There is a strange portion of this week's parsha. Here's a translation I found in an essay by Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl:
The agreement between Yaakov and Lavan as stated by Yaakov was: "Let me pass through your whole flock today, remove from there every speckled or spotted lamb, every brownish lamb among the sheep and the spotted or speckled among the goats - that will be my wage" (Bereishit 30:32). The Torah then tells us "Yaakov then took himself fresh rods of poplar and hazel and chestnut ... he set up the rods which he had peeled in the runnels - in the water in receptacles to which the flocks came to drink - facing the flocks, so they would become stimulated when they drink. Then the flocks became stimulated by the rods and the flocks gave birth to ringed ones, speckled ones, and spotted ones ... Whenever it was mating time for the early bearing flocks, Yaakov would place the rods in the runnels, in full view of the flock to stimulate them among the rods" (Bereishit 30:37-42).
To summarize, Lavan was trying to pay Yaakov as little as possible, so he said that he would get, all of the spotted sheep born, though there weren't likely to be any spotted sheep. Yaakov foiled the plan by placing a stick carved with the pattern he needed their children to be, in the water where the sheep were drinking. This effectively induced the sheep to bear spotted offspring, though they themselves had no spots.
We sometimes like to think that what we can see or watch whatever we want, and we will enjoy it on a surface or intellectual level, but that it doesn't really effect us. We can learn from an unlikely source that this is not the case.
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