This week, outside of school, I was absorbed in preparing to chant Genesis 28:10-22, the verses about Jacob’s dream, in which he sees a ladder stretching from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending it. Then God appears beside him, reveals who he is, and promises to stay with Jacob and his descendants (who will be as the dust of the earth, spreading west, east, north, and south) and bring them back to this land. When Jacob wakes up, it dawns on him that God might have been present. As far as I know, his words are the first expression of awe in the Bible:

What is this ladder? After our service at Szim Salom today, we gathered around a table to discuss this question. Many ideas came up, including the possibility that the ladder is Jacob himself: that he is a conduit between heaven and earth, like certain rare people with a special quality of holiness. Another possibility that the ladder is internal—that it has something to do with his struggles and dichotomies (just a few verses later, he vows that if God fulfills his promises, he will accept him as his own God).

But I don’t think you can come to any kind of understanding of these verses through group conversation. You have to consider them in quiet. At most, a group conversation can point you to a particular insight or allusion. In that light, it is worthwhile.

Various people brought up literary references to ladders: in particular, Sándor Weöres’s poem “Szembe-fordított tükrök” (“Facing Mirrors”):

Örömöm sokszorozódjék a te örömödben.
Hiányosságom váljék jósággá benned.
 
Egyetlen parancs van, a többi csak tanács: igyekezz úgy érezni, gondolkozni, cselekedni, hogy mindennek javára legyél.
Egyetlen ismeret van, a többi csak toldás: Alattad a föld, fölötted az ég, benned a létra.
 
Az igazság nem mondatokban rejlik, hanem a torzítatlan létezésben.
Az öröklét nem az időben rejlik, hanem az összhang állapotában.

Here is my tentative translation:

May my joy be multiplied in your joy.
Let my defects become goodness in you.

There is only one commandment, the rest is just advice: Try to think, feel, and act for the good of everything.
There is only one precept, the rest just follows from it: Below you is the earth, above you the sky, within you the ladder.

Truth dwells not in sentences, but in undistorted existence.
Eternity dwells not in time, but in the state of harmony.

Listen also to Dániel Gryllus’s musical rendition of the poem.

I brought up the film Magasságok és mélységek (Heights and Depths), which I had been hoping to go see for the third time. The film’s theme song, which plays from start to finish in the credits and answers the entire film, is Platon Karataev’s “Létra” (“Ladder).

I knew that the film would be playing in Hungary for just a few more days, so, after leaving Bálint Ház (where we hold our services), I checked to see where it was playing. It turned out that I could see it at 2:45 at the Művész Mozi, not far from the Nyugati train station. It worked out perfectly.

The film is a somewhat fictional (and also faithful) rendition of the true story of the mountaineer Zsolt Erőss, who died in a Himalayan descent; it focuses on his wife, Hilda Sterczer (played brilliantly and profoundly by Emőke Pál), who has to contend with his loss and help her daughter do the same. This viewing opened up new levels of the film for me, both because I had seen it twice before and because I was thinking of the ladder. I realized how important it is that Hilda herself is an exceptional mountaineer. Once a mother, she gives it up, but she understands her husband’s expeditions as those around her cannot. Her excellence and her dependence are part of the same ladder. Slowly she begins to climb (down or up, it could be seen either way).

For instance, after gathering three million forints for a helicopter rescue mission (which proves futile), she decides not to undertake further rescue efforts—maybe partly because she wants to end the waiting and doubt, but also because she knows what it means to be up in the mountains, in weak condition, in extreme cold. She also knows that a mountaineer thinks in terms of survival, and that if her husband died, as she understands he did, he would have wanted her to survive. In other words, what others perceive as her coldness or lack of faith is actually her knowledge.

Also, her struggle with the loss, her difficulty living as herself, is not just the plight of an overly dependent wife. It comes from her strength and talent. Her strength and weakness are like the angels in Genesis going up and down the ladder. Maybe the resolution is the “undistorted existence” of the Weöres poem.

Back to the passage in Genesis: the angels ascending and descending could mean that what we take as a descent might sometimes be an ascent, and vice versa: that we are continually moving up and down at once. For Jacob, this seems true; his acts of trickery (descents from one point of view) have something holy to them, since they allow God’s plan to be fulfilled. In a more mundane way, each of us must do things at times that others disapprove of, for the sake of something greater. Last night (at the Kabbalat Shabbat service, which had an exciting new musical rendering), I was anxious because I wanted and needed to leave right after the kiddush: the blessing over the wine and challah bread, after the official service. I felt guilty (because others wanted me to stay for the dancing and socializing) but needed to get back to Szolnok, into my quiet, to rest and prepare for the next day. I did this, and it was a good decision.

This return to quiet was necessary in its own way. In this and other ways, I am moving up and down the ladder, both at once.

It is never a resolved matter; our most important conflicts do not have a definite, final answer. For me, retreating into quiet is essential, but calling it “quiet” is somewhat deceptive, since it may be a kind of turbulence I retreat to. Also, there are times when I need to fight against this pull, and (more) times when I need to trust it. Beyond a few basic precepts, the “right” way to be in the world is not fixed; we must perceive it again and again, and let it be different from what others assume.

But what I hear in these verses, beyond everything, is awe: Jacob’s sense that God was present, and his willingness (conditionally, tentatively) to trust that and act upon it. The words he speaks (such as hamakom, nora) are sparse but full of depth. Whatever the ladder and the motion of the angels might be, it suggests something divine in motion.

Platon Karataev’s “Létra” has something to do with all of this. I end with a translation, once again tentative.

Art credit: Helen Franenthaler, Jacob’s Ladder, 1957 (on view at the Museum of Modern Art).

I added a little to this piece after posting it (and made two small edits to the translation of “Létra”).

Update: Here is my musical rendition of the Weöres poem: