(Originally published in December 2020)
Yaakov’s struggle with a “man” the night before he meets up with his brother Esav can be read as a rebirth. It is a transformative experience at the end of which he receives a name change, as if born anew with a fresh way of being in the world.
It is like a rebirth in another way as well: Yaakov’s original birth happened in the context of struggle, too. He and Esav were wrestling inside their mother, Rivka’s, womb, and when Yaakov emerged, he was still engaged in this struggle, holding on to his brother’s heel, trying desperately to be the first out.
The confrontation with the angel is a therapeutic replay of Yaakov’s first birth. Yaakov seems to have emerged from his birth with a sense of inferiority and insecurity. He is born trying to catch up to his brother, with a sense of being behind and secondary, and later his insecurity manifests as a need to actually dress up and pretend to be his brother in order to receive his brother’s blessing. It is as if he is not comfortable in his own skin, not confident that who he is, even as a second born, is equally worthwhile and blessed.
And so the angel helps him to replay that original birth scene in order to begin to heal those wounds. They wrestle as before, but this time, face to face, as equals, rather than one behind the other in the birth canal. Whereas before it was Yaakov, as the more desperate one about to lose the battle to be first born, who hangs on to Esav’s heel, here it is the angel who touches Yaakov’s hip; the angel is losing, and knows it, and this is his only way to make a mark on Yaakov, a last ditch effort to be victorious in a losing battle. Yaakov, in this rebirth, as the angel sees and declares, is the stronger one, the one in control. The angel has to ask permission to leave — to be “sent out” from their interplay like a baby into the world. This time, though the other is still the first to leave, to be born back into the dawn, it is Yaakov who has sent him out.
And so Yaakov leaves this encounter a new man with a new name. He is not Yaakov, the insecure heel-grabber, but Yisrael, one who “has striven (sarita) with beings divine and human and prevailed.” As the name Yisrael implies, he is a sar now, a leader, a person in charge, in control, not just of others, but also, primarily, of himself. He has God in his name, a sense of presence and of his own infinite capacity and worth. He is eminently capable, as the angel lets him know — vatukhal, “you prevailed,” or literally, “you were capable” in this fight; you did it; you have the capacity to do anything. He is a full person, not secondary, but a sar (officer) of God in his own right (much like “Sarah,” his grandmother), a fair match for even an angel. Soon after, when he travels again, the Torah describes him as shalem, “whole”; he has a new sense of completeness and wholeness, not needing anyone outside him to affirm him, but complete in himself.
And so Yaakov emerges from this rebirth with the confidence to meet his brother face to face without wanting to supercede or replace him. Yaakov is generous and gracious, giving him gifts and bowing submissively to honor his brother, with no hint of fight or insecurity or the need to show himself as the superior. Yaakov has the courage for the first time to show up as himself, and this makes all the difference in his interactions with his brother. In the past, Yaakov’s insecurity had caused strife between them; not being content with himself, Yaakov fought with Esav, extracting first the birth right and then the blessing from him, trying to fill the hole inside himself by taking something from his brother. Now, in this new encounter, Yaakov’s sense of his own completeness allows him to view his brother more generously. He can prostrate himself before Esav seven times because he has the confidence and self dignity to know that he is a sar of God. And out of this confidence comes peace and graciousness, so that, for the first time, the brothers meet and hug and kiss, accepting one another as equals.
What has happened here is remarkable and inspiring. Yaakov has managed to do one of the most difficult things in the world — to let go of his baggage and step into a larger version of self. The name Yaakov symbolizes all those parts of his small self that have been burdened and constricted by the insecurity he has been carrying around since birth. Now he is letting go of some of those burdens in a new birth process. It is interesting to note that, just before this encounter with the angel, Yaakov takes everything he has — his wives, his children and all of his possessions — and moves them across to the other side of a river; it is as if he is symbolically letting go of all of his earthly attachments, all of his baggage, for a short time, in order to come into contact with some larger, purer version of himself. The name Yisrael symbolizes this new (or perhaps, old, original) larger self, one that is connected to the divine and therefore infinitely capable and generous and confident and courageous. After wrestling all night with a divine being, Yaakov receives from that being a tiny piece of divinity, or, more accurately, Yaakov receives the ability to access the divine part of his own nature that was always there inside him. The angel functions as a mirror, allowing Yaakov to see his own divine side, his Yisrael-ness.
And so, in a way, the struggle that took place that night was between these two parts of Yaakov himself, his small human wounded self, and his larger divine perfectly whole and confident self. All night, as they wrestled, these two sides were getting to know each other. The word for wrestle, vaye’avek is understood by some to mean “embrace” as in the not dissimilar word vaye’havek (the letters alef and haf can sometimes be interchanged). The angel wrestles with Yaakov, engaging him and connecting to him, and he also embraces him in all his Yaakovness, beginning to heal his young wounded parts. Interestingly, in the process, the angel creates a new physical wound, hurting Yaakov’s hip, causing him to limp. Perhaps this wound can be understood as an externalization of the internal wounds that are being healed, a way of bringing them out into the open for healing, to expose them to the sun that is said to shine the next morning for the express purpose of healing Yaakov. Vayizrah lo hashemesh. “The sun shone for him.” Yaakov has emerged from his long night of suffering and insecurity into the dawn’s light of clarity, confidence, and courage.
Yaakov is reborn here as Yisrael, but note that the Yaakov side of him isn’t eliminated, but embraced; the Torah continues to refer to this patriarch by both names, showing that both personas remain. What happens here is that Yisrael becomes the sar, the leader, of the internal system, so that the human Yaakov, with all his special talents and capacities, can now act in the world out of a place of confidence and wholeness rather than insecurity.
What would it be like to undergo such a transformation, to be reborn in this way, to let go of some of our wounds and be whole and free and able to show up for ourselves fully without a gnawing sense of insufficiency? I think about this sometimes while immersing in the waters of the mikvah. I imagine that the mikvah is like a womb, cleansing me of my old habits and stuck places and insecurities, and allowing me to be reborn afresh — like Yaakov after his night of wrestling and embrace — pure and whole and connected to the divine inside me. The feeling generally doesn’t last, but the glimpse is helpful, as it surely was for Yaakov/Yisrael, the vision of a possibility of becoming one’s own sar, internally led by the sense of our divinely given wholeness, exuding a confidence that is gracious and generous, always mindful — without a sense of competition — of the other’s equal wholeness.
