The Courage to Be Yaakov

Twenty years earlier, in a tent dim with the haze of old age, a father asked his son a simple question: "Who are you, my son?"

The son, desperate for a destiny he felt he deserved but was not given, lied. “I am Esav, your firstborn,” Yaakov told his blind father, Yitzchak. In that moment, Yaakov stole a blessing that was not intended for him. He walked away with the prize, but the cost was exorbitant: the loss of his home, the hatred of his brother, and two decades of life spent looking over his shoulder, living in exile.

Now, in this week's parashah, Vayishlach, the bill has come due. Yaakov is about to meet Esav again. He is terrified. He sends gifts ahead, he divides his camp, but ultimately, he is left alone in the dark on the banks of the Jabbok River.

It is there that a mysterious figure—identified in the text only as ha'ish, "the man"—ambushes him. Our Sages debated who this figure might be. Some say it was an angel, others the guardian angel of Esav, yet Yaakov names the place Peniel, ‘I have seen God face to face.’

They wrestle until the break of dawn. The struggle is undeniably physical, Yaakov's hip is wrenched from its socket, but it is also something more. Before the stranger can depart, he asks Yaakov a question eerily similar to the one his father asked twenty years prior:

"What is your name?"

This is the pivotal moment of Yaakov's life. He could have lied again. He could have claimed to be someone stronger, braver, or more noble. But this time, he does not flinch. "Yaakov," he answers. He admits to being Yaakov: the heel-grabber, the supplanter, the trickster. He recognizes himself for who he has been.

As Rabbi Cheryl Peretz notes, this was a necessary prerequisite for his survival. "Did Jacob know who he was? After all, he had lied to his father... To have any chance of reconciliation with his brother, Jacob had to acknowledge that he had, in fact, done wrong; he had to wrestle with the guilt and disappointment in his own actions. He had to take an honest look in the mirror." [1]

Perhaps this is why the text identifies his opponent simply as "a man", because on the banks of Jabbok, Yaakov wrestled with more than an external adversary. He grappled with his own conscience, his fear, his shame, and yes, with God. The wrestling is both outer and inner, physical and spiritual at once. And it is only in the honest light of that confession of being "Yaakov" that he receives a blessing that is fully his. He is given a new name, Yisrael, one who wrestles with the Divine and prevails.

We often face similar moments that demand self-reflection. Like Yaakov, we wrestle with difficult questions: Who are we? What have we done? As Rabbi Peretz suggests, "Only through honest self-evaluation will we ultimately walk away renewed and transformed." [1]

The transformation, however, leaves a mark. The text tells us that when the sun finally rose, Yaakov limped because of his hip.

In our modern world, we are conditioned to view injury as failure and wholeness as perfection. But the Torah offers different, radical wisdom. Rabbi Yael Shy teaches that "although limping and in pain from the fight, Jacob emerges as who he is meant to be—Israel." [2] The limp is not a defect; it is a record of the experience. It is proof that he stayed in the fight. As Hannah Weizman (Plotkin) beautifully puts it, "That limp is not a sign of defeat but of blessing; it represents the profound change born from struggle." [3]

I suspect many of us carry our own limps, visible or invisible. Old mistakes we cannot undo. Harsh words that cannot be unsaid. Ideals we failed to live up to. Trauma that still echoes in the body. Some of those wounds came from things done to us; others, if we are honest, from things we did. Vayishlach does not promise that faith will erase any of that. What it offers is a different hope: that if we dare to wrestle, to answer truthfully when asked who we are, then even our limps can become signs of blessing.

This week, as we read of Yaakov walking into the sunrise, limping but renamed, perhaps we can ask ourselves a quiet question: Where in my life am I still trying to live on someone else's blessing? And where might God be waiting, in the dark corners of my story, to ask me one more time, "What is your name?"—inviting me to embrace my true self, walk forward, limp and all, into the light of a new day.

It is there, in our authentic, wounded, and wrestling selves, that we finally find the capacity to say: "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."

Shabbat Shalom