why are you here? Why are you digging under the kings bridge? So of course, Itzik told his story, about being poor, and the praying, and the dream, and the voice, and the bridge, and the journey, and the treasure.
And when he came to the end, the captain began laughing and laughing. He said ‘See here, you dumb Jew. You came all this way because a dream told you? How ridiculous! It just so happens that I too have been having a dream. In the dream, a voice tells me to go to Krakow. Every night the voice tells me and shows me the house of Itzik, son of Yekel. And it tells me to go there, and dig under the stove, and there I will find a treasure. Can you imagine such a thing? Why would I travel to Krakow for a non-existent treasure? And even if I did, I’m sure half the city is made up of Jews named Itzik and the other half made of Jews named Yekel.’ The captain laughed some more, and then released Itzik, who hurried on his way.
Itzik returned home, walking twice as fast as he had on the first leg of his journey. He arrived home, moved the stove, and there underneath was the treasure. He paid his debts and could provide for his wife and his children, for their schooling and that they could eat lavishly for the rest of their lives. He dedicated the rest to build a synagogue in his name, and he lived out the rest of his days a pious man, even though he no longer needed to pray that God take away his poverty.
…
A quick disclaimer before I can continue: the point of this story is not for all of you to dig underneath your stove at home. Seeing as this is Pittsburgh, odds are the only thing under your stove is your basement, and the only notable feature in your basement is likely a toilet that sits in the middle of the room with no walls or bathroom around it.
Our story I think has several meanings, and I think it is important to resist any one of them as the real meaning, because if that were so, the story would be too simple. The first meaning, of course, is the mashal, the moral, and that is that we often go searching far and wide for a thing that exists right back at home. This is a hassidic parable version of the concept ‘the grass is always greener’ - that we constantly think there is something better out there when what we need was right here all along.
The second lesson in the story, though, is about the value of the journey. Itzik would never have found the treasure at home unless he had gone on the perilous journey to Prague – and at the end of the journey, we find another man who refuses to take the journey; who refuses to take the risk and therefore he receives no reward. So of course, the journey is essential, even though it is possible by the conclusion of the story that it might have ultimately been unnecessary, since the treasure was under the stove all along.
The third lesson, though, is in the piety, and the suffering, and in the belief in the voice. This part of the story I might not have fully recognized were it not for the fact that there is a feature length film with essentially the same message - Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams - which is a great movie that you should all watch even though it isn’t baseball season right now. The movie has, oddly, all the elements of the Simcha Bunim story - a disembodied voice that whispers a crazy idea, ‘if you build it , he will come’ a long journey to retrieve first a famous writer, played by James Earl Jones, and then an old former minor leaguer, played by Burt Lancaster. In Field of Dreams though, the financial struggle and the doubt and the pathos of the movie is what makes the payoff at the end so rewarding.
All of this reminded me somewhat of this weeks Torah portion, in a weird way. Parshat Toldot is the origin story of Yakov and Esav, twin boys that battled from the moment of conception in their mothers belly. They emerge from the womb as polar opposites - Yakov a man of the tent, and Esav a man of the field, a hunter. Yakov then lies and cheats his brother Esav out of his birthright, and his blessing. This cheating becomes a leitmotif - a recurring theme, in Yakov’s life, as his father in law Laban will cheat him in work and in marriage and his sons will cheat him out of Joseph.
This weeks parsha has the beginning of the journey for both of our characters, Yakov and Esav, and they originate from this funny dramatic moment of the cheating of the patriarchal blessing. When we join the third triennial reading for this week, we see Yakov getting his blessing from his father, who thinks he is Esav, the elder. And then he leaves, and Esav comes in with a prepared dish for the old man. And Esav says “Bless me too, Father!” And Yitzhak the father replies, “Your brother came with guile and took away your blessing.” But Esav pleads, and Yitzhak provides another blessing:
“See, your abode shall enjoy the fat of the earth
And the dew of heaven above.
Yet by your sword you shall live,
And you shall serve your brother;
But when you grow restive,
You shall break his yoke from your neck.”
Esav is still incensed - he plans to kill Yaakov. Rivkah tells Yakov to run, he runs, and his life now has kind of a motivating backstory of both deception and the need to go on the run. And Esav also departs, and he also has a motivating backstory of being deceived and wanting to kill.
OK but here’s the thing. When we rejoin the brothers two torah portions from now, in Parshat Vayishlach, both Yakov and Esav are prosperous and successful. Esav has an entourage of 400 men and women.Yaakov is wealthy enough that he can send him 200 she-goats and 20 he-goats; 200 ewes and 20 rams; 30 milch camels with their colts; 40 cows and 10 bulls; 20 female-donkeys and 10 male-donkeys. The elder does not really serve the younger. Both turn out fine. And of course, the first thing they do when they see each other is make up.
And also - both brothers are forced at the end of the parsha to leave home. This is, famously, an essential plot element in all of the most successful movies - that the young main character is forced to fend for themselves, without parental protection, and that they must go out into the world. It is why Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are both orphaned at the beginning of Star Wars, and why Disney movies almost always start with our hero or heroine becoming an orphan.
In other words, the big motivating concept we talk about in this weeks Torah portion, the stealing of blessing, is kind of irrelevant, since both brothers seem to do fine regardless of the blessing. It’s actually, in the broader sweep of the Torah’s narrative, a macguffin - a plot device employed by the story in order to get our two characters out in order to see the world and go on a journey.
For those of you not familiar with a macguffin, its a term in film that originated with Alfred Hitchcock. It is a physical object that the characters need to find or retrieve that drives the plot and the characters forward. But of course, we the audience are more interested in the characters and the plot than we are with the object. Famous macguffins in movies include the maltese falcon in the movie the maltese falcon, and r2-d2 in the first star wars movie, since he has the plans for how to blow up the death star, and of course my favorite movie macguffin, Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction - which is the perfect movie macguffin because we actually never find out what’s in it, making it extra double irrelevant except as a plot device.
In the story of poor pious Itzik, the treasure is a macguffin. In the story of Yakov and Esav, the blessing and the birthright are macguffins. The real value is in the journey. But to simplify and summarize all this into ‘it’s not the destination that matters but rather the journey’ is to reduce torah into a fortune cookie - a pithy cute bit of wisdom. I mean, you could sum up this dvar torah at the shabbos table later for your guests by saying ‘the rabbi talked about the importance of the destination and not the journey’ and you wouldn’t be wrong, but you’d also miss some of the point.
This is, of course, the week of journeys in America. Every year at this time, except of course during the pandemic, the newspapers do a story saying ‘this is expected to be the busiest travel weekend ever’, because of course it is, there are more Americans this year than last year, and more of them take to the roads and rails and skies to visit their family. And some years the travel is easy, and some years it is hard. And some years we are the ones that hit the road, and some years the family comes to us. And some years there are reasons why we cannot be together - someone is sick or too old to travel, or someone has to work, or the family is divided by some disagreement, and maybe next year is the year we can all be together. Even when we are together, we sometimes go through a personal journey at thanksgiving of reestablishing who we are at the dinner table in familial pecking order or in the eyes of our parents or our children. In this respect, our journeys are not actual journeys, but personal journeys about longing or absence or loneliness that must be overcome. The turkey is a macguffin too, and we travel to it, or maybe we spend the day in the kitchen roasting it, as part of a heroes journey that we all take through life.
In our personal journeys, we all take the heroes journey at thanksgiving into learning about ourselves and overcoming difficulties. Maybe our journeys are like Yakov and Esavs journey - beginning with our own flaws and errors and requiring us to learn and grow from them. Maybe they are like Itzik son of Yekels - a journey to discover that what is valuable was at home all along.
Maybe the journey was the important thing. Maybe the valuable thing was following the dream in the first place, or fulfilling your dream and remaining essentially the same person afterwards. Maybe the treasure was behind the stove all along. Shabbat Shalom.
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