Jacob’s Survival Strategy for a Chaotic World

How do we move forward with such limited visibility?

How do we plan for the future in a world of extreme volatility?

And as Jews, how do we sleep at night when trust itself feels uncertain?”

As human beings, we adapt to many circumstances. But one force shakes us more deeply than hardship itself: uncertainty. It is not the mountain we fear most, but the fog around it. When visibility fades, fear rushes in to fill the map.

If anyone knew this vulnerability, it was our forefather Jacob.

At the opening of this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei, Jacob finds himself alone on a mountaintop—literally and existentially between a rock and a hard place.

Behind him lies his childhood home, left after a painful clash with his brother Esau over the spiritual legacy of their family. Before him stretches an unfamiliar world ruled by his uncle Laban, where deception, manipulation, and cunning were the tools of survival.

The Torah paints the moment:

“He encountered the place (Mount Moriah) and spent the night there because the sun had set. He took some of the stones of the place, placed them around his head, and he lay down in that place.”

The Lubavitcher Rebbe asks a penetrating question:

If the stones were for physical protection from wild animals, why did Jacob place them only around his head?

The Rebbe reveals the deeper message:

Jacob was not shielding his body—he was securing his mind.

In times of uncertainty, the most dangerous predators are not wolves in the dark, but doubt, fear, and despair. Jacob’s stones symbolize a life principle for his descendants: when the world becomes unstable, first stabilize your headspace. Guard your vision, your belief, your inner world.

Jacob lived this truth. His conviction that no harm or help reaches a human life without G-d’s will gave him the inner strength to endure twenty years under Laban without betraying himself. He navigated a dishonest world without becoming dishonest. He wrestled with manipulation without becoming manipulative. His integrity was preserved by a promise he trusted even when he could not yet see its fulfillment:

That no matter the detours, he would one day return home safely.

That lesson is ours now.

In a world defined by volatility and diminishing clarity, our first line of defense is not external—it is internal. We must nurture Jacob’s mindset: faith that even an unseen road remains a guided one,

and that the architect of outcomes is greater than the chaos of circumstance.

The Divine words spoken to Jacob on the Temple Mount still echo through history:

“No matter the challenge, we will return home—whole and faithful.”