MIDDA KNEGED MIDDA – The single, most fundamental moral axiom in TORAH – measure for measure.  What we do will be done to us.  Genesis 9:6 – “He who sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed.”  Those who deceive will be deceived.  Those who slander will themselves be slandered.  Those who judge harshly will themselves be judged harshly.  This fundamental biblical reality should give us all pause before we listen and before we speak – it’s the fear of YHWH that will give you the wisdom and visions of Jacob.

BERESHEET 29:25 – A precise mirror image of the scene in chapter 27 where Jacob pretends to be Esau.  Jacob posed as the older brother when Isaac was in the dark, so here Rachael and Leah exchange positions when Jacob is in the dark.  The Torah gives us three linguistic clues that take us back to the event.

“Why did you deceive me?”  RIMITANI – The very same word Isaac uses to describe Jacob’s behavior regarding the birthright with Esau in Genesis 27:35 – “Your brother came in deceit.”  MIRMA.

The word Laban uses to describe Rachael is TZE’IRA; again, this word appears in Rebecca’s HIDOT/oracles about the boys’ struggling within her womb.  Gen 25:23:  “The elder will serve the younger.”  TZA’IR

Laban tries to justify the deception with some well-chosen words:  “It is not done in our place – to give the younger before the BACHOR” (first-born) … hinting that he knew what Jacob had done in another place!

The MIDRASH  “… in the morning, and behold it was Leah.” – He said to her, “Deceiver, daughter of a deceiver, did I not call you Rachael last night and you answered me?”  She replied, “Is there a master without students?  Did your ABBA not call you Esau and you answered him?”

So in reality Reuben, Leah’s firstborn is the product of what should rightly have been Joseph’s; thus, after restoration, Reuben loses the leadership  and Joseph is restored as the oldest son.  Men’s plans for Israel’s enslavement are eventually turned around in the final days of Joseph.  Reuben is symbolic of Israel being deceived by man:  The tribe of Reuben didn’t enter the Promised Land proper but received an inheritance on the other side of the Jordan.  Don’t stay under the power of man’s deception—you’ll end up on the outside looking in and wondering how all the blessings passed you by.

Love-AHAVA by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:  Three times Jacob’s love for Rachael is revealed in the text “Jacob loved Rachael” (29:18); the seven years seemed but a few days “because of the love he had for her” (29:20); Jacob “loved Rachael more than Leah” (29:30).

Three times later in Genesis, Jacob reveals his love for his son Joseph.  So as Jacob loved Rachael more than Leah, so he loved Joseph more than all his other sons.

AHAVA – love:  an emotion, a virtue, the ultimate bond.  But without justice, love alone is insufficient to maintain peace within a congregation.  Love was the cause of conflict in Jacobs’s life – between his wives and between his children.  He paid heavily for it.  Love alone is never enough in a congregational setting; there must be justice, fairness, and a regard for how your sentiments impact on others.  The covenant between YHWH and us is based upon love and justice.  Without justice, love is blind to truth, and without love, justice is impersonal and cold.  Jacob’s family needed both … and so do we.

DEVARIM/Deuteronomy 29:29:   “The secret things belong to YHWH our ELOHIM, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

BERESHEET/Genesis 30:25:  And it came to pass, when Rachel had born YOSEPH, that YAAKOV said to LAVAN, Send me away, that I may go to my own place and to my country.  ²⁶ Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, and let me go; for you know my service that I have done for you.  ²⁷ And LAVAN said to him, Please, if I have found favor in your eyes, stay; for I have learned by experience that YHWH has blessed me for your sake.  ²⁸ And he said, Appoint me your wages and I will give it.  ²⁹ And he said to him, You know how I have served you, and how your cattle were with me.  ³⁰ For it was little which you had before I came, and it is now increased to a multitude.  And YHWH has blessed you since my coming; and now when shall I provide for my own bayit also?  ³¹ And he said, What shall I give you?  And YAAKOV said, You shall not give me anything; if you will do this thing for me, I will again feed and keep your flock:  ³² I will pass through all your flock today, removing from there all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and those shall be my hire.  ³³ So shall my TZEDAKAH answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before your face:  Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted as stolen with me.

Jacob gives to Laban all the speckled and spotted goats and brown sheep to take three days’ journey away.  This is an amazing deal for Laban because, if you remove the spotted, speckled, ring streaked, and brown from the flock, what chance do you have of producing spotted, speckled, ring streaked and brown from a now-pure flock – like kind after like kind, right?  Jacob had observed much throughout 90 years of herding for his father Isaac and 14 years for his uncle Laban.  Did Jacob not  know about the structural molecule of DNA in which the physical characteristics of the parents are transmitted to the children?  He’s set himself up to lose – or does he know so much about DNA that he can affect its change through environmental factors?

• DNA can be affected and changed by outside environmental factors:
• Water
• Diet
• Medicine
• Stress
• Sin
• Heavy metals
• Toxins and pollutants
• Environmental changes can be transmitted to the next generation.

BERESHEET 30:34:  And LAVAN said, See, I would it might be according to your word.  ³⁵ And he removed that day the male goats that were ring streaked and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, and every one that had some white in it, and all the brown among the sheep and gave them into the hand of his sons.  ³⁶ And he set three days’ journey between himself and YAAKOV; and Yaakov fed the rest of LAVAN’s flocks.  ³⁷ And YAAKOV took rods of green poplar (לבנה LIBNEH – exudes a milky white gum) and of the HAZEL (לוז LUWZ almond) and chestnut EYTZ (ערמון ARMOWN) and rounded white streaks in them and made the white appear that was in the rods.

• LUZ – Almond used to improve fertility and it’s aroma used as an aphrodisiac, sold throughout the spice markets of the Middle East.

• ARMOWN – Chestnut, drinking something containing chestnut tannins could affect genetic function.  Epigenetics – the study of heritable changes in gene expression that occurs without a change in DNA sequence.  There is a lot of study on epigenetics in the field of prenatal nutrition.  Our Biblical narrative can be explained through the early nutritional influences on the Agouti gene that affects the coat color and fur color in sheep.  Today we understand that to corrupt the DNA can produce a mutation – cancer.  A correlation has been made between esophageal or nasal cancer in humans and regular consumption of certain herbs with high tannin concentrations.  Chestnut tannins could cause mutations that could be manifested as “spotted” skin color in Jacobs’s goats and sheep.  (The leaching of highly water-soluble tannins from decaying leaves of vegetation in the water troughs of the livestock would produce what is known as a black water river.  The presence of tannins (and/or humic acid) in well water that can make it smell bad or taste bitter.

• Free amino acids under the bark – methionine, choline, and fungi as filaments.  Peeling the bark would make fungi available for water extraction.

BERESHEET 30:38:  And he set the rods that he had rounded before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.  ³⁹ And the flocks conceived before the rods and brought out cattle ring streaked, speckled, and spotted.  ⁴⁰ And YAAKOV did separate the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the ring-streaked, and all the brown in the flock of LAVAN; and he put his own flocks by themselves and did not put them in LAVAN’s cattle.  ⁴¹ And it came to pass, whenever the stronger cattle did conceive, that YAAKOV laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters that they might conceive among the rods.

The aroma from the fresh bark of the rods of the almond trees could have caused the livestock to go “in heat,” becoming more fruitful.  The tannins leaching in the water trough of the sheep and goats would be ingested by the livestock, go into their systems, and could cause specific changes in their DNA (mutations) that would allow for the offspring to be spotted, striped, or brown/black (e.g. formaldehyde’s causing DNA mutations through inhalation).  The aroma of the fresh peel of the chestnut tress caused  similar effects as the animals in heat inhaled the chemicals in the air.

BERESHEET 30:42:  But when the cattle were feeble he put them not in, so the feebler were LAVAN’s and the stronger YAAKOV’s.  ⁴³ And the man increased exceedingly and had much cattle, and female AVADIM, and male AVADIM, and camels, and donkeys.

Multidimensional Reality & Perceptual Limitations

Though we see, smell, touch, and taste, we really do have limitations if we choose to live like the rest of the world in a three-dimensional reality (length, width and depth).  Choose to live in a four-dimensional reality and see the scriptures with new clarity!

I want to examine further the spiritual realm – what scientists call the “multi-dimensional reality.”  Let’s not limit ourselves.  Some parts of Torah just can’t be readily perceived with eyes, ears, nose, hands, or tongue.  Few have perceived this fourth dimension and fewer have tried to describe it, and when the wise do they can only do so in the language of visions.  We’re limited in that we can only describe things in terms that we know.  The spiritual realm is ambiguous and contradictory, yet it’s an integral and essential part of all reality, whether we have senses to perceive it or not.  The laws of the spiritual realm are different than—and may circumvent those of—the natural realm, causing things we perceive to behave in unusual ways.  Scientists call these “anomalies”; others call them “phenomena,” “miracles,” “moves of the spirit,” or the “sixth sense.”

Jacob chose to live in YHWH’s fourth-dimensional reality, unlike Laban who chose to live in Satan’s.  Laban consults dark psychics to inform his business decisions (Genesis 30:27).  Jacob already had visions from YHWH.  Now as he tends to his solid-colored animals, he begins to have HIDOT and visions of spots; he dreams in spots, he paints spots on his animals, makes spots on the trees and troughs, he even dresses in spots.  He turns his inward man spotty and that’s where he meets YHWH and our biblical narrative describes the events taking place in a unified four-dimensional space-time continuum!  YHWH grants him a trip into gene therapy – the spotty reality of the fourth dimension.  This then becomes reality to those bound by their livesin the third dimension, and the flock manifests the HIDOT/visions and spots of the fourth dimension.  Prayer, HIDOT, and vision will change your dimensions – if you have the faith, it alters what is your perceived reality.

Now, believers are “Israel” – the spotted descendants of Jacob in the spiritual realm.  We’re the children of his vision:  you and me!  Now that’s powerful and timelessly supernatural.  As YAHWEH and Israel changed the color of the herd, we must change the essence of our reality and our perceptions of one another if there is any hope of your escaping these third-dimensional limitations to vision, intercession, and holiness.

Hermann Minkowski, 1908.  “The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength.  They are radical.  Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”