The Struggle That Gives Us Our Name: Parashat Vayishlach

The Struggle That Gives Us Our Name

Parashat Vayishlach — Kol Shalom, 2025

Parashat Vayishlach places us at one of the most intense and deeply human moments in 

the entire Torah. Jacob is about to meet his brother Esau after twenty years apart, 

carrying a history full of tension, deceit, fear, and unresolved wounds. And on the eve of 

that encounter—while everyone sleeps—Jacob remains alone.

And it is precisely in that solitude that the struggle takes place, the one that will change 

his life.

The Torah says:

“Vayivater Yaakov levado, vayeavek ish imo ad alot hashachar” —

“Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

First: when one is alone, the struggles that matter emerge.

Rashi, drawing on the Midrash, says that this “man” — this ish — was the malach of Esau, 

his guardian angel, the spiritual embodiment of the conflict Jacob had been carrying since 

his birth.

Ramban adds that this struggle was not merely physical; it was a true prophetic vision, a 

spiritual experience manifested in the body.

But before anything else, the Torah tells us: “Jacob was left alone.”

According to the Midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 77:1), it is in those moments of inner solitude 

that a person is forced to confront what they spend the day avoiding.

We all have our own “Maavar Yabbok,” a crossing through troubled waters between who 

we were and who we need to become. And almost always, we arrive there levadó—alone, 

without masks, without noise to muffle what hurts.

Second: the struggle is long, confusing, and does not always end in “victory.”

The Torah tells us that the struggle lasts “ad alot hashachar”—until dawn.

Sforno observes that the true struggles—the ones that define a person—are never 

resolved quickly. One does not walk away unscathed: Jacob leaves limping.

This teaches us something uncomfortable and beautiful at the same time:

Deep transformations almost never come without scars.

Crises, internal battles, sleepless nights… all of that leaves marks.

But those marks become part of the identity that emerges afterward.

Third: one builds one’s own name.

The angel asks him, “What is your name?”

And he answers, “Yaakov.”

Rashi explains: Yaakov is the one who “comes from behind,” the one who grasps the heel, 

the one who avoids, adapts, maneuvers. It is a name that speaks of cleverness, survival, 

and strategy.

And then the angel declares:

“Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with 

men and have prevailed.”

Ramban notes that this is not merely a change of name:

it is a change of spiritual identity.

Jacob ceases to be the one who evades, avoids, and survives,

and becomes Israel—the one who confronts, who stands upright,

who struggles to be.

Israel is not the one who “won” literally; it is the one who did not let go, who kept fighting 

even wounded, even exhausted, even afraid.

The name Israel is, at its core, a message: to be a Jew is to struggle to become.

Fourth: it seems that blessing arrives only when one stops fleeing.

The angel says to him, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.”

And Jacob replies:

“I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

The Midrash notes that this is the moment when Jacob stops running.

All his life he had fled—from Esau, from Laban, from conflict.

But that night he takes a stand and says:

“I’m not leaving this struggle for nothing.

I want the blessing hidden behind the pain.”

And the blessing arrives.

Many of us wrestle with our own shadows: old fears, persistent guilt, insecurities that 

paralyze us, challenges we never asked for.

And often the temptation is to flee.

But the Torah teaches something essential here:

Blessing does not come when we avoid the struggle; it comes when we pass through the 

Night.

Finally: perhaps truly living means walking—limping—toward the light.

The parashah tells us that Jacob leaves the encounter “limping,” and the sun “shines upon 

him” as he goes.

The Midrash compares Jacob to someone emerging from a dark tunnel, suddenly seeing 

the morning sun.

The limp is real; the wound exists.

But now he walks as Israel.

The Zohar teaches that the “man” who wrestles with Jacob is not only Esau’s angel but the 

spiritual projection of Jacob’s deepest fear. The Zohar says that every person has a sar, an 

“angel,” representing their unintegrated aspects—fears, impulses, contradictions. 

That sar appears only when a person is levadó, when external distractions fall away.

According to the Zohar, the struggle lasts all night because night represents a time of 

concealment, when things are not clear and one fights without fully knowing against what 

or whom. Only at dawn—when light appears—does Jacob understand what was truly at 

stake: it was not just an external enemy, but his own essence demanding change.

The Zohar says the angel’s question—“What is your name?”—is a mirror:

“Who are we, really? Is our identity Jacob, who avoids, or Israel, who confronts?”

The light of dawn illuminates not only the sky—it illuminates identity.

And that is why, says the Zohar, the blessing was not a gift.

It was the revelation of what Jacob had always carried within him, but had not yet dared 

to claim.

In life, we often emerge from crisis different from how we entered it: more vulnerable, 

more humble, more marked… but also more authentic, stronger, more truly ourselves.

Allow me to add to this existential element a National one.

In my view, we are not perfect, nor better, nor chosen because of any special condition—

but rather for a special purpose.

We have made many mistakes, and we continue to make them.

We have been driven into the trap of having to kill to survive, and in many cases, many 

among us continue to exercise forms of violence that distance us from our Jewish essence 

of Chesed and Rachamim, compassion and mercy.

And even so, we cannot focus exclusively on our own errors—especially those arising from 

the most reactionary and fundamentalist sectors.

In my opinion, those sectors—even with kippah and peot—do not represent the essence 

of Judaism and its human values, of which we are so proud.

But we also cannot spend our lives scrutinizing our own mistakes while ignoring the 

violence and dehumanization inflicted upon us by radical terrorism and antisemitic hate.

Being Israel is continuing to walk.

Parashat Vayishlach reminds us that there are struggles we never sought, but that define 

who we are.

That there are moments of solitude we did not choose, but that reveal our truth.

And that the deepest identity of our people—Israel—was born precisely there:

in the struggle to become, in the courage to stand firm, in the capacity to hold on until we 

uncover the blessing hidden in the night.

May each of us cross our own Maavar Yabbok with the strength of Jacob, the resilience of 

Israel, and the certainty that—even if limping—the light of a new dawn awaits us.