Vayishlach 2023

Where does faith in God and in Torah come from? There are many places—our tradition itself is certainly one source— the beauty of living a Jewish life itself is a fountain for, and practice of, faith. Additionally, there are “proofs” that medieval Jewish thinkers express such as the proof from design, that just as the watch found in the desert did not appear on its own or a book from spilled ink, so too a complex world such as ours could not come to be on its own. For some of us, faith is very personal and almost genetic; powerful and stolid but difficult to articulate or justify.     

For me, it comes partly from all of these but also from two other sources. The first is a kind of existential proof, the belief in God because one cannot, as a conscious human being, fathom a meaningless world. A world in which there is no higher source for such profound human feelings, like love or consciousness, idealism or honesty. No ultimate source for morality, for after all, a utilitarian socially constructed moral system is not very compelling when no one is watching. The second, which I have been thinking about more of late, is the hand of God in Jewish history. That the Jewish people continue to exist and to thrive even when things go so badly for us, is to me the Divine hand in history.

For example, in the book, “A Peace to End all Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East,” the historian David Fromkin writes that in 1913, a group called the Committee of Union and Progress, the Young Turks, staged a revolution with the goal of returning the Ottoman empire to a parliamentary democracy. Once in power, their priority was to modernize the empire in the hopes that pushing for more European standards would prevent Western powers from encroaching on the empire’s remaining territories.  

At that time, a consular in Constantinople committed a bizarre, trumped up act of antisemitism, which, like many attempts to accuse or destroy the Jewish people, turned into its opposite. Gerald Fitzmaurice, an interpreter who acted as an advisor to the British ambassador in Constantinople, saw the Young Turks as a threat to British interests. He sent a report to London that was inadvertently filled with false information, writing that the Young Turks were a Jewish-led Freemason group and going so far as to call them the “Jew Committee of Union and Progress.” (In reality, the Young Turks were very much Turkish and were hostile toward the empire’s non-Turkish population.) London officials snapped up Fitzmaurice’s “intel” and by the start of World War I, Britain had devised a plan to win over the empire’s support. Since, according to Fitzmaurice’s report, the Ottoman Empire was ruled by Jews, British authorities strategized, the British should then publicly support the cause of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine – and thus win over the Ottomans to the British side of the war! (See also this article in Foreign Affairs from 9/8/2010.)

I find that in reading these parshiot at the beginning of Bereishit, I see much of what is happening in Israel in our current time reflected in them. In this week’s parsha, Vayishlach, Jacob leaves his uncle Laban’s house to return to the Land of Israel. Esaw is coming toward him “to greet” Jacob, with 400 men. Jacob is scared and assumes that Esaw is coming toward him in battle. Jacob prepares as best he can, though his camp is made up, not of soldiers but of innocent women and children.  

He first prepares for the worst, dividing his large family and entourage into two groups, saying, “If Esaw attacks one camp, the other may survive.” He then prays to God, after which he engages in diplomacy, sending a series of messengers to Esaw with gifts.   

Then Jacob is alone and is attacked by a “man,” who turns out to be an angel of some sort. The Rabbis tell us that this was the angel of Esaw and the wrestling is a metaphor (some say it was a dream) for what Jacob is facing at the moment. They struggle all night and Jacob is victorious but he is injured in the process.  At the end of the fight, there is an argument regarding the blessings: The blessings outline who will get the blessing of their father Isaac and who will receive the blessing of Abraham to be the Jewish people on the Land of Israel.  

The fight concludes, Jacob is victorious but limping, and the Torah tells us that to remember this and especially Jacob’s injury of the gid hanashe, the sciatic nerve, by not eating that portion of an animal. This is a seemingly strange command. Why the need to commemorate Jacobs' injury?  

Rabbi Yosef Bekhor Shor, a 12th century French commentator writes, “Therefore, the Children of Israel may not eat the sciatic nerve; this is to remember that their forefather fought with an angel and the angel could not defeat him, and therefore, the angel injured him in the place of the sciatic nerve, and this is a remembrance and a great honor (to Jacob).”
Rabbi Bechor Shor is saying that the injury itself is testimony that Jacob was victorious; that the angel had to resort to an injury on Jacob’s leg and was not able to defeat him. Thus, precisely in our injury is the image of victory. The Jewish people have been injured many, many times throughout history, but it is precisely in that, that we see its Divine ability to not only strive and survive but to flourish. This is our victory throughout history as we battle Esaw again and again. We persevere and emerge from the battle with new blessings, with a sense of future and with a new found relationship to God, to others and to ourselves.   As the angel blesses Jacob, “Your name will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with people and have been victorious.” The praise is not just that we have been victorious but that we have struggled and come out the other side with a new name and a new relationship to God and to our blessings. May it be so for us.

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Toledot 2022