In the synagogue the Torah is read aloud in a fixed annual cycle of fifty-four weekly portions (parashiyot), one each Shabbat morning, with certain adjacent portions doubled in ordinary years so the sequence fits the calendar. Each portion is named for a distinctive word near its opening and is paired with a haftarah, a reading from the Prophets. The cycle closes and restarts on Simchat Torah. Vayetzei ('And he went out', Genesis 28:10-32:3) follows Jacob to Haran: his dream of the ladder reaching heaven, his years serving Laban, his marriages to Leah and Rachel, the birth of most of the tribes of Israel, and his eventual flight homeward with his household.
Jacob's dream of a ladder set on the earth with its top reaching the heavens, angels ascending and descending upon it (Genesis 28:12), is read across the commentary tradition in strikingly different registers, Rashi noting the specific verb for the angels' movement implies a fixed, bounded ladder rather than an image of infinite ascent, while later Jewish mystical commentary, including material in the Zohar, developed the vision into an extended meditation on the relationship between the earthly and heavenly realms. Jacob's fourteen years of labour for Laban, deceived into marrying Leah before finally securing Rachel, is read by commentators as measure-for-measure justice for his own earlier deception of Isaac, a reading Rashi makes explicit by noting Laban's excuse, that the younger is not given before the elder (Genesis 29:26), echoes Jacob's own violation of birth order in taking Esau's blessing.