You Came to This World to Plant Trees

We come to this world to plant seeds.

Some seeds grow quickly, as a fistful of grain in a fallow field. Winter turns to spring and your toil returns you a basket of bread.

There are other sorts of such seeds. Open your hand for a stranger and blessings pour from heaven. Study Torah with a friend and you feel your soul can breathe. And Shabbat—who cannot find rest and delight in Shabbat?

Yet there are other plantings that take many years. Some, a lifetime.

Plant the kernel of a date or the acorn of a grand oak. Irrigate it. Protect its sapling. Prune its branches. One day your grandchildren will eat those fruits or sit in the shade beneath that tree.

Raise a family. Teach your children our sacred values. Stand by your principles like a rock at the edge of a furious sea. Steer your ship faithfully through the storms of life, clinging to the One Above.

A lifetime rolls by. Your soul returns to its place above. But the world you leave behind is not the world to which you came.

And it will never be the same again.

Jacob, our father, stood before Pharaoh, who asked, “How many are the years of your life.”

“The years of my life,” Jacob answered, “are few and bad. They didn’t reach to the years of my fathers.”

At that point, so it was.

His father had preferred his brother, Esau, over him. He had to flee his parent’s home to escape his brother’s murderous wrath.

He worked seven years to marry the woman he loved, only to be cheated into marrying her sister and into work for another seven. And after that, as well, his father-in-law cheated him multiple times.

After another six years, he escaped, only to have his beloved wife die on the journey. His mother died before he could return home. His daughter was raped and her rescue placed him and his family in mortal danger. His favorite child disappeared and he mourned for twenty years.

His fathers, Abraham and Isaac, also suffered many tribulations. But nothing as severe as Jacob’s.

But we are reading the story wrong, from beginning to end. Read from end to beginning, it is an epic of pride.

With great toil, with iron will, and with incessant faith, Jacob fostered the seed of a mighty tree.

If not for him, the dream of Abraham would have vanished into thin air, as did perhaps the dreams of many a visionary before him. If not for him, Isaac would have had his basket of bread. And then, all would be gone.

Where Abraham and Isaac left behind only a single child who walked in their ways, Jacob begat an entire nation. The first instance in which we are called the Children of Israel is when Jacob descended with his eleven sons to be with Joseph in Egypt.

With great toil, with iron will, and with incessant faith, Jacob planted an eternal tree of life. He lives to this day within each one of us. And he will enjoy eternal life when the world is repaired and healed by our hands.

Eternity at the cost of a few short years of toil. Was it worthwhile?