This time Jacob fights back. After all the injustice of having to struggle and steal and toil to achieve what he understood to be God's will, to gain what God could simply have granted, he demands God's blessing. He pins the angel and won't let go until he gets it. He is blessed and renamed Israel -- the God-wrestler.
Read moreVayetzei 5769: A Two-Way Ladder
So why “up and down” the ladder and not “down and up”? The rabbis went crazy with this one. They understood "up and down" to be sequential, and they struggled to figure out why angels would originate on earth and not in heaven. Some of their answers were practical. The angels, like police officers or newspaper boys, had regular beats. At the end of your land, your accompanying angel loses jurisdiction. So your angel ascends again to heaven. Who descends? The angel who will accompany you on the next leg of your journey.
Read moreChayei Sarah, 5769: Post Trauma
It is this last image – of Isaac and Ishmael together, side by side, wielding shovel and pick to bury their father – that gave me pause this year. The reuniting and realigning of warring factions in the face of tragedy. At least that’s what I first thought.
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