Barbara Green has been a volunteer for Americans for Peace Now for many years. She lives in Washington, DC.
If we look to the Torah for lessons in how we are to live our lives today, we're hard-pressed to find it in Vayeitze. Rather this is a series of lessons in duplicity, trickery, bad faith between kinsmen, and ultimately the creation of a physical boundary between them which neither is ever again to cross. Laban tricks Jacob, Rachel tricks Laban, Jacob tricks Laban. In the end the 'heroes-heroines," our ancestors, narrowly escape with their lives and flocks intact.