Enoch, Who Walked with God

Ami Farkas

At synagogue this past Sabbath, our Torah reading covered the first portion of the book of Genesis. We revisited the Garden of Eden, tasted the bitterness and shame of Adam and Eve’s sin, and traversed through ten generations between Adam and Noah. In the midst of all this, my attention was transfixed on the short but meaningful story of Enoch.
I assume that when most people study Genesis, they don’t give much notice to Enoch, whose sole appearance in the Torah is limited to a few verses: Genesis 5:18-25. And considering the lives of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the contributions they made to mankind, Enoch plays a minute role in the grand scheme of things. The story of Enoch might be short, but it has deep lessons we should not ignore.

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder

“He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” — Genesis 28:12

The Torah portion for this week, Vayetze, is from Genesis 28:10–32:3 and Hosea 12:13–14:10.

The Jewish Sages teach that when Jacob was on his journey to the city of Harran, he ended up somewhere that he had not intended to go. But it was late, and so Jacob found a few stones, made a pillow, and went to sleep. As providence would have it, the place There, he had his famous dream in which Jacob saw a vision of a ladder resting on earth, stretching up to heaven. Angels were going up and down on it. When Jacob woke up he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it” (Genesis 28:16). Jacob had unintentionally, but providentially, stumbled upon a virtual stairway to heaven.