There are certain lessons from the book of Genesis that are repeated so often we tend to forget the full context for them. This week’s parsha Vayishlach contains one such lesson. This is the parsha where we, Am Yisrael, receive our name as Jacob wrestles throughout the night and is blessed with a new name at light of dawn. Yisrael means “to wrestle with/struggle with God,” making this parsha the point of origin for our legacy of being God-wrestlers, question-askers, and meaning-seekers. The verse in which this name change occurs includes another detail, though. “’No more shall you be called Jacob, but Israel,’ said the other, ‘for you have struggled with God and with human beings, and you have prevailed.’”(Genesis 32:29)
Implicit in our name Yisrael is the suggestion that we not only struggle with God, but in relationships with other human beings. One reading of this verse would have us believe that conflict is an inherent feature of human relationship. ‘Struggling with God and with human beings,” is uttered in the same breath as a statement of fact and an attribute of blessing for Jacob. Are we consigned to a cycle of struggle-and-prevail, over and over again, with God and with each other? How can we always prevail if we are one of two human beings, Yisrael, wrestling with one another, and we have both received this assurance of prevailing?
In answer, a verse from Psalms arises, “From the narrow places I called to God, who answered me with the expansiveness of God. Adonai is with me, I have no fear, what can human beings do to me?” (Psalm 118:5-6) We are all yisrael, engaged in some measure of difficult relationship, and as Yisrael, we know that we will prevail, for what can another human being truly do to us when we each have the power to choose our way through that struggle? Jacob wrestled until his adversary begged to be let go, but we can prevail in other ways by making different choices for ourselves. We are not consigned to an endless struggle with God and with each other, for the blessing is inherent in the struggle, and in finding our own way out of it.