Jacob’s Faith--Vayishlach

Jacob’s Faith

D’var Torah for Parashat Vayishlach

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

This week’s parasha, Vayishlach (Genesis 32:4—36:43) is one of the most terrifying of all Torah portions.  Yes, towards the end of Deuteronomy, too, we find some pretty awful imagery; in Vayishlach, however the disasters and calamities that befall Jacob are not merely potential—they are all too real and present.

Having escaped yet again (this time from the treacherous scheming of his in-laws in Haran), Jacob finds himself approaching a face-off with Esau, his twin brother who, two decades earlier, had sworn to kill him.  Esau is, in fact, riding towards Jacob at the head of 400 armed men.

Jacob is forced to imagine the unimaginable, and he divides up his camp into two halves.  In case Esau strikes the first group, the second half of the family may yet escape and survive.

Alone at night, facing a morning devoid of hope, Jacob is besieged by some mysterious force—perhaps spirit, perhaps human, perhaps his own subconscious.  In the night-long struggle, Jacob is hurt.  However, he manages to maintain his hold on the stranger and finally, at daybreak, elicits a blessing from him.

“Your name,” says the angel, “shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Gen. 32:29).  Immediately after making this statement, the angel disappears and the sun emerges—for the first time in a very long time—for Jacob.

Even though the encounter with his Esau turns out fortunate, worse things happen as the story progresses.  Jacob’s only daughter, Dinah, is raped.  Levi and Shimon, Dinah’s brothers, exact brutal revenge.  On the way to Bethel to fulfill his vow to God and offer a sacrifice at the place he had called “the dwelling place of God,” Jacob finds that his children have turned to idolatry and have been sacrificing to false gods.  And finally—worst of worst—Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife, for whose hand he had labored for 14 years, dies in childbirth.  Benjamin comes into this world just as Rachel leaves it.

Jacob’s life story, so full of agonies and tragedies, is what humanizes Jacob for us.  Abraham, though called avinu, “our father,” hardly seems real for us.  His overwhelming faith in God, his unquestioning faith that seems impracticable and even dangerous, distances him from us—as it must have for his own son, Isaac.

Nor is Isaac any more realistic as a role model for us, either.  He was, after all, somehow wounded—if not physically, then at least psychologically—by his father Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his life.  Passive and naïve, Isaac lets himself be swayed by forces he feels too weak to ward off or defend himself from. 

The story of Jacob, on the other hand, is our story.  Jacob is everyman.  The dreadful things that happen to him happen to us.  OK, not all of them to each of us, thank God!  But they are things we read about in the paper every day, things that we know for a fact happen every day—if not to us, then to someone else that we may know.

The story of Vayishlach would be depressing beyond hope if we didn’t already know that Jacob’s life will have a happy ending.  This is what keeps us turning to the next page and the one after that.  We want to know how he gets to that blessed point.  We wonder where Jacob gets the strength to carry on, to push ahead, despite the terrors that life rolls his way.

The secret is in the angel’s blessing; Jacob’s strength is within him, implanted in his soul on the fateful night before he returns to his homeland:  “You have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.”

Jacob’s faith is a new kind of faith.  He does not rely on God’s word alone.  Nor does he turn a blind eye to the dangers that surround him.  Rather, Jacob faces any situation he is in, assesses it and deals with it appropriately.  He knows enough to keep in mind the wise and moral lessons of his fathers.  Yet he also profoundly understands the ways and rules of realpolitik.  Despite the perils—perhaps emboldened by the blessing he was given, by the assurance that, in the end, he would prevail—Jacob does not shy from engaging in the fearful struggles of life.

Jacob turns into Israel, and we Jews are his rightful descendants.  Like our third—and most human—patriarch, we do not recoil.  We do not tremble at the thought of the difficulties or dangers that may face us, whether these be the struggles that we sometimes face within our families, the daily wrestling matches with our conscience, or the historic battles we fight for our causes of life, freedom, justice.  In facing the assaults of ignorance and prejudice, of disease and poverty, we do not cower.  Like Jacob, we may come out limping from the encounter, but daybreak will find us standing on our feet.

It’s good knowledge to own, this assurance that no matter what, we will prevail.  We don’t merely survive; that’s not good enough.  Our knowledge that terrors lie all around us does not make us run for cover.  Meaning for us is found in the understanding that we can do something about the situation, that we can make life better.  That’s what gives us purpose and reason to go on.  We struggle, but in the end we prevail.  There’s the difference.  For if we know that our efforts will, in the end, prove worthwhile—if not for us, then for future generations—then our hard work and sacrifices have meaning and are not in vain.

That is the faith that Jacob found—the trust both in God’s promise, but also in his own internal strength, in his God-given ability to change things, to make a difference, to improve the world. 

That’s what made Jacob Israel, and why we have inherited his name and his blessing.

©2012 by Boaz D. Heilman