Wrestling Until it Yields Blessing

Rabbi Deborah Wechsler

When we win it's with small things,

and the triumph itself makes us small.

What is extraordinary and eternal

does not want to be bent by us.

I mean the Angel who appeared

to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:

when the wrestler's sinews

grew long like metal strings,

he felt them under his fingers

like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel

(who often simply declined the fight)

went away proud and strengthened

and great from that harsh hand,

that kneaded him as if to change his shape.

Winning does not tempt that man.

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,

by constantly greater beings.

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926) in his poem The Man Watching brings the magnificent idea that we wrestle with something until it yields blessing. In this week’s parashah we read of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel/man on the side of the river. Jacob is preparing himself to see his brother after a 20 year absence. But of course he is unsure what the nature of that reunion will be. So the night before their meeting he takes his wives, his concubines, his children, and all his possessions and transports them to safety across the river. And Jacob is left alone. Profoundly alone, with all that he loves on one side of a divide, and all that he fears on the other. And he in the middle.

In his existential loneliness a man comes to him and wrestles with him until the break of dawn. When this man sees that he has not prevailed against Jacob, he wrenches Jacob’s hip from his socket and wounds him. Then he asks Jacob to release him as dawn is breaking. But Jacob refuses, “lo asha leichecha ki im beirachtani.” I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Jacob has been struggling for a blessing his whole life. From before he was even born he was struggling with his brother in the womb. He struggled for his father’s love, for his brother’s admiration, for a birthright that was not his own. It is his very identity, his name Yaakov defines him as someone who is always grabbing at the heel of another, a supplanter. Until he comes to this crossroads, literally a crossroad with two different paths, two different peoples laid out in front of him.

And up until this moment he always chose the way with the least conflict. He was content to struggle from behind, to deceive from beneath a disguise, to wrestle without blessing and then sneak away quietly in the night. Until now, when a man comes and forces him to struggle. The Torah does not say that Jacob wrestled with the man, rather than the man wrestled with him. A night when he is drawn into conflict and left hurt and tired. He encountered one adversary and knew that another awaited him and for the first time in his life he hung on without letting go. “lo asha leichecha ki im beirachtani.” I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

You know yourself. You know if you follow the fight. If you are someone who is never content to let an argument reach its conclusion. And you know if you are conflict averse. If you do everything in your power to run away from any kind of disagreement. Jacob is the second, Moses is the first. But finally Jacob reaching the defining moment of his life, the moment when he wrestles with himself, with God, with his brother, with his legacy, and he doesn’t stop wrestling until it yields blessing.

It is the most powerful of lessons, the most striking of teachings. When we find ourselves in conflict – whether with our families, whether with God, whether with our religious traditions, whether with our families, whether with the insidious parts of our selves - we do not sneak away in the night. We wrestle until we yield blessing. And in that moment we are transformed. As Jonah into a prophet in the belly of the whale, as Jacob into Israel on the banks of the river, as whatever it is our legacy to be. Blessing comes from struggle, the sacred comes from conflict, and we are enriched by our willingness to hold on and not let go.