Dreams from the Ground Up

"And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and behold, angels of God were ascending and descending on it." (Genesis 28:12) 

Jacob's ladder begins not in Heaven, but in the earth. As Jacob flees from home and lies down with only a stone for his pillow, his vision rises from the ground beneath him. Rashi, the great medieval commentator of Troyes, notices a striking detail: the angels do not descend first; they ascend. Revelation, in this reading, begins from below. It is the human condition-fear, longing, imagination-that stirs movement toward Heaven.

In most of the Torah, revelation descends from above: at Sinai, God's voice thunders down to the people. But at Bet-El, the place of Jacob's dream, the movement is reversed-revelation rises from below. Jacob's vision teaches that divine encounter can begin in human strife; the ladder becomes a symbol of holiness discovered by reaching up.

Modern scholar Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg builds on Rashi's commentary and reads the aftermath of the dream as an experience of embodied resilience. Drawing on the classical Targum and midrash, she notes that "Jacob lifted up his legs … his heart lifted up his legs and he became light on his feet." For Zornberg, "There is a richness in the earth that gives resilience to Jacob … His motion, vertical and horizontal at once, has a paradoxical superiority to that of the angels." Where the angels climb cautiously, Jacob moves freely-his humanity itself a source of sacred energy. Revelation becomes an upsurge from the ground, a buoyancy born of earthly strength.

Centuries later, another Jewish dream rose from the ground, this time in fin-de-siècle Vienna. In the city's cafés, salons, and lecture halls, Jewish thinkers such as Martin Buber, Bertha Pappenheim, and Sigmund Freud sought moral and intellectual renewal in an age of doubt. It was a culture of progressive imagination, where Judaism was reinterpreted through ethics, art, and social vision. Out of that same firmament, Theodor Herzl, who was more a journalist than a theologian, dreamed of his own ladder between earth and heaven.

Herzl's book, "Judenstaat," and the First Zionist Congress were not revelations from above, they were built from the ground up. Like Jacob's ascending angels, Herzl's dream began with human movement: meetings, pamphlets, and will. He dreamed not of angels but of delegates, teachers, and engineers building the rungs of a people's future. His declaration, "If you will it, it is no dream," turned yearning into covenantal responsibility.

This theology of ascent sits at the heart of Reform Judaism. Creation and revelation unfold through human action. Faith is sustained not by waiting for miracles, but by our actions. In Herzl's day, few Reform Jews embraced Zionism; many saw the idea of a modern nation-state as a distraction from Judaism's ethical mission. However, Herzl's insistence that renewal must begin from human initiative echoes the same impulse that animates Progressive Judaism. Zornberg's Jacob rises light-footed from the earth; Herzl's Vienna transformed that ancient ascent into a practical dream of a people rising on their own strength: Jewish identity was translated into civic imagination and ethics into structure. In both, revelation is not bestowed but enacted as divine purpose takes shape through human creativity.

A century later, in Herzl's own city, that ladder still stands. What many Reform Jews of his generation resisted, their descendants now claim with conviction. Vienna's Or Chadash, "New Light," embodies this grounded vision. Rooted in Central European Progressive Judaism, the community has recently relaunched its branch of Reform Zionism, ARZENU (known in the United States as ARZA). In doing so, Or Chadash stands tall in Herzl's footsteps, affirming that Zionism and Progressive Judaism are not opposing currents but intertwined expressions of covenantal partnership, dreams that rise through human initiative toward divine purpose. Their renewal in Vienna, the city where Herzl first dreamed and where Jewish thought once flourished, reminds us that revelation still ascends from the ground.

Each generation must decide how to dream from the ground up. What ladders will we build between our ideals and the world as it is? What might we still uncover in the richness of the earth beneath our feet, the same ground where Jacob woke, Herzl walked, and a new Jewish light now shines?

The Torah reminds us that revelation is not confined to a mountaintop moment; it can begin wherever human hope and responsibility meet. When we dare to act, lightened by vision, we join the movement that began with Jacob's dream and continues every time we choose to climb.