- Clergy
- Shabbat
I played tennis throughout my entire adolescence. The sport was a huge part of my life for a long time, and I played on a very competitive level. As I went off to college, my focus shifted toward music and theatre, leaving my racquet to collect dust in my closet. While I sadly don’t have time for much tennis anymore, I still do often return to the tennis court–in my dreams. Especially when I have an upcoming stressful event, I have dreams about big matches where I find myself strenuously reaching for a ball or serving game point. During those tense moments, my body jerks awake; sometimes these dreams are so vivid and so physically daunting that I wake up with an intense charlie horse or a painful foot cramp. It’s sort of incredible: a sport that has become part of my past still finds a way of affecting me physically through my subconscious.
I believe Jacob encounters a similar experience in Parshat Vayishlach. In this complex chapter, Jacob gets word that his twin brother Esau wants to stop by for a visit–well, more so that Esau is bringing his entire army with him for a visit. Jacob appropriately panics, as it wasn't all that long ago that he was tricking Esau into selling his birthright and then fooling their father into only giving him a blessing. Jacob splits his camp and prepares for an awkward, if not, dangerous, encounter with his brother.
The Torah then tells us that “Jacob was left alone,” but soon was confronted with an “ish,” some presence, that wrestled with him enough to dislocate his hip. Our tradition debates what exactly this “ish” was: this term is often translated as “man,” deriving from the verb to mean strength. And for many Torah commentaries, they take this translation literally–many scholars believe that it was actually Esau who came to wrestle with Jacob before their public encounter. However, traditional commentators view Jacob’s adversary as an angel sent by Gd to fight with Jacob, preventing him from fleeing before his reunion with Esau. This viewpoint would support what happens next, as Jacob’s name gets changed to Yisrael, meaning wrestles with Gd.
Despite this dispute in translation and interpretation, there is no debate concerning the line that sets the scene: “Jacob was left alone.” If he is indisputably alone, why would we believe the “ish” that he encounters is a physical man or an angel? Jacob does undergo a physical and spiritual transformation, but is it possible that this occurs while Jacob is still alone? Just as I do in my stress-dreams about tennis, I believe that Jacob is in fact by himself, left alone to confront his own subconscious. In this dream-like moment, Jacob is wrestling with none other than his inner guilt from his severed relationship with his brother and the trauma that has been festering within him for years, which then results in a physical transformation: Jacob’s hip becomes dislocated. Interestingly, there are studies that show the connection between our hips and our emotions, specifically, that the hips are considered the “seat” of our emotions, holding our tension, memories, and stored energy from both our past and present. Jacob has finally reached a breaking point, no longer able to bottle in the guilt and tension he feels concerning his actions towards Esau, and his self-conscious wins over this battle. Jacob confronts his personal trauma in order to move forward, and once he does, he is spiritually changed and adopts the moniker of Yisrael.
This battle, this internal struggle, marks Jacob’s redemption moment. No longer is he seen as the younger twin, the brother who tricked his elder father, the naive man who married the wrong sister–we finally see Jacob stepping into the role of responsible, worthy Patriarch. Jacob now becomes humble, acknowledging the mistakes of his past and owning them when he encounters his brother. If we are truly the people of Yisrael, the people of Jacob, let us follow his lead: when we have the opportunity to confront our trauma, whether it be induced from our tennis stress dreams or however else, let’s not fight the notion to explore the origin of said trauma. We cannot let what has happened in the past fester within us until it literally causes us to crumble. Just as Jacob did, let’s take the opportunity to become spiritually elevated, and wrestling with our past might just be the way to do it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Cantorial Intern Aliya Stuart