This week is a big one for our ancestor Ya’akov for many reasons. He prepares to see his estranged brother Esav once again, his name is changed to Yisrael and he bestows that legacy to all of us, he finally returns to the land of Canaan, his daughter Dina is assaulted, and his wife Rachel gives birth to Binyamin and subsequently dies. These are some of the biggest, most challenging moments of Ya’akov’s life. And in the context of this, there is one incident that offers him a moment of spiritual transformation, affecting the way he views everything else.
As Ya’akov camps the night before reuniting with Esav, in the midst of his anticipation and trepidation, the text tells us that an ‘ish,’ a man, came to Ya’akov. The two enter a wrestling match, and we know that Ya’akov prevails. Often, if someone talks about this encounter, they’ll say that Ya’akov wrestled with an angel. But the Torah only tells us that it is a person! It is following their battle, only in Ya’akov’s reflection of the incident, that he describes his encounter and says that he has seen God. It’s through Ya’akov’s own processing of the moment that the human in the encounter has become Divine for Ya’akov.
This forces us to ask serious questions about the nature of that battle itself. Was it really an angel and not a man? What kind of angel, or was it God? We don’t know the answers to these questions, and it seems like to Ya’akov, the answer didn’t matter. Because for Ya’akov, he was able to transform his understanding of an ish, a man, to something spiritual, to something that represented God.
This was not an easy encounter for Ya’akov. It challenged him not only physically in significant ways, but also spiritually and emotionally. And if Ya’akov was able to view an individual that challenged him in that divine way, how much the more so would he have been able to do that with someone who didn’t offer challenge to his life. This is also part of Ya’akov’s legacy to us as Jews.
As we, the people of Yisrael, bear the name that was given to our ancestor as a part of this very encounter, we are offered the opportunity to also think about how we can transform our encounters with others from the realm of human to the realm of the Divine. When can we elevate someone else to the level of Divine? I pray that we allow ourselves to view another person not simply as human but as reflections of God.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
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