Photo Credit: Jewish Press

What gives us strength? This week’s parshah, Va’yetze, starts with the famous dream of Jacob’s ladder. Jacob hears wonderful promises about his future and the future of the people of Israel. He gets up from his resting spot, after which, the Torah reports, “Jacob carried his legs and went.”

Rashi explains: Since Jacob was given good news, his heart carried his legs, and it became easy for him to walk. His heart lifted his legs.

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A few verses later, we again see the mind’s ability to affect the body and energize it with special forces. When Jacob sees Rachel – his partner in fulfilling his divine role – for the first time, he moves a heavy rock that would normally take many people to lift.

In this parshah, then, we learn about the two factors that arguably can influence a person more than anything else, giving him strength and lifting him up: faith and one’s spouse.


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Sivan Rahav-Meir is a primetime news anchor with weekly broadcasts on television and radio. Her “Daily Thought” has a huge following on social media, with hundreds of thousands of followers, translated into 17 languages. She has a weekly podcast on Tablet, called "Sivan Says" and has published several books in English. Sivan was recognized by Globes newspaper as Israel’s most popular female media figure and by the Jerusalem Post as one of the 50 most influential Jews worldwide. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband Yedidya and their five children.