Our story about the twin brothers who became mortal enemies continues. Of course, we know they are enemies partially due to their family dysfunction.

This week, Ya’akov (Jacob) and his twin, Esav (Esau), are destined to meet each other after many years apart. The fabulous writer and novelist Dara Horn is the narrator for G-dcast this week, and her reading of the meeting of the twins presents us with core questions: how are our identities linked to our names? how are our relationships with our closest loved ones? how does God work in our lives? and what does this text want us to learn from the enigmatic story of the wrestling match at the Yabok River?

Just in case it isn’t obvious, this motley tribe descended from Avraham and Sarah is known as The Children of Israel. And since there was no place yet named Israel, we learn that we are the children of the man called “Yisrael/Israel;” that is the new name Ya’akov receives after his midnight wrestling at the river. He is given a new name by the being he wrestled with. YISRA-EL. “…for you have striven with beings divine and human and have prevailed” (Genesis 32 verse 29). The scientific etymology of the word Yisrael is unclear, but the folk etymology stuck, perhaps because the people descended from Ya’akov liked to think of themselves as “God-wrestlers.” Isn’t that what Jews are often known for even today? Arguing and wrestling with the meanings of the text, trying with all their might to figure out what the text is saying and what it wants us to take away as a lesson?

This dramatic passage of the midnight encounter bears a close reading. I invite you to read the 10 verses (Genesis 32: 23-33) as you would a poem, wrestling with the meaning. What are we supposed to make of this mysterious nighttime encounter? Ya’akov is tired and scared. He sends his wives and children and servants across the Yabok River (doesn’t that sound very much like his name?). “He is left alone and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn” (verse 25). Is Ya’akov dreaming? Who is this man he wrestles with?

Dara Horn gives us a few ideas: he is wrestling with his conscience, he is wrestling with an angel, he is wrestling with his twin brother, Esav. Can you think of other possibilities? Could he be wrestling with the various parts of himself, his very character? Does the setting of midnight at a river provide you with hints that this is more than just an encounter with another human being? When you see two people in a wrestling hold, can you imagine that they are actually locked in an embrace? What do wrestling and embracing have in common?

Questions, questions, questions…. and no definitive answers.

And then the denouement, in verse 31: “I have seen a divine being face to face yet my life has been preserved.” Ya’akov finally meets his real life twin brother, Esav, in Chapter 33, and they reconcile. And we hear an echo, Ya’akov once again says something similar about having seen God: “No, I pray you; if you would do me this favor, accept from me this gift; for to see your face is like seeing the face of God, and you have received me favorably” (verse 10). With this utterance, Ya’akov creates a standard for an I-Thou relationship, so well described by Martin Buber, centuries later.

A couple of other interesting tidbits in this parasha:

1. Isaac/Yitzhak finally dies in chapter 35 verses 28-29. Wow… we thought he was supposed to die way back, years ago, when he asked Esav to bring him some stew made from wild game, so that he could bless Esav before dying! And notice that when Yitzhak, the second patriarch, dies, BOTH twin brothers bury him. No longer enemies, their last act as brothers is to bury their father. Anything like that ever happen in your family?
2. There are 3 stories of women embedded in this parasha:
   • The longest and most disturbing is the rape of Dinah, Ya’akov’s daughter. Rabbi Laura Geller has written a compassionate drash (interpretation) about the tragedy of Dinah, linking her rape with violence against women today.
   • The other two stories are much shorter; one is only one sentence long, but mysterious for what is NOT said, in chapter 35 verse 8: “Deborah, Rebecca/Rivka’s nurse, died, and was buried under the oak below Bet-el, and so was named Allon-Bachut.” Really? Rivka’s nurse? What about Rivka herself? We read nothing of her death and burial. How could such an important, lively and perspicacious woman as our second matriarch die without a mention? And anyway, why is her nursemaid, Deborah/D’vora, called out in this way?
   • And finally, the death of our beloved matriarch Rachel, in chapter 35 verses 16-20…. The poignancy of her dying in childbirth, on her journey back home, is heart-wrenching and filled with pathos. Verses 19-20: “Thus Rahel died. She was buried on the road to Efrat — now Bethlehem. Over her grave Ya’akov set up a pillar; it is the pillar at Rahel’s grave to this day.”

Last question: when the Bible says, “to this day,” what do you think it signifies?