Vayetze on JWA Shabbat 2025

Rabbi Miriam's Vayetze sermon - delivered Shabbat 29th November 2025

What does it look like to have a safe home?

The home is usually the place where we expect to “switch off” our threat responses. A place where you are physically protected, but also one with psychological safety. If home doesn’t feel safe, the body can stay in a chronic stress state and never truly relaxes. 

On the other hand, a home with good physical and psychological safety has long-term positive effects on family relationships, emotional resilience, and self-esteem.

It’s no coincidence that the Jewish phrase to describe a physically and psychologically safe home is shalom bayit. The word “shalom” means peace. But its close relative is “shalem”, completeness. A peaceful home is also a home where someone can be their full self, afforded respect and dignity, and give that in return. 

It strikes me that we’re getting much better at protecting most spaces in the world. With policing and safeguarding policies and bullying policies, our streets, community centres and workplaces usually have checks and balances in place. But the home is an unregulated space - one in which society largely trusts adults to create safe and loving dynamics for family units, while they also deal with huge pressures - work, sometimes children, budgeting through a cost of living crisis, and sometimes physical and mental health challenges.

This weekend across the country, Jewish communities are marking JWA Shabbat. It is a moment, to pause and reflect on something that can be hard to speak about: Domestic abuse. It is a shocking statistic that one in three women will experience abuse in their lifetime. For most women, it takes them almost four years to come forward and ask for help. For Jewish women, it can be far longer - sometimes double that!

Our parasha, Vayetze, offers a striking example of a deeply unsafe home, one which shows numerous characteristics of domestic abuse. The chief abuser is Lavan. Lavan manipulates and deceives everyone around him: his daughters, his son-in-law and his entire household. Leah and Rachel have no say in their own marriages. Their consent is neither sought nor recorded. It is a striking contrast to the previous generation, when Rebecca was asked directly:

“Will you go with this man?”

Her voice was heard; theirs is not. 

Yaakov is a victim too, and it’s important to acknowledge that men can also be victims of domestic abuse. This is one of just two parshiot in the entire Torah which have no petuchot or stumot, no paragraph or line breaks in the text. It has the effect of reading a book without white space - a single, breathless, stressful flow. It’s a breathless, stressful parasha for Yaakov, who starts on the run from his brother and lands with the trickster Lavan. Then it’s one long, complex and painful negotiation first for a wife, then wives and children, work and property. The sun is described as "setting" as Yaakov leaves for Charan. It is described as "rising" on his journey out 20 years later. In the middle, as Aviva Zornberg puts it,

“there is darkness, the Dark Night of the Soul”. 

During this whole parasha, Yaakov never has a safe home. Lavan manipulates him, talking a a good talk:

“surely you can’t live with me without receiving payment”,

“I love my daughters and my grandchildren”,

“It’s not the way of our people for the younger to marry before the older”...

He is utterly convinced of his own righteousness and consistently deflects any suggestion that he could be in the wrong. Finally, towards the end of the parasha, Yaakov tries to extricate himself. We realise that Lavan has also been financially controlling him, so he is unable to leave. 

His daughters are in a similar position. They say: 

הֲלוֹא נׇכְרִיּוֹת נֶחְשַׁבְנוּ לוֹ כִּי מְכָרָנוּ וַיֹּאכַל גַּם־אָכוֹל אֶת־כַּסְפֵּנוּ

“Surely, he regards us as strangers, now that he has sold us and has used up (literally eaten up) our purchase price.”

We realise, therefore, that Lavan has deprived them of a dowry, and they too are financially dependent and stuck. 

Lavan is a man who treats people as objects rather than subjects - they are not human beings deserving of dignity and care. He controls their movements and life decisions. 

And truthfully, while Yaakov, Rachel and Leah are victims, they end up being perpetrators too, which can often happen until someone can recognise the cycle of abuse and make an active decision to end it with them. Yaakov doesn’t object to marrying not only Rachel and Leah but also their maids Bilha and Zilpa. He seems unable to contain the vicious fight between his wives. Rachel and Leah for their part put their maids forward as concubines, presumably without their permission. And they barter over Yaakov’s love, treating him too as an object. 

As ever, the imperfection in our avot and imahot, our forefathers and mothers, serves as instruction to us. Their very unsafe, stressful home helps us in 5786 to strive for safe homes - ourselves and for our whole community. 

JWA’s theme for this Shabbat is “Stop the Ripple”. Domestic abuse has catastrophic ripple effects for the victim, for children and across generations. But there can be a positive version of the ripple - the ripple effect of a community which doesn’t close its eyes to abuse and doesn’t tolerate it when it exists. Whether through loyalty, image or community reputation, it can be very hard to face up to misbehaviour among our own, but turning away has serious consequences. 

Silence, fear, stigma and shame allow abuse to thrive. But when we talk about it, and when we refuse to look away, we start to break that silence. Communities are intertwined structures - we’re involved in one another’s lives socially, we pray together, and we try to offer support at times when it’s most needed. Pirkei Avot teaches us:

“kol Yisrael arevim ze la ze” — all Israel is responsible for one another.

And that’s why JWA Shabbat exists - to remind us that small acts of noticing and offering a quiet word of concern can go a long way to helping someone living in fear at home. It could be as simple as “Is there anything you want to talk to me about?” or “Are you safe at home?” 

Take a moment to look at the excellent resource JWA has produced this year. It takes the example of Rachel, whose home is a place of control and fear, and shows how the people around her - her friend, her parent, her colleague, a teacher at her child’s school, her Rabbi and her neighbour could all be a part of supporting her to get the help she needs.  Together, as a community, we can make a difference; we can all do something to help stop the ripple.

The good news is that in next week’s parasha, Yaakov finally builds a bayit a home of his own. And ironically, of all our Avot, he ends up with a perpetual house - Beit Yaakov is a phrase repeated twice in the Torah, frequently in the rest of Tanakh and other texts, and indeed it is a familiar name and movement today. Happy and safe homes can come for victims of abuse, and JWA is one of our community’s organisations working towards exactly that.  

It is our responsibility to create homes, schools and communities where every voice is valued, every person is seen and where the ripples we send into the world are those of empathy, courage and care.

Shabbat shalom