Shalom! This is Parshat Vayeshev. A very interesting Parsha. When we last left Jacob, in Parshat Vayeshev, he had the magnificent dream of the ladder that reaches from the heaven to the earth and he know moves to Parshat Vayeshev. He finds out that Esau, the brother that he cheated twice, once for a bowl of soup and once with the blessing with his father Isaac, is coming at him with 400 armed men. So he is very afraid, and he divides his camp into two in case half of them are killed, at least half the camp might survive. And then he decides to send presents to Esau with his servants and to try and beg for forgiveness. And then as he is alone and his camp is on the other side of the river, he has a wrestling match with a mysterious figure which never identified, but at the end of the match, his name is changed from Jacob to Israel. His hip is wrenched and there is actually a Mitzvah in that story where Jews do not eat of the hollow of the thigh, because his hip was wrenched.
Now, in legal terms, that is the sinew and butchers chucked him from the Ashkenazic world never poured the sciatic nerves. They simply cut off the hind cord of the cow. We do not get serve on their T-bone because of that Mitzvah. By the way, there are many other cultures that have a similar tradition for example; some of the Native Americans do not eat of the surreal of the deer, very interesting to try and understand what that signifies. Any case, at the end, when the being wants to leave when Dora was approaching, Jacob asked for a blessing.
I know, that is a fantastic story, remember the, in Transylvania with the story of the cannot be seen in the morning, only at night, so what does that have to do with this story of the being cannot be out there during the day. So maybe it is a dream, and in which case, what is the dream about? And it ends by saying your name is Israel because you have wrestled with God and prevailed. So, just a wrestling match, or what was a wrestling match, but with what? Was it his conscience, was he growing here, was this a maturation experience? Seems like it was, because then, what happens is, he reconciles with his brother, he meets his brother Esau, Esau comes off as more of a mandamus character there, he does not want the gifts, but Jacob insists, they kiss and make up and you have a reconciliation story.
Then the last story of the Parsha is really a very disturbing one. There is one daughter of Jacob named Dina, and the manor wants to marry her and in order to marry the girls of Israel, of Jacob, after he circumcised. So the brothers of Dina say circumcise as so the couple of the brothers and they do, and while they are recovering from the circumcision, the boys killed him. And Jacob is just furious, how it looked to be Gentile world basically, this terrible deed you have done. You have embarrassed us. You have embarrassed God, a very disturbing story.
And that is how the Parsha ends, another growth in the development of Jacob, but again, one of the lessons his sons did not act honorably, looks like from the at least the Parshat of the story and maybe that is kind of following the legacy of Jacob having been such a bad young fellow, to see, quite the, the Parshat of the texts, deceiving his father, deceiving his brother and now maybe he is maturing but his sons now did this actually he did. Of course, a lot of the rabbinic tradition tried to make Jacob off as a better character and that is fascinating aspect too of the rabbinic tradition. But this is Parshat Vayeshev, these fascinating stories and of course the dramas of the wrestling match. And the lesson I think for all of us is when we wrestle with ourselves, with our conscience, and listen to that still small voice telling us to do the right thing, we should listen to that voice. Of course, we do not always, it gets us into trouble generally, but the conscience that God implanted there, the small voice saying “Do the right thing.” We hope we will prevail with that voice, and the conscience that we have. You can call at the yeats, I told in Judaism, the good inclination, resisting the yeats or hara. If indeed this was a wrestling match between Jacob and himself, now it is possible it was also a wrestling match with another being, and we have to explicate that idea too, on packet, what is it that that extra being is all about? So this fascinating Torah portion Parshat Vayeshev.
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