Becoming Ourselves, Becoming Israel
Sermon Shabbat Vayishlach 5785
Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
In our vibrant Torah Study on Saturday morning last Shabbat I was asked a difficult question: if the Biblical Jacob is such an ethically challenged and challenging person, why do we so revere him as a father of our people? In fact, why is he given the honor in this Shabbat’s Torah portion of Vayishlach of being named Israel, and why are we all, technically speaking, b’nai Yisrael, children of Israel? That is, Jacob’s kids?
In the Torah we have been following Jacob’s troubled life since Parshat Toldot, in which he first conned his brother Esau out of his birthright, and then deceived his own father Isaac and expropriated Esau’s blessing and had to flee his brother’s wrath. Truly he acted the part of the “heel” for which he was named.
Last week, in Parshat Vayetsei, we witnessed Jacob’s unkindness to his wives. The Torah actually describes Leah as “hated”! Jacob’s greater love for Rachel is understandable, but nonetheless, Leah is essentially an innocent victim of her father Laban’s treachery, undeserving of Jacob’s scorn. The Etz Hayim commentary says, “Knowing what we know of human psychology, we can suspect that Jacob did indeed hate Leah because, by reminding him of the fraudulent circumstances of their wedding, she reminded him of his most shameful memory, the time he deceived his own father. We often hate people for confronting us with what we least like about ourselves.” Leah is so neglected that she pathetically names her sons, serially, “maybe my husband will see me; maybe my husband will hear me; maybe my husband will connect with me.”
There is more negative material about Jacob in the Torah. When Rachel cries out to him of her profound pain at being barren, he is incensed rather than sympathetic and answers her unfeelingly. Even the Sages, who usually exalt Jacob at the expense of others, criticize him for his insensitivity.
But finally in this week’s Parsha, Vayishlach, we see that Jacob has changed in some important ways. Twenty years before, when he left his home, after that dream of the ladder to heaven, he prayed to God as though he were engaged in a negotiation: if God would protect him, if God would supply his needs and if God would return him safely home, then he would acknowledge God as God and set aside a tithe for Him! It was all “If… then” statements, followed by a stingy offer of tzedakah. But now, here in Vayishlach, an older and perhaps wiser Jacob prays a more mature prayer – he knows he has nothing to offer God, and that he has already been granted a plethora of blessings: love, family, and wealth. Now he asks only for God’s protection so that he can be an instrument in fulfilling God’s plan.
We see, too, how his previous response to precarious situations was to lie and leave: he fled from Esau, and he snuck away and fled from Laban, too. But now, here in Vayishlach, he outgrows his Jacob identity as the heel and trickster and becomes Israel, the one who wrestles with, who contends with God and people instead of avoiding and manipulating them. Even though at the end of the nocturnal struggle Jacob is wounded and limping, he is later described as shalem or whole (Breisheet 33:18). The word shalem is, of course, connected with shalom – peace. He is envisioned as being at peace with himself. Perhaps, after all that wrestling, he now has an integrity, a wholeness, that he didn’t have before.
As a people, we are named not after Abraham, nor Isaac, but Jacob. Rabbi Ed Feld says, “Abraham is a mythic figure — we have almost no clue to his inner life. Both at the beginning of his story and at the end, we see him following God’s command with absolute faith… his life appears charmed, and God protects him… There is a paucity of information regarding Isaac, his son, the second of the patriarchs. Essentially, we see him in two scenes, in both of which he is a passive player…
“But the Jacob narrative is different…Jacob’s emotional life is apparent. We are told when he is fearful; we are told when he is in love. His messy domestic life is carefully examined, and his troubles and feelings are in full view. The trajectory of his life is not simply uphill. His relationship with his family is constantly troubled.
“We suspect that the love relationship with Rachel has gone aground; their dialogue certainly seems less than loving. His eldest son, Reuben, disrespects him. His disagreements with Laban almost put his life in danger. Fear and disappointment never leave him. In old age, reflecting on it all, he will complain to Pharoah, “Few and hard have been the years of my life,” (Breisheet 47:9).
“Of all the patriarchs, then, Jacob is the most human, suffering ups and downs, living through successful accomplishment and suffering tragedy. He is the most human, the most like us. And we are called the People Israel because his are precisely the most human of tasks with which we are to engage: How to live with one another, how to love, how to raise families, how to create community. That is the stuff of truly Jewish life… the path which we are to create in order to build a life that aims toward God, goodness, and even holiness.”
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the cult of Chabad Hasidism, begins his classic work, the Tanya, by discussing the beinoni, the person who is neither fully righteous nor evil. This is surprising, for most Hasidic masters concentrated on the development of the tsaddik, the saintly person. Yet the Ba’al HaTanya, the creator of this sect, suggested that in the end even those who seek a life of extreme piety are simply middling people, made up of flesh and blood, tossed about by circumstances, subject to mixed motives, trying to work through relationships and be decent husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, siblings, children. Each person must come to grips with their own fears, loves, self-concern, and the wish to make a difference.
Like Jacob, the Alter Rebbe says, we always meet the Other who is not what we expect, who is filled with his or her own ambitions, fears, inclinations, and desires. Ultimately, we meet a succession of Others with whom we wrestle, with whom we must come to grips, if you will.
Jacob shows us the way: he goes to sleep in a field, dreams, and awakens only to discover what he didn’t comprehend or imagine, “Truly there is God in this place, and I didn’t know it.” We, too, can enter into our world, the world of everyday busyness, the place of ambition and concern, of love that strives to be realized and motive that is misunderstood, but as we struggle to create a measure of holiness out of the ordinary, something special out of the everyday, we truly become living participants in the story of the People Israel. We, too, might be able to echo our eponymous ancestor and amid the striving, the wrestling, discover that this is where we find God: in the revelation that the everyday may contain holiness.
Janet Sternfield Davis says, “Many of us have had Jacob moments, but luckily not a Jacob life. We’ve had to leave home in order to get on track. Sometimes home is not safe, or it’s too safe to do the hard work of creating a life worth living. What is a life worth living? What is the hard work required to become who we were meant to or could be?”
Jacob’s life is indeed difficult and painful. He has been both manipulator and manipulated, deceiver and deceived. Our lives may or may not be as dramatic as Jacob’s life. The question is do we have the courage psychically to commit ourselves to live with integrity? What do we make of our lives if we don’t fulfill our own personal pledge to act responsibly? And… can we return “home” as the different people we became due to our “getting out of town”?
This can be as daunting as the original leave-taking because we fear we will regress to the old us and lose all the hard-fought changes we have made. The stories of our ancestors are full of promises made to and by human and recognizable people. They are flawed individuals who accomplished great things. Our responsibility is to fulfill our promise to live a life worth living, and so make our own contribution to the legacy of our people.
Jacob’s night of wrestling is a moment of reckoning. His struggle clearly transformed him. His name was changed to Israel and through him we became known as B’nei Israel– the Children of Israel, a people who must wrestle with God and ourselves to determine our blessing, to experience the essence of our covenant, to accept our collective mission as a people.
Like Jacob, we face moments in life that command our self-reflection and willingness to struggle. We too must confront our inner selves – the good and the bad. We confront our own angel; we confront God; we confront ourselves. And, we wrestle with questions: Who are we? What have we done? How can we change and grow from within the depths of accepting our frailties? What does God really want from us?”
Even after transformative moments, like Jacob’s here in Vayishlach, we remain ourselves. Who we were, we still 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 we retain from our youth. While we will never obliterate the Jacob within, it is within our power to transcend him. We, too, can grow to become Israel. And so live with integrity, purpose and meaning in our own lives.