By Raphy Tischler

This week’s parsha definitely contains some of the juicer plot twists that the good book has to offer. We follow Jacobs’s life for 20 years and learn about some pretty awesome things. Like how Jacob dreams and god bequeaths him the land of Canaan and blesses his descendants (wait a minute isn’t that me, isn’t that that place I went to last year, damn my head hurts, also I didn’t know bequeath was a real word outside of last wills...weird). Anyhoo After wondering the desert for a bit more time Jacob winds up working as a Shepard for Laban. While sheparding Jacob falls in love with the boss’s daughter Rachel. Jacob makes a deal with Laban that he will work for seven years in order to earn Rachel’s hand in marriage. Eventually the day comes, Jacob has put years of work in and finally he is ready to be rewarded, but Laban switches the brides and Jacob Marries Leah by mistake. That sneaky devil Laban. So Jacob works seven more years and finally earns Rachel’s hand in marriage and has two brides and moves to Canaan and they lived happily ever after…mostly.

So how is this relevant to chaverim of your favorite labour Zionist youth movement? I would like to focus on the ordeal of Jacobs’s marriage. Jacob dedicated his life towards a goal and worked towards it. Just as currently chaverim from across the movement have dedicated their summers, or lives, towards fulfillment of our goals, whether those goals changing society on a wide scale to fit a new worldview, or giving a chanich a chance to explore their Jewish identity in a fun interesting environment, we as movement leaders have goals.

Throughout my tenure as a madrich I have laboured to achieve change through building relationships with my chanichim. As I am sure many of us have experienced sometimes being a madrich can be more of a frustrating experience than a fun and empowering one. You pour so much effort into a bunch of kids and dedicate so much time to insuring a positive educational process for them and sometimes at the end it feels as if

you have accomplished nothing. A whole session goes by and my chanichim still bully each other.

But just because we cannot see the way in witch we are affecting the world, or maybe not achieving the change we set out to do directly does not make our efforts for naught. For seven years Jacob toiled in order to achieve his goal and at the end did not accomplish what he set out to do. After trying so long and hard to earn Rachel’s hand, he ends up marrying Leah. But this is not a bad thing, although not his original goal, marrying Leah was still a positive outcome and led to the eventual births of the majority of the tribe’s of Israel. It is hard to see the ways we are affecting chanichim lives and the outcomes of our actions as madrichim, but just because chanichim may not fully take on the exact values that we embody right away does not mean our work is a failure.

Maybe my chanichim from messima didn’t become social justice fiends in pursuit of a two state solution and equality right away, but maybe that will happen after several years. Maybe in the future my labour will lead to a “Rachel” type result. If not, some poor kids in Akko at least improved their English and had a safe space to be in for a few months. My messima may not have changed Israeli society to completely align with my values, but it helped out youth and created some change in the world. This is an accomplishment we all should value, just as Jacob valued Leah. In our messimot we must attempt goals that can seam beyond our reach, and strive with all of our might to achieve them, but we must never overlook the small meaningful differences we make in the lives of chanichim and in society as a whole.