In last week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayishlach, we encounter Jacob at a moment of profound liminality. He stands on the threshold between what has been and what might yet be — between a past marked by conflict with his brother Esau and a future still unknown. The last time they were together, Esau threatened to kill him. Now, after years apart, Jacob prepares to face him once more, full of uncertainty and fear.
It is in this in-between space that Jacob wrestles. The Torah notes that Jacob was alone and then immediately tells us he wrestled with a man: “Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.” (Genesis 32:25)
It’s a striking and apparently contradictory juxtaposition — he is alone, and then he is wrestling with a man. Many commentators suggest that this points to Jacob’s own inner turmoil: his fears, regrets and hopes for a different kind of future. Essentially, he is wrestling with himself, struggling to understand who he must become in order to meet his brother with honesty and courage and, more broadly, to understand who he is meant to be.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about that kind of wrestling as I reflect on the extraordinary journey I just completed with a remarkable group of Black Christian and Black Jewish leaders — a journey I was privileged to help plan and lead together with my partners, Bishop Michael Fisher of Greater Zion Church Family in Compton and Amanda Berman, CEO and founder of Zioness. A few days before the trip began, Bishop Fisher said something powerful to Amanda and me: “This trip is going to be a wrestle.” And it was, in the best and deepest sense — a wrestle with history, with what it means to call oneself a Zionist and with the tension we sometimes feel between our commitments to our own people (particularism) and our commitments to others (universalism).
His words made me ask: What are the things that matter enough that we are willing to wrestle with them? What relationships, stories and responsibilities call us into that vulnerable, transformative work?
The relationship between the Jewish and Black communities — and the powerful intersection of the Black Jewish community — is one of those. And this is a wrestling that should matter to all of us: not only because of our shared histories, but because of our interconnected identities.
Part of the story many Black Americans tell about themselves draws from our shared sacred literature — the story of our Israelite ancestors’ deliverance from bondage. “Let My People Go!” became a rallying cry of spiritual strength and defiant hope. And part of the story we tell about ourselves as Jews is the role our community played as partners and allies in the civil rights movement: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously marching arm in arm with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “praying with his feet.”
These aren’t just parallel narratives — they are interwoven. We are bound together by our past, by the ways we have understood ourselves and — if we have the courage and resilience to continue this work — by our shared future. I believe our destinies are inseparable. The work of justice, dignity, and freedom is work we must do together.
Jacob emerges from his wrestling changed. He bears the wound, but also the blessing. He becomes more whole, more grounded and more able to meet his brother with an open heart.
My hope is that we, too, embrace the kind of wrestling that leads to blessing: wrestling with our histories, our assumptions, our biases, our prejudices and our responsibilities to one another — wrestling that deepens relationship, strengthens understanding and brings us closer to a world of connection, healing and peace.
Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.
