Surviving Crisis
The Torah is not just a book to read; it is a book to live by. In that spirit, I want to reflect in this essay on how the story of Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel can help us survive crisis, when we, like our ancestor, feel ourselves alone, afraid and in distress. It can happen in many ways: we can lose our job, our savings, our self respect. We can suffer bereavement and feel ourselves surrounded by a cloud of grief. We can find ourselves in the midst of controversy, subject to the sometimes brutal criticism of others. We can feel ourselves to be a failure. These are terrifying moments when life seems drained of meaning, when we can no longer concentrate or connect with others, when we find it hard to sleep at night or stay awake during the day, when mere existence seems a burden we lack the strength to carry.
At such times, it can sometimes help to retrace the steps of our ancestors when they faced similar situations. One of the most beautiful aspects of Genesis, often lost when we read the stories through the lens of midrash, is that its heroes and heroines are recognizably human. They too have fears and doubts, none more so than Jacob, the man whose name, Israel, we bear. Often it is argued that we should not read the text at its surface meaning, precisely because this would make them seem mere mortals like us, and there is much to be said for this point of view. But there is a contrary case. The Torah portrays the patriarchs and matriarchs in all their human complexity so that we can identify with them and take strength from their stories rather than seeing them as impossibly remote from all we know and are. What follows is what I have learned from Jacob’s night-time struggle.
And Jacob was left alone: The wrestling match with the stranger takes place after the most elaborately conceived and executed preparations for any event in Genesis. Jacob had prepared himself for three things: diplomacy, war and prayer. He sent huge gifts of cattle to appease Esau’s anger. He divided his camp in two so that even if one were destroyed the other might survive. He prayed to God. He covered every eventuality, adopted every strategy, anticipated every outcome – except the one that actually happened, the appearance of an unnamed adversary who fought with him.
Crises happen, and there is no way we can make ourselves immune to them. That is the human condition and we cannot escape it. We live toward an unknown, unknowable future. Even the answer God gives Moses when he asks Him His name – “I will be what I will be” – tells us this. God is saying, “You will not know what, where or how I will be until the moment comes.” Faith is not certainty: it is the courage to live with uncertainty. Indeed that is why we need faith, because life is uncertain. Even in the twenty-first century when we know so much about the universe, cosmology, the human genome and the workings of the human brain, there is one thing we do not know and never will: what tomorrow will bring.
And a man wrestled with him: We do not know who this stranger was, a man, an angel or God Himself. What we surely do know is that the wrestling match was an externalisation of Jacob’s inner conflict, the result of his fear and distress. However we construe the passage, Jacob was wrestling with himself, and that is where the real battle takes place. If we can win the struggle “in here,” we can win it “out there,” and if we cannot win the struggle with ourselves, we will eventually lose our struggle with the world.
The late Viktor Frankl, a psychotherapist, was a prisoner in Auschwitz, and it was there that he discovered his vocation. He saw how difficult it was to sustain the will to live, and those who lost it, died. He took it as his mission to give people back the will to live. He would talk to them to discover whether they had an unfulfilled dream or a task to complete. Once he found it he was able to give them a reason to survive. Something was calling to them from the future, and this was sometimes enough to give them the inner strength to keep going. After the war he founded a new school of psychotherapy – he called it Logotherapy – based on what he called “Man’s search for meaning,” the power of which he had seen in the camp.1.See Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984); The Doctor and the Soul (New York: Vintage Books, 1986); The Will to Meaning (New York: New American Library, 1988).
Crisis can challenge us at the deepest level of the self, threatening our self-confidence and self-respect. That is where we need to concentrate our effort and focus our energies. We are here because someone, the One, wanted us to be. He loves us, understands us, forgives us when we acknowledge our mistakes, and believes in us more than we believe in ourselves. That is where true self-confidence is born: the faith that lights the way in the heart of darkness. “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Psalms 118:6). “The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?” (27:1).
Rashi’s grandson Rashbam gives an extraordinary interpretation of Jacob’s wrestling match.2.Rashbam, commentary to Bereshit 32. Rashbam compares Jacob to Jonah, who also tried to flee.
Fearing the confrontation with Esau, Jacob wanted to run away, and God sent an angel to wrestle with him to stop him doing so. On this reading, God was teaching Jacob how to wrestle with his fears and defeat them. “Who is strong?” asked Ben Zoma. Not one who can defeat his enemies but one who “who masters his impulses.”3.Avot 4:1.
Ben Zoma’s proof text was a verse from Proverbs: “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules over his spirit than he who conquers a city” (16:22).
What actually happened the next day, when Jacob finally came face to face with Esau? Instead of attacking him, Esau ran to meet him and embraced him (32:1). There was no anger, no violence, no lingering trace of resentment. Everything Jacob feared, failed to happen. Was this mere coincidence, happenstance? Were Jacob’s fears simply misplaced? I believe the Torah is teaching a deeper truth, that once Jacob had resolved the conflict within himself he had removed the source of tension between himself and Esau. Even animals sense fear. Predators chase those who run away. The way of safety is to stay calm and still.
An inner sense of self-confidence and trust does not mean that one will never have to fight battles. Economics and politics are intrinsically conflictual. Much of life is a zero-sum competition for scarce goods in which some win, some lose. But spiritual goods – love, trust, friendship, the pursuit of knowledge – are not zero-sum. The more we share, the more we have. That I win does not mean that you lose, and vice versa. So my self-respect never needs to be purchased at the cost of yours. I can respect you without denigrating myself. I can make space for you without denying myself. So our deepest psychological and spiritual goods need never be bought at the cost of others. That knowledge alone – that Jacob and Esau can each have their own blessings without envying one another – is enough to remove many, even most, of the conflicts by which people cause one another pain.
The sun rose upon him as he passed Penu’el, limping because of his hip (32:31): Jacob limped after the fight. Crisis is real; the suffering to which it gives rise can cut deep; even when you survive, you limp; long afterwards, perhaps for a lifetime, you bear the scars. But they are honourable scars. They tell that you fought and won, and greater is one who fought and won that one who, fearing confrontation, takes the path of least resistance and submits.
I will not let you go until you bless me: These words of Jacob to the angel lie at the very core of surviving crisis. Each of us knows from personal experience that events that seemed disappointing, painful, even humiliating at the time, can be the most important in our lives. Through them we learned how to try harder next time; or they taught us a truth about ourselves; or they shifted our life into a new and more fruitful direction. We learn, not from our successes but from our failures. We mature and grow strong and become more understanding and forgiving through the mistakes we make. A protected life is a fragile and superficial life. Strength comes from knowing the worst and refusing to give in. Jacob/Israel has bequeathed us many gifts, but few more valuable than the obstinacy and resilience that can face hard times and say of them: “I will not let you go until you bless me.” I will not give up or move on until I have extracted something positive from this pain and turned it into blessing.
That is how the story of Jacob’s struggle has helped me, and it serves to emphasize how important it is not to lose sight of the biblical text by burying it under layers of midrashic reinterpretation. What Genesis tells us is that the heroes of our faith did not live charmed lives. They suffered exiles, knew danger, had their hopes disappointed and their expectations delayed. They fought, they struggled, but they neither gave in nor gave up. They were not serene. Sometimes they laughed in disbelief; there were times when they feared, trembled, wept and even gave way to anger. For they were human beings, not angels; they were people with whom we can identify, not saints to be worshipped. Jacob taught us that we cannot pre-empt crisis, nor should we minimise it, but we can survive it, thus becoming worthy of bearing the name of one who struggled with God and with men and prevailed.