Veyeitze: "How Awesome is This Place" – Beit El!

by Chaim Avihu Schwartz, translated by Hillel Fendel

Ever since the times of our holy forefathers Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov, the site and town of Beit El has been a central and sacred place. Here, in this holy spot, Yaakov Avinu dreams his famous Dream of the Ladder – and when he awakens, he says: "There actually is G-d in this place, and I did not know." He then continues: "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the House of G-d, and this is the gateway to the Heavens."

Commenting on this in his Sefer HaKuzari, R. Yehuda HaLevy notes that Yaakov attributed the holy spirit that he sensed not to his own feelings, nor to his greatness of soul, and not even to his deep faith and fear of Heaven – but only to the very place itself. As he said: "He feared and said, 'How awesome is this place.'" This unique and sacred place is what caused the Divine Presence to dwell there, and is what led to the special connection between the land and the upper heavens.

Ever since then, and throughout history, this place – Beit El, House of G-d – has been considered a uniquely holy location. For instance, when King Saul met the Prophet Samuel for the first time, the latter told him, "You shall go on forward from there, and you shall come to the plain of Tabor, and there three men will meet you going up to G-d, Beit El" (Shmuel I 10,3). The classic commentator Radak wrote on this: 

"This was the place that Yaakov called Beit El, and the Torah in Genesis said it was originally Luz – the place where Yaakov built an altar, and where sacrifices were brought [when it was permitted to offer them outside the Beit HaMikdash]; people would come at that time to pray there, in this holy place, in the merit of Yaakov. Yaakov said it "will be a House of G-d" - and it was a place of prophecy, as he said, "This is the Gate of Heaven," meaning, a gateway from which to know what is being decreed from the Heaven upon the world below." 

Not for naught did Yeravam ben Nevat turn Beit El into the place of his terrible sin, building there a replacement Beit HaMikdash, Heaven forbid. He used the tremendous sanctity of Beit El for the opposite of the intended purpose. It was also no wonder that specifically in this place did his hand become paralyzed when he sought to harm the Prophet Ido, who was actually later buried there. 

During the times of Eliyahu HaNavi, recounted in Kings II 2, he told his protégé Elisha: "Sit here, please, for G-d has sent me to Beit El." Elisha then answered, "By Hashem and by your soul, I will never leave you… and the two of them went to Beit El." We also read there that the "sons of the prophets in Beit El came out to Elisha…"

That is, there was a large Yeshiva in Beit El in which the students trained themselves to be prophets, and G-d sent Eliyahu the Prophet to visit this holy place – the place from which prayer can burst forth to break through the gates of Heaven and attain prophecy from the Heavens.

We have merited in our generation that G-d has returned us to our original borders. And our teacher and rabbi, Rav Zalman Baruch Melamed, may he live long, and a group of his original students, merited to return to this holy spot and build it up into the modern-day, thriving community of Beit El. From a handful of families, this place has become a large town of many hundreds of blessed families [well over 1,300 at last count – ed.]; may they grow and increase more and more. Thanks to G-d, a Yeshiva has also sprouted here, headed by the town's founding rabbi Rav Zalman, with hundreds of students continuing the tradition of the earliest generations. Beit El also boasts many pure children's nurseries, and Talmudei Torah and schools for students of all ages up through and including high school.

Most certainly, "there is G-d in this place," and it will continue to grow and become a great foundation stone of our complete Redemption, of the process of the building of complete Jerusalem and our glorious Beit HaMikdash, with compassion – Amen.