Rabbi's Sermons

In 1962, a 23-year-old French scientist named Michel Siffre descended into a cave in the Alps to conduct an experiment that would later inform NASA's understanding of isolation and human limits. He spent 63 days alone in complete darkness, 375 feet underground, with no clock, no calendar, no way to tell day from night. The temperature hovered near freezing. The humidity was 98 percent. He was utterly, profoundly alone.

What Siffre discovered shocked the scientific world. Without light to anchor him, his sense of time completely dissolved. What felt like one minute was actually five. When he emerged after two months, he was convinced only 35 days had passed. But more remarkable than the time distortion was what he reported about the darkness itself.

"In the cave," Siffre later wrote, "I discovered that darkness is not empty. It is full—full of presence, full of weight. When you cannot see, you begin to truly feel. When external time stops, internal time begins. In that crushing darkness, I was more aware of being alive than I had ever been in the light."

He described experiencing what he called "the eternal present"—a state where, stripped of all external markers, he encountered something raw and essential about existence itself. Despite the isolation, or perhaps because of it, he felt connected to something beyond himself.

This morning, I want to suggest that 3,800 years before Michel Siffre descended into that Alpine cave, our ancestor Jacob made the same discovery. And from his encounter in the darkness came one of Judaism's most profound gifts: the evening prayer, Maariv.

When Jacob fled from his brother Esau's murderous rage, he found himself utterly alone for perhaps the first time in his life. No family protection, no certainty about tomorrow, only the gathering darkness and a stone for a pillow. And it was precisely at this moment—this moment of profound vulnerability and isolation—that our tradition teaches us Jacob established tefillat arvit, the evening prayer.

The Torah tells us in Bereishit 28:11: וַיִּפְגַּע בַּמָּקוֹם וַיָּלֶן שָׁם כִּי־בָא הַשֶּׁמֶש
"Vayifga bamakom vayalen sham ki-va hashemesh"
"And he encountered the place and spent the night there because the sun had set"

Our Sages in the Gemara (Berachot 26b) see something profound in that word vayifga (וַיִּפְגַּע). The root פ.ג.ע usually means to bump into, to collide with, to meet unexpectedly. But here, the Talmud teaches, it means something else entirely:

תְּפִלַּת עַרְבִית יַעֲקֹב תִּקְּנָהּ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וַיִּפְגַּע בַּמָּקוֹם

"Jacob instituted the evening prayer, as it says: 'and he encountered the place'"

The Gemara learns this from the principle that פְּגִיעָה זוֹ אֵינָהּ אֶלָּא תְּפִלָּה - "this 'encounter' is none other than prayer."

But why use this strange word for prayer? Perhaps because real prayer is exactly that—a collision, an unexpected encounter, a moment when we bump into something beyond ourselves.

Here's where our story takes an unexpected turn. There's a famous debate in the Talmud where Rabbi Joshua ben Levi takes the position that, unlike Shacharit or Minchah, the evening prayer is reshut—voluntary, not obligatory.

This should stop us in our tracks. If Jacob himself instituted Arvit, why would it carry less weight than the prayers of Abraham and Isaac? Why would the prayer born from our patriarch's darkest moment be considered optional?

The answer reveals something profound about the nature of darkness, vulnerability, and authentic spiritual encounter.

Think about the circumstances of each patriarch's prayer:

Abraham prayed Shacharit in the morning light—at a moment of vision and clarity, when he could see Mount Moriah from afar. His prayer emerged from הִנֵּנִי (hineni) - "Here I am"—a declaration of presence and readiness in the full light of day.

Isaac prayed Minchah in the afternoon, when he went out לָשׂוּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶה (lasuach basadeh), to meditate in the field. The afternoon light, golden and contemplative, invited reflection and peaceful communion.

But Jacob? Jacob prays כִּי־בָא הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ - "because the sun had set." He prays when the light is gone. He prays when he cannot see the path ahead. He prays while running for his life, when his future is a black void, when he is truly, viscerally afraid.

Perhaps this is exactly why Arvit's obligation was debated. Because prayer in the darkness operates by different rules. You can command someone to show up when they can see. You can obligate prayer when the path is clear. But faith in the darkness? That cannot be legislated. It must be chosen.

Think about it: The most profound spiritual moments in our lives rarely come when things are clear and certain. They come: In the hospital room at 3 AM

• After the phone call that changes everything
• In the midst of loss when words fail
• During the sleepless nights of crisis
• When our carefully constructed plans crumble

These are our vayifga bamakom moments—when we collide with reality, when we encounter THE place, the ground zero of our existence, with nothing to cushion us but stones.

When Jacob wakes from his dream, he makes one of the most paradoxical statements in the entire Torah:

אָכֵן יֵשׁ יְיָ בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה וְאָנֹכִי לֹא יָדָעְתִּי "Surely God is in this place, and I—I did not know it!"

Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz in his Panim Yafot offers a reading that turns everything on its head. He suggests we read it differently: How do we come to know that "G-d is in this place"? Through "ve'anochi lo yadati"—by not knowing the "I," by letting go of the ego.

Like those NASA volunteers in the cave, Jacob discovered that when external vision fails, when the ego's defenses crumble, when we can no longer maintain our illusions of control—that's when we might actually encounter something real.

The Gemara records something beautiful. Although Rabbi Joshua said Arvit is voluntary, it adds: קִבְּלוּהָ עֲלֵיהֶם יִשְׂרָאֵל כְּחוֹבָה - "Israel accepted it upon themselves as an obligation."

Think about that. Through two thousand years of exile, through nights of persecution, through darkness that seemed endless, the Jewish people chose to pray Maariv. Not because they had to, but because they understood something profound: The voluntary prayer that we choose in darkness becomes more powerful than any obligation.

This is the difference between showing up because you must and showing up because, despite everything, you choose to believe. Despite the darkness—or perhaps because of it—you choose to reach out.

The liturgy of Maariv itself reflects this profound theology. We begin with:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ... הַמַּעֲרִיב עֲרָבִים "Blessed are You, Hashem... who brings on evenings"

We actually bless God for the darkness! Not for bringing us through it, not for the morning that will come, but for the darkness itself. Because Maariv teaches us that darkness is not the absence of God's presence but another form of it—perhaps even a more intimate form.

And what emerges from Jacob's prayer in darkness? He dreams of a ladder—סֻלָּם מֻצָּב אַרְצָה וְרֹאשׁוֹ מַגִּיעַ הַשָּׁמָיְמָה - "a ladder set upon the earth with its top reaching heaven."

Notice: The ladder starts from the earth, from the lowest place. You cannot climb to heaven from halfway up. The ascent begins precisely from the point of maximum vulnerability, with our face on the ground, with a stone for a pillow. The Slonimer Rebbe teaches that this is why angels were "ascending and descending" on the ladder—first ascending, though we'd expect them to descend first from heaven. The message: Even angels must start from below. Even celestial beings understand that the journey to heaven begins in the darkness of earth.

I want to propose something practical. This week, as you daven Maariv, remember its voluntary nature—not as a leniency but as an invitation. Each evening, as the sun sets, you have the opportunity to make Jacob's choice anew. Stand for a moment before you begin. Feel the weight of the day settling. Notice the darkness gathering. And then choose. Choose to pray not because you must, but because you've learned what Jacob learned: that specifically in darkness, when we cannot see, when we're most vulnerable, when we have only stones for comfort—that's when real encounter becomes possible.

Say to yourself what Jacob discovered:

אָכֵן יֵשׁ יְיָ בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה וְאָנֹכִי לֹא יָדָעְתִּי "Surely God is in this place, even though I did not know it."

Michel Siffre emerged from his cave after 63 days transformed. His experiment, which NASA would later study for understanding isolation in space travel, revealed something profound about human consciousness. He had discovered that in absolute darkness, when all external reference points vanish, we don't disappear—we encounter ourselves and something beyond ourselves more intensely than ever before.

Jacob emerged from his night of darkness transformed too. He who had been Jacob the grasper, the deceiver, the one who lived by his wits and schemes, became Israel—one who wrestles with the Divine and prevails. But that transformation began here, in our parasha, with a prayer in the dark. We live in times of darkness—personal, communal, global. The temptation is to wait for the light, to postpone our prayers until we can see clearly again. But Jacob teaches us otherwise. He teaches us that some prayers can only be prayed in darkness. Some encounters only happen when we cannot see. Some transformations require the complete collapse of our daytime certainties.

The next time you find yourself in darkness—and you will—remember that you stand in a tradition that began with a frightened young man, alone and running, who chose to pray anyway. Remember that our evening prayer was born not from obligation but from choice, not from clarity but from collision with the unknown. The darkness is not the absence of God. It is, perhaps, where we learn to encounter God most truly—not with our eyes but with something deeper, not through our strength but through our vulnerability, not because we must but because we choose.