Wrestling with the Torah: Vayishlach’s Lessons
What a parashah this was! It features disjointed narratives of family dynamics, life and death, rape and inappropriate sexual relations, and vengeance—leaving me shaking my head and wondering what direction to take this blog post.
Let’s begin with a recap:
After twenty years of work for his uncle Laban, Jacob is nervous about returning home and reuniting with his brother, Esau, who supposedly is coming to meet him…with 400 of his men. An anxious Jacob strategizes, sending gifts and dividing his people in case Esau still wants to kill him after all these years. He also has a dream in which he wrestles with an angel, injures his hip, and receives a blessing and a name change to “Israel”.
The brothers reunite with tears and kisses and presents, and Jacob makes it into the city of Shechem in the land of Canaan.
Jacob’s journey is abruptly interrupted by a troubling account involving his daughter, Dinah. Dinah ventures into Shehem to meet other women but is raped by Shechem, the son of the chief, who then expresses a desire to marry her. Jacob seeks his sons’ input. Their conclusion: a wedding is okay as long as all of the men of the city circumcise themselves. This story becomes even more distrubing when we consider that Dinah is never given a voice in the text (nor are any other women).
The men hop to it, but on the third day of their recovery, two of Dinah’s brothers, Simeon and Levi, kill all the men in the city. Once the other ten brothers see the aftermath, they plunder the town, taking riches and making the children and women captives.
Jacob realizes this reflects badly upon him and has created a dangerous situation for his family, but God sends him to Bethel and creates protection so that the neighboring cities leave them alone. At Bethel, God repeats the name change to “Israel” and blesses Jacob and his offspring with fertility and the land that had previously been assigned to Abraham and Isaac.
Rachel has one more son, Ben-oni/Benjamin, dies, and is buried in Bethlehem (for real, the site still exists—I’ve been there!). Jacob’s son, Reuben, has sex with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, and the parashah wraps up with a list of Jacob and Esau’s respective descendents.
What Have others said about this parashah?
I’ve heard that Jacob’s dream represents the theme of wrestling with identity and that his name change can be seen as a signifier of personal transformation. The reunion between the brothers can be interpreted as gathering courage to face the past or preparing for fear or uncertainty.
Rabbi Linzer and Abigail Pogrebin in It Takes Two to Torah explore Dinah’s tragedy: Is this message of this chapter about rape? Is it about intermarriage? What is Dinah’s voice in all this?
A controversial novel, The Red Tent, by Anita Diamont, attempts to provide Dinah with the voice the Torah denies her (and all women), imagining a love affair between Dinah and Shechem that is misinterpreted or denied by the men of her family.
In his book How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, James L. Kugel makes a compelling argument that the story of Dinah may have been a later addition, as evidenced by its abrupt narrative placement and what appear to be bare-minimum edits to the original text to incorporate her into Jacob’s family tree.
An invitation to become israel
I found Vayishlach particularly noteworthy because, more than any of the previous seven chapters, it exemplifies how engaging with Torah has profoundly shaped Jewish culture, values, and our collective psyche. Our tradition is founded on our drive to return to the text year after year and continue asking, “What is the point here?”
We may never know exactly what this chapter was intended to teach, but reading it, exploring the commentaries, and considering the possibilities is an exercise in Jewish thought and the ability to grapple with uncertainty or a lack of conclusion.
So, was it poor editing, or is this parashah an invitation to become Israel? Just as Jacob wrestled with the angel, we, thousands of years later, wrestle with the meaning and takeaway of this text. I don’t believe it is an accident that Jacob’s name is changed to Israel—”one who wrestles with God”—not once but twice in this chapter. As Jacob’s transforms into Israel, we are invited to join his legacy of wrestling. This questioning and grappling is the thread that binds us, keeps our tradition alive, and connects us generation to generation to the name we still carry: Israel.
