Song lyrics frequently float around my brain. This week, a verse of Paul Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al’ has run in a pretty constant loop. Here goes:
A man walks down the street
It’s a street in a strange world
Maybe it’s the third world
Maybe it’s his first time around
He doesn’t speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound, the sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterlings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says, “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!”
A stranger, in a strange place, a foreigner who can’t communicate with the locals, notices ‘angels in the architecture’ and proclaims ‘Amen’ and ‘Hallelujah!’
[Church House, Belfast, Northern Ireland]
Our ancestor Jacob, at both the front and back ends of Parashat Va-yeitzei, is that stranger. On the run in both instances, he encounters angels. The first set climbs up and down the famous ladder about which he dreams on his first night away from home, fleeing his brother Esau’s wrath. The second set await him as he leaves his father-in-law Laban’s household and heads home where he will again face his brother Esau.
[Jacob Returning to Canaan by Willem van Nieulandt the Younger, 1611]
The scenes that frame Parashat Va-yeitzei are the very definition of liminal moments – times of transition from one state, or status, or mode of being, to another. Liminal moments are scary, anxiety filled. That’s why the angels show up. Jacob needs their reassurance; their presence signals that everything will be all right (which summons up a thousand other lyrics, but that’s for a different week!).
Feeling out of place is, of course, not limited to travels in the third world nor to instances of fleeing from or running toward home. To the contrary. Human experience is filled with moments of foreign-ness, and they happen even in very familiar surroundings. That, I suggest, is why Jacob’s story resonates. We all walk down ‘streets in a strange world,’ and often enough it is, or at least feels like, the ‘first time around.’ Jacob’s message? There are angels out there. And they show up – in whatever form – at the key moments. Look for them.
Shabbat Shalom.
