Parashat Veyeitzei

SERMON    Parashat Veyeitzei   Thanksgiving    2025 

Rabbi David Edleson   Temple Sinai   South Burlington, Vermont

This week’s portion begins: 

Jacob left Beer-sheba, and set out for Haran.

He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.

He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and messengers of God were going up and down on it.

And standing beside him was יהוה, who said, “I am יהוה, the God of your father Abraham’s [house] and the God of Isaac’s [house]: the ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and to your offspring.

Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants.

Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely יהוה is present in this place, and I did not know it!”

Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.”

Early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.

He named that site Bethel; but previously the name of the city had been Luz, which means Light.

Jacob, fleeing for his life from his brother Esau, sleeping on the cold rocky soil of the Judean Hills with a stone for a pillow, wakes and is filled with gratitude.  Even a cold rocky place like this can be a place of blessing and light.  There is, it turns  out, a ‘stairway to heaven” available to us even in our darkest, most stressed moments.  We are always connected to something beyond us and beyond our understanding. 

Gratitude, even in times of suffering, particularly in times of great difficulty, is one of the signatures of Jewish spirituality and resilience.  We are taught to say 100 blessings each day expressing our gratitude for the miracles of every day and of the world and life around us.  For love.  For beauty.

Famously, even in the face of death, we give thanks in the Kaddish, which is a long thanksgiving poem to God for life. 

Our prayer services are almost entirely an expression of and fostering of a gratitude.  Often, Jews tell me they don’t really know how to pray.  While there are many techniques for having a richer prayer life, one easy one is to simply substitute the word gratitude for prayer, and focus on not only saying the words but feeling grateful, open you heart a turn or two and let some gratitude pour out. 

Judaism teaches us to look for the blessings in dark times, to find those sparks of holiness and goodness that are all around us, embedded in us and the world since creation.   

Judaism gives us one such blessing each week in the form of Shabbat that we might have a respite from the dark and affirm our choice of hope and faith by lighting candles and blessing them. 

If you want a richer spiritual life, there is no better place to start than cultivating the habit of being grateful, called “Hakarat HaTov,” or recognizing the good.  It is always around us and we have to learn to see it.   As Victor Frankl famously observed in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, that what he remembers most of that time in Auschwitz was the tremendous outpouring of love between those trapped there; that in the midst of such degradation, the was such spirit and beauty and love.  This is what he took away.  May we learn to see the spirit and love around us and in us.

Shabbat Shalom.