Torah of Recovery: Vayishlach

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Bereshit Rabbah 76:2

(2) Another matter, “Jacob was very frightened and distressed” – Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Ilai said: The fright and the distress are not the same. Rather, he was frightened lest he kill, and distressed lest he be killed. He said: ‘If he overcomes me, he will kill me, and if I overcome him, I will kill him.’ That is: He was frightened lest he kill, and distressed lest he be killed.

Rabbi Judith Lazarus Siegal, Yirah - Awe: From Fear to Awe, in The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 51-52

As Jacob prepares to see his brother Esau in the morning, he lies restless. The Torah tells us of his state of mind: vayira Yaakov (וַיִּירָא יַעֲקֹב), “Jacob was terrified” (Genesis 32:8). Later in the parashah, we learn why Jacob is fearful, as he says, “I am afraid of him, lest he advance on me and strike me” (Genesis 32:12), referring to his brother Esau. ... In Jewish thought, “fear” (yirah, יִרְאָה) of God is understood to be complementary to “love” or “awe” of God. In fact, the term yirat HaShem, or “fear of God,” is equal to following the Torah and mitzvot, according to Rabbi Yosef Albo (1380–1444, Spain), author of Sefer HaIkarim. In the teachings of Mussar, however, we find a very interesting concept when it comes to the middah of “fear/awe.” Alan Morinis writes, “Though yirah can describe the unified fear/awe experience, the term can also be used for the singular experiences of fear and of awe. . . . The Duties of the Heart makes this very point: ‘The fear of Heaven has two aspects: the fear of tribulations and Divine retribution, and the awe of His Glory, majesty, and awesome power.’”1 In other words, fear and awe can be two separate traits completely, or they can be merged together.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, p. 75

The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 198

[Jacob] will be reunited with his brother Easau, as Isaac and Ishmael were reunited late in life [25:9] and as Joseph and his brothers will be reunited in the next generation.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 198-199

Now [Jacob] prays a more mature prayer. In place of bargaining, there is the realization that he has nothing to offer God and that God has already blessed him with more than he had any right to claim - love, family, and material wealth. Jacob now asks only for God's help and protection...

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 201

...this may be an account of Jacob's wrestling with his conscience, torn between his human tendency to avoid an unpleasant encounter and the divine impulse in him that urges him to do the difficult but right thing...He outgrows his Jacob identity as the trickster and becomes Israel, the one who contends with God and people instead of avoiding or manipulating them...B. Jacob writes, 'God answers a person's prayers if the person prays by searching himself, becoming his own opponent.'

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 670

With whom does he wrestle? It says “a man.” But he is able against the man, and later the man names him yir-’l, which is interpreted to mean “struggles with God,” and says to him, “You’ve struggled with God and with people and were able.” And Jacob names the place Peni-El, meaning “face of God,” and says, “I’ve seen God face-to-face.” This all indicates that he has wrestled with God in human form.

Rabbi Mark Borowitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 54

This is the encounter that many of us have when we are in distress over where our lives are at the moment and what our next move will be. This distress is not only about addiction or criminality; this distress is about the way we live in the world. All of us behave in ways that are not holy, ways that feed our most profane self; therefore, all of us need to have this wrestling match with our souls. All of us, at one time or another, have had a choice to treat someone as a divine image or to take advantage of them, treating them as an object. We do this when we don’t think of how our actions and decisions will affect others. We do this when we ignore the cries and pleadings of others. We do this when we don’t take our own inventories and when we refuse to make t’shuvah. Jacob teaches us that all of us, no matter how righteous we think we are, no matter how much we want to see ourselves as the good guys, need to wrestle with our souls. In The Lonely Man of Faith, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, z”l, adds that we must also allow ourselves to “be confronted and defeated by a Higher and Truer Being.”

George Robinson, Essential Torah: A Complete Guide to the Five Books of Moses, p. 324

But before he can be given that new name, he must make his peace with Eisav. What does Eisav see when the two meet on the plains that morning? The clever, guileful Ya’akov of their youth is gone. He has been replaced by a man who is bruised and limping and dirty from a night of struggle, a man who prostrates himself on the ground seven times before his older brother. He sees a man who is, as Yeshayahu Leibowitz says, not obsequious but self-accusing, a man who knows that he wronged Eisav before. In a telling turn of phrase that Leibowitz calls a Freudian slip, Ya’akov tells Eisav, “Take my blessing that I have brought you” rather than “my gift.”

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, vol. 1, p. 220

The passage resists easy interpretation, yet it holds the key to understanding Jewish identity. It is not we, the readers, who give it this significance but the Torah itself. For it was then, as dawn was about to break, that Jacob acquired the name that his descendants would bear throughout eternity. The people of the covenant are not the children of Abraham or Isaac but “the children of Israel.” It was only with the division of the kingdom and the Assyrian conquest of the north, that those who remained were called generically Judah (the Southern Kingdom), and thus Yehudim or, in English, Jews. Names in the Torah – especially a new name given by God – are not mere labels but signals of character or calling. The moment at which Jacob became Israel contains the clue to who we are. To be sure, our ancestors were later called on to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” but we never lost that earlier appellation. We are the people who struggled with God and with man and yet survived. What does this mean?

Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson, The Everyday Torah, p. 56-7

Why does the third patriarch retain his earlier, somewhat embarrassing name? The reality of human life is that we never eradicate our earlier identities. Rather than living solely in the present, each person's identity is a blend of all previous embodiments—the infant, the child, the adolescent, the young adult, and so on throughout life...Who we were, we are. But the glory of human growth is that we too, like our ancient ancestor, need not accept our shortcomings as defining. Instead, we can struggle with our own angels and wrestle with the demons that we retain from our youth.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, loc. 5354, Kindle edition

Ultimately, of course, Jacob and Israel both remain his names. The dialectical confrontation between his two personae is never entirely resolved. This is true throughout the biblical and prophetic writings, where the passionate power of confrontation and the sophisticated “knowing from behind” both remain essential aspects of the man and the nation, undergoing mutations and reworkings throughout history. Certainly, before God confirms the angel’s blessing, Jacob’s unequivocal assumption of the name Israel is unjustified. It betrays Jacob’s ongoing conflict, the dilemma of double identity, and his desire for unambiguous resolutions.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, vol. 1, p. 234

What Genesis tells us is that the heroes of our faith did not live charmed lives. They suffered exiles, knew danger, had their hopes disappointed and their expectations delayed. They fought, they struggled, but they neither gave in nor gave up. They were not serene. Sometimes they laughed in disbelief; there were times when they feared, trembled, wept and even gave way to anger. For they were human beings, not angels; they were people with whom we can identify, not saints to be worshipped.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 667

The repetition conveys the force of this juncture in Jacob’s life. He must face his past. He must face his brother, whom he wronged. And in the middle of the account of his facing his brother will come the account of his most immediate contact with God in his life, his struggle after which he will say, “I’ve seen God face-to-face.”

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 204

Both Jacob and Esau realize that the mental images each has been carrying of the other for 20 years are no longer accurate.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 681

It was Jacob’s taking of Esau’s blessing that led to the brothers’ separation. His description now of what he is offering as “my blessing” suggests that it is an act of compensation for what he did to Esau twenty years earlier. Unlike biblical interpreters who try to defend Jacob’s earlier actions, Jacob himself is pictured as (1) not trying to make any excuses, and (2) trying to make amends.

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 325

There is an unusal marking—dots over each letter—above the word va’yishakayhu/and [Eisav] he kissed, as it appears in the pointed version of the Torah. Some commentators suggest that this means that Eisav’s kissing of his brother was insincere, but Rabbi Shimon bar Yokhai said it is a sign of how deeply felt the emotion of the moment was, that Eisav’s compassion for his brother broke through any other feelings he may have had.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, vol. 1, p. 227-228

Not by accident was this episode the birth of our identity (our “name”) as Israel. At almost every significant juncture in our history we have wrestled with civilizations who worshipped the gods of nature: wealth (“the dew of heaven and the richness of the earth”) or power (“may nations serve you and peoples bow down to you”). Israel never knew the wealth of ancient Greece or Rome, Renaissance Italy or aristocratic France. It never knew the power of great empires, their invincible armies and weapons of destruction. When it longed for those things, as in the days of Solomon, it lost its way. Israel’s strength never lay in itself but in that which was other and greater than itself: the power that transcends all earthly powers, and the wealth that is not physical but spiritual, a matter of mind and heart. Jews have often wished to be someone else, the Esaus of the age. Too often, they knew what it was, in Shakespeare’s words, to "…look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least." (Sonnet XXIX 4–8) That is a feeling we must ultimately reject. The Torah does not ask us to think badly of Esau. To the contrary, it commands us: “Do not hate an Edomite [i.e., a descendant of Esau], for he is your brother” (Deuteronomy 23:7). It did however ask us to wrestle, as did Jacob, alone, at night, in the depths of our soul, and discover the face, the name and the blessing that is ours. Before Jacob could be at peace with Esau he had to learn that he was not Esau but Israel – he who wrestles with God and never lets go.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, loc. 4946, Kindle edition

In his vow, Jacob had added be-shalom—“safe, in peace”—to the words of God’s promise: his concept of return involves an idea of wholeness...How far does reality consummate God’s promise and Jacob’s intention? As far as integrity is concerned, the text seems to vouch for Jacob that he does indeed return intact from his travels...

URJ, The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p. 597

What happens to Dinah in the aftermath of her ordeal? We do not know. We never hear from her, just as we may never hear from the women and girls in our generation who are victims of violence and whose voices are not heard. But the legacy of Jacob as Israel, the one who wrestles, demands that we confront the shadowy parts of ourselves and our world—and not passively ignore these facts.

Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer 38, 1-2

(1) [Dinah] conceived and bare Asenath...

(2) What did (Jacob) do? He wrote the Holy Name upon a golden plate, and suspended it about her neck and sent her away. She went her way. Everything is revealed before the Holy One, blessed be He, and Michael the angel descended and took her, and brought her down to Egypt to the house of Potiphera; because Asenath was destined to become the wife of Joseph. Now the wife of Potiphera was barren, and (Asenath) grew up with her as a daughter. When Joseph came down to Egypt he married her, as it is said, "And he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Potiphera priest of On" (Gen. 41:45).

Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, p. 367

In addition to this biblical encounter, the primary focus of Jacob’s elevation to a divine figure derives from two key rabbinic myths. One holds that Jacob’s image was carved or engraved on God’s heavenly throne. The other suggests that Jacob himself was an angel. The key to this process derives from the tradition, found in many early and diverse sources, that Jacob’s image is to be found on God’s Throne of Glory.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 676

Abraham and Sarah have their names changed permanently, but Jacob is still called Jacob many times after his name is changed to Israel. Rabbi Simcha Weiser teaches that this shows that “Israel” (struggle with God) is something to be attained. It is a long process in one’s life.

Rabbi David Kasher, Parshanut, p. 83

But a verse like, “Timna was the concubine of Eliphaz,” we just gloss over. We keep reading. We forget that the second half of the verse – “she bore Amalek to Eliphaz” – may contain the seeds of our destruction. When we forget Timna’s story, we may well be putting our very existence in danger. In that sense, upon this one line rests every other line in the Torah. There is, as Maimonides said, no difference. So we should read our Torah carefully, all of it. And we should also be very careful whom we turn away from it.