Wrestling with our better and worse angels

Shabbat shalom.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, recounts the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. And every year since I’ve been at Greenwich Reform Synagogue, I’ve talked about that encounter, its significance and long term implications, and who it was that Jacob was really wrestling with: an angel, his conscience, his shadow, etc. But there are countless interpretations of everything in the Torah, which is why the Rabbis famously said: “The Torah has 70 faces – turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.” Tonight, I want to turn to one of Vayishlach’s other faces.

Genesis 32:25 reads: “Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.”

The Hebrew is as follows: וַיִּוָּתֵ֥ר יַעֲקֹ֖ב לְבַדּ֑וֹ וַיֵּאָבֵ֥ק אִישׁ֙ עִמּ֔וֹ עַ֖ד עֲל֥וֹת הַשָּֽׁחַר׃

That is, a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. The Hebrew is unambiguous. It is a man. Not an angel, not a shadowy figure, just a man. And so if we read this as p’shat –the plain sense of the text – that Jacob’s adversary was a man, the question is – who is that man?

Every hint in the text points to Esau, Jacob’s long estranged brother. How do we know that it was Esau? First, because when Jacob and Esau were in utero, during Rebecca’s pregnancy, the Torah reports (Genesis 25:22): “But [Jacob and Esau] struggled against each other in her womb.”

That is, even before they are born, the brothers are wrestling with each other. Fast forward to this week’s Torah portion and decades after Jacob stole Esau’s birthright, then fled his brother’s anger, the brothers are about to reunite for the first time by the edge of the river Jabbok. And Jacob, is so ambivalent, so afraid of how Esau might greet him that he leaves half of his belongings, and his family, on the far side of the river so that if Esau and his entourage of 400 men decide to take their revenge, Jacob will not be left without descendants and wealth.

And then Jacob lies down by the river, and falls asleep. And in the darkness, a man comes and wrestles with him until dawn, the wrestling growing so violent that Jacob’s adversary dislocates his hip and leave him with a lifelong limp.

Before departing, Jacob demands a blessing from his adversary, who gives him a new name: Israel, or, the one who has wrestled with God prevailed. And Jacob names that place Peniel – which the Torah explains means: “I have seen a divine being face to face, yet my life has been preserved.” (Genesis 32:31) The next day, when Esau and Jacob finally meet face to face, Jacob says these words to Esau: “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”

Is there any doubt who Jacob was (literally) wrestling with? All signs, all language, everything points to Esau.

So, what does it mean when Jacob says that seeing Esau’s face is like seeing the face of God? Is it a reference to their wrestling match the night before? And, what does it mean that Esau gives Jacob a new name: “You have wrestled with God and prevailed?” If Jacob was wrestling with Esau, does that mean Esau is calling himself divine? And, finally, if Jacob named that place: “I have seen a divine being face to face” does that make Esau the divine being? Where and how do Esau’s humanity and potential divinity intersect? Is Esau part angel? Is Esau a messenger of God? Why is the parsha so ambiguous, hinting that Esau was the wrestler repeatedly, but then, in Jacob and Esau’s own words, hinting that the wrestling match was with a divine being? What is happening here?

One potential answer is that the way we experience divinity here on earth is by facing the people we have wronged, and hurt, and making amends. By wrestling with our mistakes and frailties, our vulnerabilities, and outsize egos, and facing the truth of who we are (and for many of us, what we have done), we encounter not just our brokenness and flaws but also our holiness, and wholeness. And by abandoning pretense and egos propped up by titles or belongings (as Jacob did when he left most of his belongings, and support system on the other side of the river) we are left with only our most essential, purest selves, which, as we learn in the prayer “Elohai Neshama” every morning, are pure. So that Jacob, by then a very rich and accomplished man by ancient Near East standards was not merely facing the humanity and holiness of Esau, who he had gravely wronged, but also facing himself – and the entire truth of himself, warts and all.

Because there is godliness to be found when we look in the mirror and see our authentic selves. Not the selves puffed up with titles and belongings and surfaces, but the selves who love and hurt others in equal measure, who succeed and fail, who we are at our most honest, and our most vulnerable. And there is godliness to be found when we look at others, even those who we most struggle with, and see the divinity in them.

Because when we wrestle with our better and worse angels, and admit our own vulnerability, our holiness often reveals itself in ways we could not have anticipated. And so too does our own capacity to apologize, to let go, to admit we were wrong, and to forgive reveal itself. And we begin to inhabit the fullness of what it is to be human; to be imperfect, and flawed, and still divine in origin and nature.

Make no mistake, this wrestling with our true selves is not for the weak. Like Jacob’s wrestling, it may even leave us with a new name, a new sense of identity and self, and, we may even be wounded in the process, our hips pulled out of joint (or at least our noses) and find ourselves with a lifelong limp; a mark of all we have learned, survived, and grown from. In time, we may even come to understand some of those wounds as blessings.

And so, this week, my question for us is this: how will we show up for the Esaus in our own lives? How will we wrestle with our own egos, our arrogance, our mistake, and by doing so, transform them into vulnerability, and love? How will we be brave enough to strip ourselves of all the things that don’t, in the end, truly matter, and show up at our own riverbanks, vulnerable and open, and ready to greet whoever is waiting there for us: Esau, an angel, or simply our truest, and best selves?

Shabbat shalom.