panim el panim

Wrestling with our Demons

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Genesis Ch. 32 contains the well-known story of Jacob’s night of wrestling the angel in advance of his reunion with his brother Esau. They have not seen each other since Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and ran away to save himself from Esau’s potential revenge.

It is tempting to use the story as a lesson about how two nations need to reconcile with one another. In our current, American moment, the story has some lessons about what it means to live in a divided country, when two factions see the world totally differently.  

This article appeared in the Times of Israel on December 6, 2020.  A version of this article was delivered as a dvar torah at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD). 

But instead, I want to look at the story in a more personal way. The literal reading of the text has us imagine that Jacob wrestled with a Divine Being, either an angel or God. Even though I prefer more allegorical readings of the Biblical text to explore deeper levels of meaning, even when taking the story literally, there is much for us to learn about human nature and ourselves.

Jacob stands at a crossroad in his life. The incident takes place at maavar Yabok, the fjord of the Yabok river, a tributary of the Jordan River, about 30 miles north of the Dead Sea. But Yabok may be a pun on the name Yaakov, and maavar can mean “passageway” or “transition” in which case maavar Yabok might mean: “Jacob at the crossroads of his life”! Jacob believes that he is destined to be the father of a great nation. This is a legacy passed down from his grandfather, Abraham, to his father, Isaac, and now to him. Yet, not unlike many individuals aspiring to greatness, Jacob wrestles with self-doubt. “Am I worthy?” He wonders if he is the legitimate heir to God’s promise to Abraham. Perhaps Esau was the rightful heir?

In the 1970’s, there was a commercial that ran on TV for Chiffon margarine. Suggesting that the margarine tasted virtually the same as butter, the punch line was: “It is not nice to fool Mother Nature”. Jacob’s memory of how he deceived his father to get Esau’s birthright likely haunted him ever since. Think: “It is not nice to fool the Master of the Universe”.

With this as backdrop, Jacob’s supernatural adversary—be it an angel or God– the night before his reunion with Esau, is a message to Jacob that he cannot fulfill his destiny without coming to terms with his “original sin”. His adversary confronts him to convey: You must take responsibility for the deception of your brother. You must find a way to own your subterfuge and reconcile with Esau.

In this version of the story, the adversary’s renaming of Jacob takes on great meaning. He goes from Yaakov, “the heel,” to Yisrael, “the one who wrestled with God” or, if you will allow, “the one who confronted an unpleasant truth that revealed something about his own dark side which he much overcome in order to be the father of a great nation”.

If we reject the literal version of the story and imagine that the struggle was a dream sequence—we know that Jacob is big on dreams—there is even more insight to be gained. One possibility, not at all far-fetched, is that the night before Jacob is to have his first encounter with his older, and physically stronger, brother, Esau, Jacob dreams that he is in a wrestling match with him. The wrestling match re-visits a struggle between twin brothers that started in the womb of Rebecca. Even in utero, Jacob tried to usurp his brother’s status as first born by grabbing his ankle so as to emerge first. Because he failed, he must trick Esau to win the coveted birthright of the firstborn from his father.

Jacob realizes that he falls into a trap that is so common to human nature. We believe that love is finite. We believe that life is a zero-sum game where a handful are “winners” and everyone else is a “loser”. Jacob’s mother and father help to perpetuate that insidious view of the world. It seems that Isaac has only one birthright blessing to confer, to the eventual horror of Esau, who comes to his father’s tent after the blessing has already been given to Jacob. And Rebecca, knowing that only one birthright will be conferred, conspires to have Jacob arrive first, posing as Esau. Jacob “wins” the birthright, but he pays a price in feelings of guilt for the rest of his life.

The dream is a chance at a reboot, a reset. This time, Jacob does not try to pull his brother back, as he attempted to do in the womb. Nor does he dress up like Esau to trick an aging and failing Isaac into getting the blessing of the first born.  In the dream, there is conflict between the brothers. As twins, they will compete for the love of their parents. They will always be compared to each other. As much as they may want to celebrate the success of the other, they will wrestle with the jealousy that their twins’ success will engender. And so, in the dream, they wrestle. But they do so face to face. Genesis 32:31 has Jacob say: ki raiti Elohim panim el panim vatinatzel, “I have seen a divine Being face to face and I prevailed”. My, more midrashic translation, would be: “I have confronted a hard truth about myself and my treachery, face to face, and am a better person for it.”

The conflict between Jacob and Esau is real and it will not go away. But it can be handled with more honesty and more compassion than happened when they were immature children. Most poignantly, in the dream, with the arrival of dawn, Jacob asks his adversary, Esau, to give him a blessing before he takes his leave. The blessing will not be stolen; it will be freely given by Esau, who will not begrudge his brother his aspiration to father a great nation. With age, they have known love and loss and they have matured. The next morning, Jacob will meet Esau, ready to ask forgiveness for what he did to him at their father’s knee. And they will reconcile, making it possible for Jacob, now named Yisrael, to fulfill his destiny.

There is yet a third version of the story that I want to suggest. This too, sees the story as a dream sequence. But the adversary is neither a Divine Being nor his brother, Esau. It is Jacob’s shadow self. Jacob is literally, wrestling with his own demons. All of the elements from the prior two interpretations are still in play. Jacob is anxious about his reunion with his brother. He has been haunted by his youthful deception of Esau. He suffers from feelings of self-loathing. He does not want his legacy to be “my Dad, the trickster”. Abraham and Isaac would expect better.

The dream of a wrestling match is an apt metaphor. In our consciousness, we are torn between our yetzer ha-ra and our yetzer tov, our evil inclination and our good inclination. Our evil inclination tells us: Don’t be a sucker.  You know what it takes to get ahead. What is a small little lie in the larger scheme of things? The ends justify the means. And our good inclination tells us: Do the right thing. Goodness is its own reward. You need to be able to look in the mirror and know that you have lived a life of integrity. Don’t sell your soul for a bowl of porridge.

This is the human condition. And, as we have come to realize of late, to our horror, goodness does not always prevail.

Except for Jacob, it does. Once he confronts his own demons in his dream, he knows how he has fallen short. And he knows how he must make things right with his twin brother, Esau. The text tells us that when dawn comes, Jacob has survived the night of travail. The wrestling match was not a physical one. It was a psychological one, and as such, far more significant for the person Jacob will become. This version yields yet another way to understand the verse: (Genesis 32:31): ki raiti Elohim panim el panim vatinatzel, “I have seen a divine Being face to face and I prevailed”. I would translate it as: “I have come to realize how strong is my yetzer ha-ra, my evil inclination. If I want to be worthy of the name Yisrael, Israel, I must find a way to keep it in check.” In this version, va-tinatzel is not, “he prevailed” but rather, “this is what it takes to be a spiritually mature person”.

The Biblical text tells us (32:33) that at the end of the night of wrestling, Jacob survives but is left with a wounded hip socket. He will now, forever, walk with a limp. Past misdeeds are never erased; at best, we confront them and learn from those mistakes. The scars left by those misdeeds become markers of our spiritual growth. When Jacob approaches Esau the next morning to reconcile, gone is the arrogance of his youth. His deep remorse is visible from across the field as he limps towards his twin brother. The physical wound represents Jacob’s ability to own his act of deception and the possibility, that his success, might have been built on a lie.

In a spiritually mature world, the ability to own the misdeeds of our past is a sign of moral courage and strength. The ability to repent and to ask forgiveness for our sins opens the possibility for severed relationships to be healed. We need to know this truth deep in our hearts because we live at a time when public figures weave elaborate webs of lies and social media provides the platform that allows those lies to be taken as truth. We need to know better.

Did Jacob wrestle with an angel? With Esau? With himself? Yes. All of the above. And it doesn’t matter. Because in each version he learns something about himself that allows him to be worthy of the name Israel-the one who wrestled with God. The one who wrestled with hard truths.

The next morning, Jacob limps to meet his brother. And by showing that vulnerability, Jacob and Esau are able to embrace, repair their estrangement and respect one another, even as they take different life paths.

A morality tale for us all.  

Longing for Face Time

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Every good sermon has at least one compelling metaphor. Here is mine for this evening; it is visual (a camera shot of the empty sanctuary).

When I learned back in July that Adat Shalom would only be holding remote services for the High Holydays, I was overtaken by a deep sadness that I felt in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t a surprise and I think it was the only responsible course of action given the current state of the Covid-19 pandemic. And still, I found myself really bummed out. I was longing for face time, and I am not talking about the iPhone variety. Real face time, with each of you.

 

This was the Kol Nidre sermon delivered to Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD) on September 27, 2020. 

I love the chagim. I love the liturgy and the music. I love the universal themes and the rituals that are particular to our tradition. I love seeing the Adat Shalom regulars as well as checking in with those who show up less regularly, but with whom I have had meaningful interactions over the years. I love the socializing before and after services and yes, maybe even a bit during services. I love the holiday meals (my wife, Sandy, is an amazing hostess and cook). And I love all the hugs. None of that is happening this year. And I miss it all very much.  

Given the scale of suffering that the pandemic has caused, my complaining about not having High Holyday face time may seem trite, or even somewhat indulgent. But maybe not. Because “face time” is a metaphor for something much larger.

Some of you know that the same year that I helped to found Adat Shalom, 1988, I also founded a national organization devoted to exploring the intersection between Jewish learning, Jewish values and social responsibility. It was called PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values. Our flagship program was called Panim el Panim, which brought Jewish high school students to Washington from all over North America for programs on Judaism and social activism. The phrase panim el panim comes from the Bible and it is used to describe Jacob’s experience of seeing God’s face in Genesis ch. 32. Later it describes the way Moses encountered God in both Numbers 12 and Deut 34. So, while the modern Hebrew word panim means “face”, the phrase panim el panim suggests a deep encounter, when you come to understand a higher truth about what it means to be a human being who functions responsibly in relationship with others. To me, panim el panim is an alternate formulation of the Golden Rule: vahavta lreacha kamocha, “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. It is, in essence, face time that leads to “beloved community”, a form of community that we so desperately need today.

This kind of “face time” has informed the communal culture of Adat Shalom since its founding. The purpose of the community was not to sponsor shabbat services, educational programs, life cycle events and more. Most synagogues do that but it confuses ends and means. The purpose of every Adat Shalom event and program was to cultivate deep bonds of community and an ethos of chesed/lovingkindness to one another and tzedek/justice to the world. Services, onegs, classes were a means to an end. This was putting into practice a core Reconstructionist principle coined by our beloved, Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, that “belonging comes prior to believing”. It also is consistent with the teachings of Emmanuel Levinas, the 20th century French Jewish philosopher, who saw the Biblical phrase, panim el panim, as the way human beings cultivate a feeling of compassion and even love for the “other”, the fundamental building block of ethical living.

But I am afraid that this orientation to life is in short supply in our country today. And I believe that the manifold problems that we currently face—the pandemic, climate change, racism, poverty, the erosion of democracy– will get worse unless we make a major spiritual course correction. So, how do we do that?

I believe, as did the rabbis of our tradition, that human beings have moral agency. We have choice. And every day, each human being can decide either to exclusively advance their own interests or to act in such a way that shows concern, compassion and love for our fellow human beings and for creation. This is what our tradition describes as yeter ha-ra, the evil inclination and yetzer tov, a good inclination. These are Jewish terms for selfishness and selflessness. It is that simple. To my great sorrow, over the past few years, we have witnessed a situation in America where the evil inclination is ascendant and, as a result, every one of the crises I mentioned moments ago, is getting worse and not getting better. Alarmingly, that more selfish America, epitomized by the phrase “America First”, is like a contagion, spreading as quickly as has Covid-19. And it is seriously endangering our Republic.

The Bible seemed to anticipate periods of time when history would turn towards evil. Ironically, here too, the Hebrew word, panim, serves as metaphor. In Deut 31 God says: “I will surely conceal my face (haster astir panai) because my people have turned to other Gods.” The concealing of God’s face signals the breakdown of healthy societies and of social responsibility.

The philosopher, Martin Buber translates the hiding of God’s face, in Hebrew, hester panim, with the term “the eclipse of God” and he wrote a whole book with that title, published in 1952, to better understand the existence of evil in our world, including the Holocaust. Buber wrote: “When history appears to be empty of God, … it is difficult for an individual and even more, for a people, to understand themselves as addressed by God. … During such times the world seems to be irretrievably abandoned to the forces of tyranny.”

If that Buber passage sounds dark, it is intended as such. He was trying to make the case for God even in the face of the horrors of the Holocaust. The Yom Kippur liturgy seems designed to do something similar. First it holds up a mirror to all the ways that we have personally fallen short of living a moral and ethical life. In not so subtle ways it tells us that, because of our sins, we may not be worthy to live for another year. But then it tells us that we are capable of repentance and, if we do it with a full heart, there is the possibility of a return to a right relationship with others and with the society in which we live; in religious-speak: to once again merit to be panim el panim with God.

I don’t think it is as simple as fasting and reciting a few lines from the machzor. But, with every passing year, I become increasingly impressed how those ritual pieces remind us of the need for a course correction. And part of that course correction is relating to all people in the spirit of panim el panim, seeing the other in the fullness of their humanity.

Face Time is my shorthand for how we make our world a more compassionate and loving place. To do that, we need to be inspired by acts of hesed. Fortunately, such acts can be found virtually everywhere, made even more obvious against the backdrop of our current crises.

  • We saw it in the many stories we heard about doctors and nurses putting their own lives at risk, working 16-17 hour days to treat Covid-19 patients. Thousands of health care workers travelled to New York City at their own expense in March to volunteer their time with Covid patients. Some paid with their lives!
  • We saw it in the life of Congressman John Lewis who, from his early 20’s, was willing to sacrifice his life for the cause of civil rights in this country. And we saw it in the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg who, despite the discrimination she faced for being a woman early in her legal career, helped to re-write this country’s laws around gender equality.
  • We see it, week in and week out, in this holy community of Adat Shalom where we have created a culture of caring; where people show up for each other in such impressive numbers in times of illness, injury, loss and need. We have created a hesed culture that is so lacking in much of American society.

I truly believe that the antidote to the spiritual, moral and political decay of our country and of the world is more “face time”, treating each and every person we encounter as mirror images of the Divine. I am longing for that kind of face time, not only because this year I miss hugging you on the High Holydays, but because these days, our world is so lacking in that kind of caring between people.

This kind of face time is not only possible during a pandemic, it is a necessity! And we must extend it well beyond the people we know because we are all now more keenly aware of how much we have allowed our country to divide itself into tribes of race, religion, class, and country of origin. We simply don’t know one another well enough to warrant the term United States of America. I dare say, we must even extend face time to those who are on the other side of today’s political divide. I know that is a big ask; I am not even sure that I am capable of it. But we must try. Our country is in desperate need of some healing and it must start with people who can see the divine image in the face of every person who, to us, is “other”.

Do it for the sake of heaven; do it for the sake of humanity; do it for the sake of the world that you want to bequeath to your children.  

Gmar Chatima Tova, may you be inscribed for a year of health and spiritual wholeness.