Have you ever heard your inner voice speaking to you along the following lines: -

“If I keep this Mitvah then I will have to keep them all. Seeing as I am honest with myself and know that I can’t or won’t keep them all, then isn’t it hypocritical for me to keep this one then?!”

This is the classic deception of what we term the “evil inclination”, that inner voice whose raison d’être is to cause us to veer from the healthy path of spiritual growth.

The only valid response to this ‘all or nothing approach’ is to ignore it and move forward with one more Mitzva as our sages teach “one Mitzva causes another Mitzva”.

We understand that this is really an impractical philosophy. Were we to apply it in other areas of life, it would cripple our progress. Yet when it comes to our spirituality we seem too easily enticed by this mantra.

Why?

There is a spiritual rule of thumb for us to bear in mind:

“The greater the spiritual opportunity that is placed before us the greater the force of resistance”

When Jacob leaves the land of Canaan, fleeing from his murderous brother Esav, he encounters “the place”. There he has a dream where a ladder is fixed on the ground, its head reaches the heavens and angels are ascending and descending and then G-d speaks promising Jacob the land of Israel and protection.

There are many interpretations to this strange episode and many questions.

Let us focus on one. Why the ladder?

I would like to suggest that Jacob is being shown the dynamics of spiritual growth. Life is like a ladder. We reach the top one rung at a time. At any particular spiritual level we are on there is always another rung.

If we are to truly progress in our spiritual path we must absorb this message that Judaism is Not all or nothing.