Visions of Life’s Struggles
Vayishlach
Visions at night hold a special
place in the Torah, as it is seen as the most common way that the ancients
received their teachings from G-d. Last week, we had Jacob’s dream of the ladder, next
week, Joseph dreams, and in the following week, Pharaoh dreams.
But this week, for Jacob, the vision he sees at
night, in our Torah reading, is
one he sees while fully awake, hardly in a trance.
The
story is well known. Jacob
is about to meet his brother Esau once again and he is filled with tremendous anxiety
as he is about to cross the brook of Yabok, which is the boundary for Esau's territory. Jacob
losses no time in taking every precaution imaginable as he is about to
confront Esau's army of 400 armed soldiers. He
sends messengers with very humbling and modest words. He sends gifts. Not counting on that alone, he prays to G-d for
help. Not being sure that G-d will help, he splits his camp into two, so that if one half of
his family is captured and killed, the other half can escape.
Finally, he is left alone at night, making final
preparations; a man struggles with him and,
while Jacob is wounded in the thigh, he nevertheless prevails and only at the morning’s
light, does he discover that he has wrestled some divine
creature and demands a blessing from him.
It comes in the form of a new name, one that is to be the designation for all
his descendants,
Israel, for “ You have struggle with human and divine, and you have prevailed.”
How are we to take such an experience? Are we to believe in night demons? Did Jacob, as the
text boldly states really wrestle with G-d f ace to face? ”For I
have seen G-d face to face?”
How
do we interpret this event in the context
of meaning for ourselves and still be true to the text
itself?
First we ask, where does this event take place? We are introduced to
the location by an
unusual designation. Geographically it is a stream, but it
is called specifically, maavar-a crossing place, a ford. A crossing place can be a place on a map where one crosses over; it can also be
crossing place inside the soul.
If we were to translate it as “Passages”, then we would have the title of a pop
psychology book on
the theme of change as one grows. Jacob is about to change; he is at a maavar, a crossing point in his life.
Significantly, the crossing place is a stream. In all literature, people change, world history changes inexorably, when a body of water is crossed. Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and by his
irreversible action, changed not only his own future, but that of the
entire Mediterranean world for the next five hundred years and with it the rest of world
history. Moses and the children of Israel crossed
the Red Sea and only then were they truly free. Elisha becomes the heir to Elijah only at the
crossing of the Jordan and
so it is in other lore as well. We
have to expect at this point that
Jacob will be a forever transformed individual.
Even the brooks name
is significant-Yabok. Word play is central to the language of the Torah. Change a vowel or a
consonant, and new meanings appear that are still related to the original word.
יבק יעקב אבק מעבר
Yabok is a river over which Yaakov traverses-it is, in a sense, his
river, as he and the river share much
the same consonants. At this moment of Maavar, crossing over, at this river, Yabok, Yaakov is engaged in an action described by a word that appears only once, here,
in the entire Bible “Vayeavek”.He wrestled ! Nowhere else do we Jews wrestle! The
Hebrew word for wrestling has almost the same consonants, as both the river and the man: Avak, Yabok, Yaakov. The changes that take place in
the Hebrew are common interchanges of vowels and consonant order that show a common meaning. If we tried to read the passage in
the sense of which all the words allude, it
would read: At the place of transformation, the river of struggle, Jacob, the one who grabbed the heel to struggle with his brother before he was even born, must now once again struggle through the night.
Jacob emerges from the conflict
both stronger and weaker. He gains a new name, which also incorporates the theme
of struggle in it-Yisrael. Jacob is now confirmed as
one who fights and struggles, "
for you have striven[sarita] with both G-d and man". Conflict
is to remain a part of Jacob, but it is now a
blessing, not a burden. The ford, too, gets a new name,
“Peniel”- “For I have seen G-d face to face and yet survived.”
Jacob emerges weaker as well; he is struck on the thigh and limps. The thigh represents
sexual vigor, drives, desires, passion. Jacob
is a man whose drives led him to
work for fourteen years for the sake of one woman but also led him to deceive his brother. The
change has taken place, then,
in his ability to control his
drives, his
urges, his Yetser Hara, the tendency to let his passions control him.
What kind of person then, does Esau , the embittered brother see in
front of him?
No longer is it Jacob the schemer, Jacob the
clever tricky one. It Is a Jacob
who is limping, much wiser, humbled who is now presenting himself. It is to this new Jacob that Esau can
relate in harmony.
How do we understand the event? Is it
then with an angel or demon that Jacob struggles?
Maimonides, ever the rationalist, explained it
away as a vision, a prophetic vision, in which Jacob confronts not Esau
his brother but the future
generations of Esau with whom his descendants will
strive.
In countering Maimonides, Nachmanides then asked the rhetorical
questions: "If it is just a vision or a dream how can he be crippled?”
To this, sometime
later, Don Issac Abarbanel,
postulated a contemporary answer: “When somebody in his
sleep experiences a painful sensation, he may dream of being locked in struggle
with an opponent which causes
a twinge in some part of his body. Jacob, as a
result of his travels and toils
of preparing for the meeting with Esau, must
have had twinges during his sleep in the sciatic nerve,"
This much is clear: when Jacob meets
Esau, he tells him: For I have seen your face as if to see G-d face to face and
you have accepted me. The wording is very similar to the wording Jacob uses to
describe his night vision. It is not a slobbery buttering-up of his brother
here; it is a recognition that what he has confronted in his night vision is
his fear. In facing his fear, embodied in his brother, Esau, he has come face
to face with the Divine, and he has survived, been accepted.
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