Kabbalat Shabbat Kavannah | Rabbi Roly Matalon | November 28, 2025

Well this week in person.

Why, you'd say

and why you'd say

in your cove

flees from his home.

His twin brother had vowed

to kill him.

And the person

begins by ID say, I caught me with a shovel.

But you know,

Yaakov left the observer and he set out for Harun.

Harun is far away in the east.

With the government gone

violent, shun.

Give us your image.

He came.

Actually.

He collided with God. But come.

He collided with a certain place.

And he stopped there for the night.

For the sun had set.

He collided with a certain place.

Suggests that the place is coming toward him.

The Midrash says that this may come.

This place is Haram. Moriah.

Mount Moriah, the place where his father attack was bound to be sacrificed

and decide whether

to make a dash where God's house, God's temple, will be built.

Other interpretations

say that the hammer come

collided with my come

refers to gun.

Macomb Malcolm is one of God's names.

We say when we welcome the mourners on Friday night, we say, hammer,

call me in a helmet cam.

May God comfort you.

We use the word macomb to refer to God.

So when the text says wife common Macomb,

the place the Macomb collided with him.

Some interpreters believe say that it is God

whom Yaakov encounters there.

And this happens after the sun

has said it is dark.

So what did Ya'acov do

at night, when it's dark in this place,

in the middle of nowhere, to encounter God?

Tradition says that Ya'acov prayed

that he was the first person

to ever pray at night and in the dark

and in the dark, he made God's presence.

Tradition says that Avraham

is the one who initiated the prayer of Jared, the morning prayer.

It's Huk initiated in the afternoon prayer, and Yakov

is the one who initiated read the Evening Prayer.

And that time was the first time that any person

ever had prayed at night.

What did he pray?

May be your will.

And tonight my gun.

To bring me out of darkness into light.

It is not given that a person

would pray at night in the dark.

It's much more natural

to pray when there is light,

when the sun shines, when everything is bright and beautiful,

when we can see things and when we can be grateful

for everything that we

see and for the renewal of each day.

The psalm for Shabbat says,

it is good to thank you for the night of the.

Lion to sing your name most High.

But Boker has to proclaim your love

by boker in the morning.

That's easy, comes natural.

But at night,

of course.

Night and darkness are not words that refer only

to external physical realities.

Night

and darkness are metaphors

for the night of the soul, for the times

when we feel lost, scared,

anguished, vulnerable.

When we have no certainty at all.

Then the psalm says.

A lot

to proclaim your faithfulness each night.

This at night is

when we have to exercise our faithfulness.

It is not always possible for a person who sits in darkness,

in the darkness of the soul to pray, says this Fatima.

It's not possible.

Most of the time.

But in times of darkness,

he says, light can break through.

When a person feels deep desire and longing,

it is through this longing he teaches that one

can awaken God's light.

That is what Chuck Yakov

was able to do that night.

And this is why he instituted the prayer

over it at night.

This is the teaching

and the legacy that he left for us,

that we might,

when it's dark, not just outside, but inside.

And the times such as these

in which we live are very dark times, very difficult,

challenging times when we have no certainty about anything.

We don't know where things are going,

when we feel that way.

Together as a community, as a society,

and also many of us in our personal

lives, facing anguish and vulnerability and challenges

that are much, much bigger than we think we can conquer.

When we are in

those places and we pray out of it,

and in that prayer in front of it, we try to awaken the longing,

the desire to be in God's presence.

And sometimes when the desire is so powerful

and the yearning is so powerful,

sometimes in the dark

a light in the soul can shine.