What a joy to be celebrating Noah Schindler becoming Bar Mitzvah with you all. Noah’s Torah portion is vayishlach, and while of course all 54 Torah portions are equally sacred, there is something pretty special about this one, because it’s the one that gives us our name—Yisrael, Israel. Noah’s portion contains the etymology, the origin story, for how we became B’nei Yisrael, the children of Israel, and what that means.
Many of you are familiar with the story. Our ancestor Jacob, who has been essentially on the lam, on the run, after fleecing the all-important patriarchal blessing from his aging father and the blessing’s traditional recipient, his older brother, is finally returning home, after years of exile from his homeland. Much has changed since those events. He has a family now. He is the ancient equivalent of being professionally accomplished. He has ample wealth and an ample flock. He’s made it.
And yet he is not returning triumphantly but trepidatiously. With anxiety. He doesn’t know how he is going to be received as he anticipates that first encounter with Esau, the man he has wronged, years later. He prepares for the encounter by preparing a gift train—dozens, hundreds of gifts in the currency of the day, livestock, in order to appease and placate his wronged brother.
As a failsafe he puts his wives and children behind the train to ensure that if it does come to blows they are as protected as they can be, fearing, as he does, for their safety and his own.
With one night to go before the encounter, Jacob finds himself on one side of the river Yabok, with his family, camp and possessions on the other. What happens in this moment of trepidation?
וַיִּוָּתֵ֥ר יַעֲקֹ֖ב לְבַדּ֑וֹ, we read: “Jacob was left alone.” Without any warning the text next tells us וַיֵּאָבֵ֥ק אִישׁ֙ עִמּ֔וֹ עַ֖ד עֲל֥וֹת הַשָּֽׁחַר׃ “And a figure wrestled with him until the break of dawn.”
Huh?
Who is this figure? And what does this mean? The story continues:
וַיַּ֗רְא כִּ֣י לֹ֤א יָכֹל֙ ל֔וֹ, “When the figure saw that he had not prevailed against Jacob, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him. “Then the figure said, ‘Let me go, for dawn is breaking.’ But Jacob answered, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So the figure said, ‘What is your name?” He replied, ‘Jacob.’ And the figure said ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob but Yisrael’” Israel, כִּֽי־שָׂרִ֧יתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִ֛ים וְעִם־אֲנָשִׁ֖ים וַתּוּכָֽל “for you have striven” — sarita, striven or wrestled, Yisra — “with Elohim” — El, God. Yisra-el. “You have striven with God and with human beings,” vatuchal, “and have prevailed.”
Wow. As we said, quite a story and the foundation, in a sense, of our entire identity as B’nei Yisrael, the children of Israel, and their latter day descendants, the Jewish people.
The foundation of our identity as the children of Israel is the incident when our ancestor wrestled with the divine, and prevailed.
What could that mean?
It’s a good thing we are reading this portion as we celebrate someone in this community becoming Bar Mitzvah, because a B’nai Mitzvah student’s engagement with the Torah in preparation for their delivering a d’var torah, a teaching of their own, is in some ways the ultimate embodiment of sar-el, yisrael, wrestling with god.
“This is the core of the Bar Mitzvah event,” write Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman. “The moment at the heart of the ritual when there is [the opportunity for] the deepest and closest encounter with God, or with the child’s own wrestling with their life. It crystalizes the lifepath that Jewish children have been ideally expected to walk: not only hearing God’s Voice through the words of Torah and the Prophets,” which they chant in the Torah and haftarah “but also engaging with these words— wrestling with them—so as to bring into the world their own new Torah.”
“Only in this way” they continue, “can they become full adult members of the people ‘Yisra-el.’ For the very name of the people echoes the night of terror and transformation in which Jacob turned his lifelong struggle with his brother into a Wrestle with the nameless One, and was himself renamed Yisra-el, ‘Godwrestler.’”
I can speak with firsthand knowledge that Noah has done this. He has wrestled with the text—turned it over in his mind and in his spirit and in his heart— and come out the other side with new insights, new light—Torah—to share, in his own generation, in his own community.
But what about the rest of us?
Remember, that becoming Bar Mitzvah isn’t a one time occurence signaling the culmination of a chapter of life. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is not only that. B’nai Mitzvah is both culmination and inauguration—inauguration into the ongoing community of Yisra-el, god wrestlers. Bar Mitzvah isn’t about a day; it’s about a status, a role, dare I say a duty. The president’s job doesn’t end on inauguration day, it begins.
And so I ask again, what about the rest of us? God wrestling is not a one time occurrence but the ongoing source of the identity of the people of Israel. Us.
So how are we God wrestling to this day?
I would suggest there are at least two ways to approach this. One is the cognitive, the intellectual: What do I think about God, what do I believe about God, if anything? How do I think the world came into existence? Why do I think bad things happen to good people and vice versa? What do I think happens to us after we die? Why is there evil in the world? As adults, we wrestle with these questions, we wrestle with our understandings of God. These are important questions as we formulate our relationship to the universe and to living, and surely comprise a component of Yisrael, of God wrestling.
Still, I can’t help but think the notion of yisrael, God-wrestling, connotes not just what we think, what we believe, but what we experience, what we feel. Something in which not only the brain is engaged, but the spirit, the heart.
Jacob, after all, does not leave this encounter unscathed. It’s not an arms length encounter; it’s up close and personal. After the story completes we read, “וַיִּֽזְרַֽח־ל֣וֹ הַשֶּׁ֔מֶשׁ… וְה֥וּא צֹלֵ֖עַ עַל־יְרֵכֽוֹ” The sun rose upon him and he was limping on his hip. This is not to suggest that encounters with God need to be painful, but true wrestling, this suggests, surely incorporates an element of vulnerability, of wearing our heart on our sleeve.
The questions associated with this form of wrestling are in the vein, not just of “what do I think” but “what do I do?” “I’m lost, God, what do I do.”The questions are inherently more relational, directed not about God but to Him. “How did I end up in this place and where do I go now?” “What are you asking of me?” “How can I serve?”
As Rabbi Art Green observes, one of the words used for “wrestling” in this passage, (va-ye’avek), is related to the word “ḥabbek,” “to embrace.” When wrestling, he suggests, there comes a moment when the distinction between the two—are we wrestling or embracing?—is ambiguous. Where are we in our own relationship to the Divine? In what ways does that call forth to us?
As B’nei Yisrael, as Children of Israel, we are invited, dare I say commanded, to engage in that wrestling. Noah has done it. When our B’nei Mitzvah is fresh in the rearview we’re used to it. But what about the rest of us? Are we living up to our namesake? Some days, my answer is a clearer yes than others; some days it’s a clearer no. Still that’s the task laid out before us. B’nei Yisrael. Wrestlers with God.
