12-05-2025 VaYishlach

You will find this week’s parashah, called  VaYishlach meaning:“ He sent forth” in the Book of  Genesis: 32:4-36:43. The week’s section revolves  around Jacob’s maturation and spiritual growth. Perhaps the section’s most famous tale is  that of the battle between Jacob and what is called  in Hebrew “the Ish.” The Hebrew word “ish” is a  complex word meaning: “a divine being” or “another  person”, or even “oneself”. Thus, the text’s  ambiguity leaves us in an intellectual quandary. Is  the text’s lack of clarity meant to force us to wrestle  with its meaning just as Jacob had to wrestle with  the ish? 

This tale also presents us, for the second time, the  idea that Jacob seems to have a habit of “holding  onto or grabbing onto” another being. We note that  Jacob facilitated his birth by holding onto Esau’s  heal, now he wrestles with the “ish” and refuses to  let go until he receives the ish’s blessing. (32:27).  What is the text teaching us by this holding on, by  this wrestling match? Is the text teaching us that  Jacob has finally come to realize that he must take responsibility for his past and future actions? Is it  teaching us, that creativity cannot be taken from  another but rather we must first find out who we are  by looking deep into our own souls? 

This text reminds us that each of us must find our  own way, that no of us can continually hold onto  another. Until what point do we trust in another and  to what point do we trust only in ourselves? 

Reviewing Jacob’s life, we see a man who begins  life as a schemer. Now as he prepares himself to re encounter his brother by crossing the River Yabbuk,  both physically and spiritually, we meet a man who  has come to realize that in life cleverness is not  enough, that he must find meaning and commitment  in his own life if he is to succeed. Jacob must  grapple with the fact that humans must balance their  need for the tangible with their need for the spiritual. Does Jacob’s wrestling with the “ish”  represent this realization? Has he come to  understand that we all need balance between the  daily actions of life and the eternal spiritual side of  life? 

In this week’s parashah we note that in life’s  struggles between the sense of self-knowledge and  the knowledge of the other, that Jacob comes to  realize to find G-d one must seek G-d. Might this  new insight be the reason behind his name change  from Jacob (holding on to the other) to Israel  (struggling with the Divine)? 

From this point until the end of the Hebrew Bible two  themes will be ever present, the theme of the “I” in  contrast to the “we” and the question of how do we  resolve the struggle between our sense of self and  our sense of the other, between the tangible and the spiritual? How do we struggle to answer these  questions? What do your answers tell you about  who you are?