My friend, Ali, collects stones from special places, experiences, and moments that she wants to remember. She slips these stones into the pocket of whichever jacket or sweater she happens to be wearing at the time. 

Months later, when she has long forgotten about them, she inevitably reaches her hands deep into one of her pockets to find a stone from her engagement party on Vancouver Island, a small rock from her travels in the UK, or a pebble from her favorite neighborhood walking path. 

Ali calls these stones “feelies”.  Not only because they are soft to the touch, and become softer the more that they are felt. But also because they bring back all of the feelings– joy, awe, nostalgia– that she felt, and the lessons she learned when she picked them up. 

Ali is not the only one who likes to pick up stones to remind her of the places she has been. Throughout Parashat VaYeitzei, Yacov interacts with stone after stone along his journey. 

After tricking his brother, Esav, into giving him the family birth-right and subsequently running away from home, Yacov finds the perfect pile of stones on which to rest his head. These stones are not simply a functional pillow, but a place where Yacov discovers God. This divine encounter was such a transformational event for Yacov that he erected a physical marker of the experience, a Matzevah, and named it Beit El– God’s Home. 

Moving onward in his journey, Yacov once again takes a stone, this time rolling it off a well– a well that would lead him to the love of his life, Rahel. This is yet another milestone, marking the effort required not just to find love, but to sustain it.

After working for his Uncle Lavan for twenty years, Yacov is ready to bring his family back to his own home-town. But when he attempts to flee, Lavan catches up to him.

וַיִּקַּח יַעֲקֹב אָבֶן וַיְרִימֶהָ מַצֵּבָה׃
(Genesis 31:45)

Yacov once again marks this moment by taking a stone and setting up a matzevah, inviting Lavan to signify his agreement that the family can part ways by adding his own stones to the mound. This landmark of stones marks the compromises required to navigate the balance between collective ties and individual growth– a balance we all negotiate among our family and friends as we reach milestones in our own lives. 

In pivotal moments of his life, Yacov gathers stones to mark time and place. By gathering stones, Yacov is making a statement: I was here, this experience mattered, and I am taking what I learned with me as I continue along my journey. 

Even long after Yacov, stones continue to feature prominently in Jewish tradition. In the book of Devarim, we are reminded that the entire TorahRefers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, also called the Five Books of Moses, Pentateuch or the Hebrew equivalent, Humash. This is also called the Written Torah. The term may also refer to teachings that expound on Jewish tradition. was written on a slab of stone!

…וַהֲקֵמֹתָ לְךָ אֲבָנִים גְּדֹלוֹת וְשַׂדְתָּ אֹתָם בַּשִּׂיד׃  וְכָתַבְתָּ עֲלֵיהֶן אֶת־כָּל־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת…
(Deuteronomy 27:2-3)

In his comment on this verse, Ramban suggests that it would have been nothing short of a miracle to fit the entire Torah, from Bereshit to its final word, Yisrael, on just one stone!

But maybe it’s not that the entire Torah literally fit on one stone. Perhaps that one, portable stone represented all of the Torah that Moshe and B’nai Yisrael had learned along their journey. B’nai Yisrael could slip that stone into their pockets, or at least into their Aron, as a reminder of the powerful experience of receiving Torah and encountering the divine on Mount Sinai. (Pause)

Over the last five years, my pockets have been filled with my own touchstones– moments, people, and Torah– that I carry with me on my journey and that continue to guide my path forward. 

I carry a stone for the first time I ever said that I wanted to be a rabbi out loud, or rather, in a faint whisper on the phone to my mom and dad, unsure of both myself and of how they would respond. 

The Torah inscribed on this stone reminds me of the courage it takes to embrace who we are meant to be, even when self-doubt makes us feel like an imposter.

I carry with me a stone for the first eulogy I ever wrote in Rabbi Barry Dov Katz’s Rabbinic Communications class. 

I remember being overwhelmed by the daunting task of summarizing a human being’s life in only five minutes. 

As I listened to the family of the deceased share their stories and memories, I realized that my role wasn’t to craft the perfect words to memorialize someone I had never met. 

At that moment, I understood that my role as a rabbi is to listen—to be fully present with a family’s memories of their loved one, to honor the journey of every person, and to share the lessons they learned along the way. I reach for this stone to remind myself of the simple power of presence. 

I carry stones from teaching tefillah at Camp Ramah, Beth Tzedec, and Robbins Hebrew Academy, where I strive to balance Keva– the rich traditional structure of prayer and ritual– with Kavannah– heartfelt intention. 

In striving for this perfect balance, I have acutely felt what it means to be counted among the souls who have learned here at JTS, who have wrestled with tradition and sought to apply its wisdom to our ever-changing world. 

Rabbi Akiva famously stood at the mouth of a well in awe of how stones– though solid and enduring– are also smooth and malleable, shaped over time by the forces around them. The stone in that well and these stones in my pocket remind me that our Torah endures and is not diminished by its adaptability, but rather, strengthened by it. 

*This* is a stone I picked up from the courtyard this morning. I will reach for this stone as the world and my rabbinate continues to develop, to remind myself that I am capable of holding both the past and present, of negotiating the application of our tradition to our lived realities. PAUSE.

All of these stones remind me of the small stones I have placed on the graves of loved ones when visiting a cemetery. Rabbi Simkha Weintraub, rabbinic director of the New York Jewish Healing Center, points out that the Hebrew word for ‘pebble’, tz’ror, is the same word used in the memorial phrase tehey nishmato tsrurah b’tsror hachayyim– may the soul be bound up in the bond of life. 

Stones are for the living, not just for the dead. By placing a stone, a  tz’ror, on the very headstones that host the Hebrew acronym for this traditional phrase, we are saying: This person left a mark on my life. They taught me something that is bound up in who I am and how I live.

And our ancestors used rocks to mark more than just headstones. Before pen and paper, shepherds needed help keeping track of the size of their flocks. Some days, they would take 30 sheep to graze, while on other days, it might only be 10. Memory alone proved unreliable for keeping track of these numbers. To solve this, shepherds carried a sling and placed a pebble inside for each sheep in the flock. This allowed them to maintain an accurate count throughout the day. Each pebble symbolized a life under the shepherd’s watch; every stone represented a living being. Something worthy of being counted, of being remembered. 

For Yacov, for B’nai Yisrael, for generations of shepherds and mourners before us, and for my friend Ali, stones are more than memories—they are monuments of meaning. Stones help us keep track of what matters most: our experiences, and the lessons we learn from them.

My role as a Morah Derekh—a teacher, rabbi, and guide— is to help others gather the stones of their lives, uncover the Torah they hold, and carry that wisdom forward. 

May each of us be blessed to gather many stones in our lifetime, proudly affirming: I was here, this experience mattered, and the lessons it taught me will guide me in my journey ahead.