Where Heaven Touches Earth

Jacob’s Ladder by Ben Russell

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayeitzei, opens with a dream that hangs like a lantern over Jacob’s life: a ladder planted on the ground, stretching into heaven, with angels moving up and down. Jacob, alone and vulnerable, sleeps with a stone for a pillow — and in that in-between place he sees the truth we often miss:

Heaven and earth are not separate.
hey touch.

After the dream, nothing miraculous happens. Instead, Vayeitzei drops us right into the thick of living: Jacob falls in love, works for years to marry Rachel, is deceived and marries Leah first, works even longer, raises a complicated family, grows in fortune, and eventually quarrels with Laban before leaving.

It is messy.
It is human.
It is real.

And that is precisely what makes the dream matter. The ladder doesn’t remove Jacob from life — it sends him back into it, with awareness that the divine lives inside the ordinary.

This week was Thanksgiving, a holiday that often looks like Jacob’s world: laughter around the table alongside old aches and tender memories. Gratitude mixed with exhaustion. Abundance beside imperfection. Moments where family feels like blessing and burden, both. 

In other words — a ladder moment.

Angels ascend when we name what we are grateful for, when we soften, when we offer forgiveness and presence. Angels descend when we allow ourselves to receive love, nourishment, belonging, and second chances.

The ladder isn’t a symbol of escape — it’s a symbol of connection.

When Jacob wakes, he whispers words that feel like they could belong to any of us:

“Surely God was in this place —
and I did not know it.”
(Genesis 28:16)

Maybe this is our spiritual work as we move from Thanksgiving into Shabbat: not to notice holiness only after it passes, but to recognize it as it’s happening. To feel the rung beneath our feet now.

May we enter Shabbat with Jacob’s eyes open — searching for the divine inside the ordinary, the sacred woven into the human, the ladder already standing where we are.

 ,שבת שלום

Ben