Sometimes we think, like Yaakov, that we have to pretend to be someone else in order to be blessed, in order to be loved, in order to be attended to. We dress ourselves up like the cool flashy kids who are big and strong and wear leather jackets and know how to hunt. We are ashamed of who we are, the little scrawny kid who sits at home and reads books, or the one boy who knows how to cook a good lentil stew. We have the feeling that who we are is not enough, not valued, not the way that our families and cultures want us to be. So we put on our older brother’s clothing and abandon ourselves in order to get the love and connection that is our deepest desire.
But this is not how we will come to be blessed, come to be whole, come to be a blessing for the world. Yaakov doesn’t receive his true blessing from his father, but from God, over time, through struggle and striving and journeying far from home, by knowing himself, by becoming himself, by becoming Yisrael. It is a sacred process that is wondrous to behold, in Yaakov, and in each of us, as each of us learns to shed our brother’s clothing, to stop devaluing and rejecting our essence, to turn towards ourselves with love and honor, and to allow who God wants us to be to slowly and fully emerge. God doesn’t make mistakes. We are, each of us, blessed and loved for our own true essence.
Photo by Artem Podrez at Pexels
