"Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the pies? You fat..." This was probably not what Ya'akov was hearing as he fled from his brother Esav in the hope of finding a wife and escaping death. It may be a great song with its roots planted deep in the history of some football terrace somewhere but is unfortunately of little relevance to what I want to say here.

Like all the other sidrot that we read about this time of year, Vayyetze is jammed pack full of great stories to tell the kids round the fire on those long and cold winter nights. However, time, space and my attention span limits us to just talking about one of these cracking stories. Ya'akov is fleeing from Be'er Sheva to Charan, and on his way night falls and he is forces to find a resting spot. He puts his head down on a stone and has a kip, but it is what happens whilst he is in this sleep that I would like to comment on. He dreams of a ladder that stretches from the Heaven to the Earth with angels going up and down this ladder. Many medrashim are associated with this dream, and many a frum bloke with a beard has looked for deeper meaning in this event. It is, however, observations of Rav Aharon Soloveichek that were of most interest to me here. He writes that the Ba'al ha'Turim notes the Hebrew word for ladder, sulam, has the same numerical equivalent to the words, zeh kisei hakavod, Sinai, mammon and ani, the throne of G-d, Mount Sinai, money and a pauper repectively. Rabbi Soloveichek notes that represnted within the word sulam we have the seemingly paradoxical synthesis of materialism and spirituality. It seems that on the one hand the ladder is symbolic of heavenly direction, with allusions to the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai and references to the throne of G-d. Whilst on the other it seems that the ladder is representative of the more earthly pursuits in life, those of personal and financial gain. This synthesis demonstrates pertinently the notion that earthly gain and significance must be coupled with the study of Torah and all that goes with it. To put it briefly; whilst our secular lives enable us to enjoy a higher standard of living, our religious life instructs us how to use our material privileges.

This idea of coupling together our religious and secular lives is clearly one which is relevant to us all as students. Our student years are a time of change for all of us. Whether or not you choose to change your drinking preferences or some other less important features of your lifestyle, the point remains the same. Like the window cleaner who is now on the other side of the window next to me, we are all on a ladder, though whether we are wearing a shapeless boiler suit is a different question, and whether or not we'd look good in one more different still.

We have to choose whether to go up or down this ladder and decide whether the rung that we are currently perched on is really where we want to stay.