December 11, 2008
“And [the Lord] said, ‘Not Ya’akov shall your name be called any more but rather Yisrael, because you have striven with gods and with men and you have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:29)
Two questions: What does the name “Yisrael” really mean? Why does Ya’akov take such a circuitous route after leaving Laban rather than going straight to his father’s house?
The name Ya’akov (from “ekev,” “heel”) can mean two very different things: It can refer to the younger twin brother’s grasping the heel of the older as they emerge from the womb, succeeding against difficult odds by dint of extraordinary effort, triumphing at the end. Or it can evoke a usurping, crookedly pushing aside, “heel-sneaking,” brother.
The “heel-sneak” seeks always to avoid confrontation and escape responsibility. In contrast, only the son who is willing to assume full responsibility to realize the vision and mission of Israel will prevail in the end — if indeed “the end” connotes the messianic era of redemption.
We have seen how the naive dweller of tents became a “scheming deceiver,” first manipulating his elder brother into selling him the birthright, then pretending to be the brother he was not, and finally resorting to subterfuge to outsmart Laban and come out with the majority of his flocks. Indeed, the hands of the animal-hunter and people-trapper Esau overcame the spiritually pure voice of Ya’akov, so that Ya’akov turned into Esau. He succeeded in turning himself around to gain the father’s love he yearned for.
Nonetheless, in the pursuit of his father’s love, he ended up turning himself into the very disguise he had assumed. He truly became the “crooked” Ya’akov who twice circumvented the legitimate gains that were his brother’s due. (Genesis 27:36)
Ya’akov buries his true character — until he suddenly wakes up to his genuine and original vocation, realizing that his dreams have become sullied and transformed. Ya’akov is no longer seeing angels ascending and descending a ladder connecting heaven and earth; he is rather seeing striped and spotted sheep. And this latter dream is not the dream he wants to bequeath his newest newborn, Joseph, the eldest child of his beloved Rachel.
In his oath more than two decades earlier, Ya’akov predicated his acceptance of God as his God if and when he returned to his father Yitzhak’s house in peace. But at this stage in his life, Ya’akov realizes that the very opposite is true — that he must find the courage to be what he really is, a wholehearted dweller of tents, whether his father values it or not. He must become his own man, God’s man, not necessarily his father’s man.
He leaves Laban — and wily Labanism. He is ready to confront Esau and return his unearned blessing by giving his elder brother his “crookedly” gained blessing and flocks. But first he must stand alone — he and God — and exorcise his desire to become Esau to gain paternal favor. He confronts and wrestles with himself — and comes back to his true self; he becomes the yisra or yashar person of El (God) — the straight and upright Yisrael.
He is now almost ready to return home; he must first, however, test his new persona. He takes Shimon and Levy to task for selling Shechem a bill of goods about circumcision in a war of subterfuge rather than confronting them as terrorist-rapists head-on. (34:30) Jacob weeps and mourns the death of his mother’s nurse and nanny, Devorah — but Rebecca, who instigated Jacob’s crookedness, is not mourned or even mentioned at all! In mourning only for his nanny, he confronts the anger he feels for his mother.
Rachel dies in childbirth for having deceived her father and stolen his teraphim, presumably because she believed that the teraphim (or trophies) rightfully belonged to Jacob. But Jacob was firm in his moral commitment: “The one in whose possession are the teraphim shall not live.” (31:32)
And finally, “And Reuven went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s mistress….” (35:32) Reuven usurps his father’s place in a most blatant and lewd manner; he deserves to be punished, perhaps even banished from the family. Jacob is justifiably furious. But the ‘new-born’ Yisrael also understands that he must own up to his own weaknesses. Was this immoral act not a desperate cry of Reuven’s pain, a badly executed declaration that he was his father’s rightful heir and that he should not have been cast aside in favor of Joseph, younger firstborn of the more favored wife?
A chastened Yisrael understands that he must assume a portion of the blame for Reuven’s immoral act — and so overlooks the incident. His silence allows him to remain the patriarch of the 12 tribes and gains him the catharsis of self-forgiveness for his act of deception. After all, if his misguided paternal favoritism allows him to forgive the transgression of Reuven, ought not Yitzhak’s misguided paternal favoritism of Esau allow him — Ya’akov — to be forgiven his transgression toward his father?
And so “Ya’akov returns to Yitzhak his father” (35:27) in peace within himself, at last. “The crooked has become straight,” Ya’akov has become Yisrael — Yashar-El, the straight, righteous man of God.
Shlomo Riskin is the chief rabbi of the city of Efrat and dean of Ohr Torah Institutes in Israel.
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