1. There was a need for our nation to repeat the same stories year after year until the stories became foundational stories, the fundamental ideas of our existence, and with them, we navigated our way in the valley of death of nations and peoples, of destruction and redemption. Especially in the book of Genesis, which has (virtually) no laws or customs, but rather the description of the depth of the roots from whence we branched out over thousands of years. We took solace and strength from them, and most of all – by reading and learning them we understood how to read the history and current events of every generation, in order to continue on our long journey from Rome to Jerusalem.
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In this Sabbath's Torah portion, we will read about the most famous twins in the entire world: Jacob and Esau, the eternal wrestlers. They are not just characters who lived in a specific time in history, but rather they are representations, archetypes, and possibilities of existence.
The pregnant Rebecca is suffering and trying to understand what is happening inside her body. The answer is not a personal one: "Two nations are in your womb; two regimes from your insides shall be separated, the might shall pass from one regime to the other, and the elder shall serve the younger" (Genesis 25:23). We are hurled from the personal-human domain into the symbolic and historiosophical one. Rebecca's womb is depicted as a site of worldwide wrestling between two forces. "The lads grew up, and Esau became one who knows hunting, a man of the field; but Jacob was a wholesome man, abiding in tents" (Gen. 25:27). Completely different.
2. Before his death, the elderly Isaac intends to bless Esau, his eldest son, and pass him Abraham's inheritance. Not just his earthly inheritance, but primarily the vision of establishing a unique nation that will hold a moral message to the world. Rebecca hears this and urges Jacob to enter his father's room disguised as his brother in order to receive the blessing himself. The women appear in many of the Scripture's historic crossroads to steer the course of events.
Jacob enters Isaac's room as "not himself". He dresses in other clothing and is hidden within a borrowed identity. He is not built for dangerous positions such as this; it is apparent from his hesitations: "But my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth-skinned man. Perhaps my father will feel me and I shall be a mocker in his eyes; I will thus bring myself a curse rather than a blessing!" Therefore he undergoes a complex process, and transformation. Into Isaac's room entered one Jacob and exited another Jacob.
We can understand what Jacob experienced from the words of his father, Isaac, when (the real) Esau enters his room and he understands for the first time that the son in his room earlier was not Esau: "Then Isaac trembled in very great perplexity" (Gen. 27:33). This is not another ordinary trembling, but a terrible terror that consumes every other emotion. Indeed, Rashi quotes the Midrash: "He saw Hell open up beneath him."
And if Isaac felt this way, more so Jacob. The moments of terror he experienced in his father's room began the test of sound Isaac gave him – "Who are you?" (27:18); and then the test of touch: "Come close, if you please, so I can feel you; are you, indeed, my son Esau or not?" (27:21); and finally the test of smell: "Come close, if you please, and kiss me, my son… and he smelled the fragrance of his garments" (27:27). Every test and the terror of his father finding out the truth and the horrible curse that is likely to follow. When Jacob passes the first test and breathes a little easier, the second test comes and makes him wither on the inside, and again he feels relief, and then the third and fourth tests. His soul had left him. The blood is leaking out of his body and his heart was about to burst – as we say: "scared to death". Our sages described it thus: "Jacob wet himself and his heart was as weak as wax, and God sent him two angels – one on his right and one on his left – and they held him by the elbows lest he falls." Even they needed God's presence that supported Jacob to explain how he did not faint from fear.
3. This description is crucial because it explains that what transpired in that endless hour was a binding for Jacob. When he entered the room, he was being bound. He would never go back to being what he was. From the deep terror he felt, he was reborn. In many cultures, people who wear costumes go through a symbolic process of death and rebirth, just like a caterpillar who cocoons itself in preparation for its rebirth as a butterfly.
In these moments when Jacob gathers his courage and does what he thought until then was impossible, he realizes that his costume left the bounds of being a trick or even a deception. He will not strip these clothes from him; his costume became stuck to his flesh and soul. When he left his father's room, he will wear something of Esau on him as well. In Isaac's room, he began a process that would continue in the house of Laban and would reach its climax when he fights the angel, that is when he would face Esau again face-to-face. He would realize, throughout a long process, that if he wishes to continue Abraham's legacy, he can no longer continue being a "wholesome man, abiding in tents", but rather adopt traits of Esau, "one who knows hunting, a man of the field", as well. A healthy nation cannot rely solely on upon those residing in tents – neither those of livestock nor those of Torah and technology. A nation needs men of action as well – men of the military, the economy, the industry, and of politics.
In that room, in front of his blind father (just like Jonah inside the belly of the whale), Jacob, at long last, meets Isaac. For years, he distanced himself from his father and went after his mother, because his father loved his other brother, the red-skinned, popular, heroic, and admired one. Now, in the dim room (camera obscura) of Isaac, who does not see, but instead hears, feels, and smells, he realizes that Isaac preferred his brother because Esau was his (Isaac's) opposite, the opposite of one who was an unblemished, passive, and bound offering. Jacob understands this; he will learn how to adopt Esau's traits as well. This is the work of a lifetime; but in the end, he will succeed – "Jacob arrived intact at the city of Shechem" (33:18). This verse came after his decisive meeting with Esau – "intact", because he now contained his twin brother within him.
4. This retroactively takes us back and provides us with insight into the beginning of the story. Until now, we thought that Rebecca's womb contained two possibilities of existence – two peoples within her womb, two nations that were separate even in their mother's womb – and now we know that the contrast between them was external only. Since both possibilities of existence, both polarities, were in one womb, two sides of the same coin, and one could not relinquish any one of them. Isaac chose Esau, Because he knew Jacob well, he resembled him. He was also a wholesome man who resided in tents. Compared to Isaac and Jacob, Esau was something else entirely, an ingredient the family of Abraham needed to continue developing itself. Therefore, from the moment Esau left the history of Abraham's household, Jacob had to carry what was missing within him – the essence of Esau. And so, with this insight, he goes into exile out of fear of his brother who conspired to kill him. He will learn and accumulate experience from his uncle Laban, which will prepare him to stand before his red brother.
Twenty years later, he returns from exile to the promised land, where his brother awaits him to settle the score and inherit his land. Jacob hears that Esau is approaching him with 400 men. He fears – not for himself, but for his family – and so he prepares, both for diplomatic negotiations that will lead to appeasement, and for war.
5. And then it happens: Esau (or his messenger) pounces on him to kill him. "Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn" (32:25). This story is a pattern that repeats itself many times throughout history: You are alone, says the third forefather (Jacob), just as I was alone. While you will meet friends along the road on your journey through history, in the moment of truth, you will need to manage on your own.
Also 20 years earlier, in his escape from Esau, Jacob was alone; but now he faced the risk of death. His family, people, and belongings have made it across the Jabbok river, and he alone was left on the other side. The Midrash states that the Hebrew word "Hebrew" ("Ivri"), whose root translates to "side", symbolizes that a Hebrew stands on one side, while the entire world stands on another (Compare with "Abram the Hebrew", Gen. 14:13). But while Jacob fled the first time, now, after leaving his parent's protective bubble and learning in the school of life, he adopted the traits of Esau. He is no longer fleeing. He is returning to his homeland after a long exile so that he will no longer need to run away. So, he fights and is victorious.
When the sun rises, his opponent pleads: "Let me go, for dawn has broken" (32:27). And Jacob responds: "I will not let you go unless you bless me" (Ibid). This is the symbolic situation Jacob was in, in which he makes Esau admit to the matter of the blessing, meaning to admit to his inheritance. And this is how it happened: "He said to him: 'What is your name?' He replied: 'Jacob.' He said: No longer will it be said that your name is Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with the Divine and with man and have overcome" (32:28-29). Now, only when he returns to his land and does not flee from his enemies, but rather fights and wins, does our eternal name appear for the first time: Israel.
6. The name "Israel" has a dimension that holds the mystery of our existence as a nation and society. The first explanation is that Jacob has striven with God and man, and has overcome them. The word "God" ("Elohim") means force (such as "the mighty ("Eley") of the land", Ezekiel 17:13` ", Tycoon, which in Hebrew is "El hon", etc.), meaning the contend with forces applied on us and against us throughout history, collective, national, and personal forces.
Nachmanides (Ramban – Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman), who lived in the 13th century in Girona in the Catalonia region in Spain, wrote: "The thing is, that the entire incident is a hint forever after, that there will be a generation of one of Jacob's offspring, that will be overcome by Esau nearly to the point of uprooting their root … and there are other generations that have done this and even worse to us; and we suffered and made it through it all, just as it was hinted 'Jacob arrived intact'." And it is as if Nachmanides referred to his generation, to the church that persecuted him until he fled Spain and arrived at the land of Israel in 1267. He saw our land in its ruins, and he even managed to renew the Jewish settlement in Jerusalem. Ramban reads the Torah as a code to history and refers to a generation in which the Jewish people will be on the brink of extermination, God forbid. Today we know something he did not. We saw the survivors of this specific generation with our own eyes.
And in the perspective of thousands of years, this indeed is what happened to us: we have striven with the Divine and with man and with various strange nations, we have striven with every type of death and destruction that man has concocted, we have striven with waves of history that have brought an end to nations and languages – and we have overcome them.
7. And the statement can be read as-is: Israel is a people that strive with its God. It is inherent to our existence. We do not rest in God's presence, rather we struggle with him, kick, scratch, and defy. And then we make up, only to go on to the next fight. Abraham, the father of the nation, argues with his God with all his might regarding Sodom's fate: "Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?" (Gen. 18:25); Jeremiah, the prophet of the destruction of the Temple, invites his God to judgment: "I will speak with you of Judgments" (Jeremiah 12:1), and so on and so forth.
The word "God" not only has its regular meaning but also indicates our Jewish identity. Therefore, a struggle with God is a struggle with our identity. Many eras in our national history were characterized by our struggle with our religious identity, certainly as is the new era of our history: since the mid-18th century, from the time of Enlightenment, through Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel, all the way to the animated arguments of our time regarding the place of religion and God in Israeli society and in public.
8. The struggle between the "Israeli" and the "Jew" has become more apparent in the past decades. When looking at the Scripture's source that gave us our name, we understand that striving with God (and man) was essential for us as a people. The symbiosis between the people and God has accompanied us since the dawn of our existence, even when it occasionally reaches the point of pathological relations of attraction and repulsion – this is the depth of the argument in Israeli society, regarding our deeper identity, even if it is sometimes expressed superficially.
And if we strive with God, we have nothing to fear from serious and poignant arguments in Israeli society, not even from defiance of the state and its institutions. This dialect is on every page of our fundamental books. There is no assumption in the Talmud that is not disputed and awaits the dispute's settlement. I do not know if Friedrich Hegel knew about the Talmud, but the new historiosophical equation he created is embedded in the structure of the Talmudic debate: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This is the type of democratic dialogue our nation has always known. Therefore, the concern regarding what is known in public discussion as a "halachic state" (a Jewish state governed by Jewish religious law) is an idle threat. There is no way we will establish a theocracy since Israelism is the embodiment of the two primordial possibilities that appeared in our origins: Jacob and Esau. There is no Jacob without Esau. We need both sides of our national personality.
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9. Anyway, the eternal debate on the question, "Who are we?" created a flexible and fluid identity for us, that has always preserved within it the historical and spiritual nucleus, but also succeeded in adapting to the ever-changing conditions of history. Every generation has contended with its identity all over again, and the answer it discovered met its generation's spiritual and national existential needs.
The answers of the Jews of the Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain and those who were expelled from Spain were not the same; neither were the identities of the first generations following the destruction of the Second Temple and the Jews in Babylon in the mid-first Millennium B.C.; the Jews of the Resurrection Period answered the question of their identity differently than the Jews of the Middle Ages, and so on. These answers were always existential ones, and with them, we managed to build an incredible textual and intellectual skyscraper that no other nation has provided for its descendants.
The common denominator for all this is the fact that the constant debate regarding our identity is not a source of weakness, but rather the secret of our existence; with it, we struggled against and overcame colossal forces of history that would have destroyed any other nation under the same circumstances. We flowed, like water that always finds alternative routes to flow in, and succeeded in watering weary souls on a long historic journey through the desert of nations. This is the essence of the blessing given to Jacob (by his enemy!), and by him to all his offspring: you have struggled with God and with man – you contended with and struggled with your identity, and by constantly contending with your identity, you were able to survive and even flourish throughout history, under conditions that any other nation would not have been able to withstand – and you overcame them!
