December 19, 2024

In last week’s Torah portion, the Jewish people earn a new name: Yisrael. Here’s the context:

Jacob was left alone. And a figure wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But he answered, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” Said the other, “What is your name?” He replied, “Jacob.” Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Yisrael, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:25-29)

It’s a bit of clever word play; to be “Yisrael” is to strive or struggle or wrestle (“sariti”) with God and prevail.

A 20th-century commentator, Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin (1881-1966), notices something peculiar about the end of the episode. In his middle-of-the-night wrestling match with the stranger (maybe a person, maybe an angel), Jacob is injured rather seriously. His hip is strained and as a result, he will walk with a limp for the rest of his life. Yet the text says that he has “prevailed.” Rabbi Sorotzkin notices this detail and finds both wisdom and a touch of dark comedy in it, saying:

“One could say, in a somewhat humorous way, that this is a typical Jewish ‘success story.’ When robbers attack a Jew and he is left ‘only’ with a permanent limp, it is considered a victory since he was neither killed nor was he forced to kill.”

There is a deep truth to this teaching as well as a beautiful Jewish value at its core: Not only do we want ourselves not to be harmed, we equally do not want to cause harm to others. We don’t want to be the targets of Jew-hatred. We don’t want to have to defend ourselves. A permanent limp seems to be, according to this text, a type of Jewish victory. It could have been worse! We could have been killed or forced to harm another!

But if we are to be completely honest with ourselves, this dark humor is painful and even a bit pathetic. Of course, we don’t want to have to defend ourselves from antisemitism. We don’t want to have the need to respond to those who slander us online or, God forbid, try to harm us physically. But if we are forced to do so, prevailing must mean more than “not dying.” Prevailing must mean that those who seek to destroy us are deterred from ever doing so again. 

And while we should, of course, never seek the harm of another, let’s not be naive. Sometimes the only way to defend ourselves and those we love is to take actions that result in the harm of those who seek to destroy us. And in defending ourselves and our values, bystanders might be swept up in the violence as well and we will have to deal with the fact that our actions resulted in the harm of the innocent.  

While we should, of course, never seek the harm of another, let’s not be naive. Sometimes the only way to defend ourselves and those we love is to take actions that result in the harm of those who seek to destroy us.

It is a core value of our tradition to never seek the harm of another (known as pikuach nefesh) and yet, at the same time, to protect ourselves and those we love and thereby truly prevail, we must, sometimes, take defensive action against those who seek to destroy us. Action which, tragically, does cause harm. Additionally, in protecting ourselves, bystanders can be swept up in the violence as well and we have to deal with the fact that our actions resulted in the harm of the innocent.

I read those verses differently than Rabbi Sorotzkin. 

Jacob doesn’t come looking for a fight. He is set upon while he is sleeping. He fights back, refusing to quit. Yes, he is injured in the process, but Jacob won’t let his attacker go until his attacker blesses him. Jacob gains a new name which he and his descendants wear with pride. 

Our prayer is that we would not need to fight. But when we must prevail, we remember who we are. We remember our name.

We are Yisrael. We are willing to wrestle, willing to fight when necessary, even if it means walking away with a limp.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.

Except for our house (which we still owe a boatload on), a few pieces of jewelry my wife won’t wear for fear of getting clocked and a few investments, almost everything we have is either junk or will be soon.      

We are at an age when we realize there is a ticking clock, and it’s time to get rid of stuff. No one wants to burden their spouse or kids by leaving behind all their priceless junk for them to dispose of once they dispose of us.  It’s a guarantee that almost everything we keep for our kids to sift through will be tossed faster than a flea plucked off a dog’s abdomen.

Remember how your kids used to fight over a helium balloon when they were young? Civil war can break out if you leave behind a painting by Yayoi Kusama and let them decide how to split the money.  Tell them in writing if they sue and lose, they get nothing. 

My 99-year-old friend George Stanley still hasn’t let go of thousands of books he’ll never read again. Instead of giving them away, George had a shed built in his backyard to store them — a shed he’ll probably never enter. 

In divorce, you must let go of stuff, but usually, it’s the things you don’t want to let go of, like cars, homes, bank accounts, and kids. Even the girlfriend or boyfriend you chucked everything for might say ta-ta once the lawyers send in the U-Haul.

One of our closets recently had an ant problem, so we had to empty it of almost everything. Thank you, ants. Because of the ants, we filled three giant Hefty bags with things like two-dollar dried-out ponchos, one left glove, a ski hat missing its pom-pom, half a dozen burlap bags from charity events, some of my dress suits and shoes, a few of my wife’s coats and a vacuum that spits out more dust than it takes in.

My wife has asked me to help her tackle the garage for years. I’d be best served if I told her, “Throw out everything you want to throw out. I trust you.” But I can’t bring myself to say those words. I need to be there, fighting tooth and nail for my 1960s Grateful Dead posters and my Mickey Mouse lunch box because, who knows, they might be worth a fortune.  eBay has created the ultimate junkyard for buyers for your 20-year-old knee and elbow pads you used during your high school football days.    

I have a bottle of unopened beet juice in the back left corner of the fridge that has been there for five months. If I leave something untouched, I become scared of it. Look at my desk if you don’t believe me. The beet juice is just that. I am afraid to drink it or toss it.  

I have a bottle of unopened beet juice in the back left corner of the fridge that has been there for five months. If I leave something untouched, I become scared of it. Look at my desk if you don’t believe me. 

Not long ago, we were lucky to be rid of our children who left much of their junk behind. Don’t get me wrong, our kids are not junk — we love them more than Trump loves being on TV — but we are done living with them. Amazingly, it was much easier for me to toss them than the beet juice. Go figure.  

My daughter-in-law Anna told my wife to get new living room lamps and remove a bench we have for people to sit on. She didn’t call our stuff junk but said, “They don’t fit your decor.” She’s also redecorated a playroom for our grandchildren. She did a good job, and the place looks newer and fresher. But she did it for one reason: we owned junk.  

Now that we are on a rampage to toss, I must admit the feeling of getting rid of our junk is freeing and calming. It’s almost a meditation. It almost feels like being released from prison. I am not a hoarder, but I am a saver of things. My mother used to say, “Why don’t you ever throw anything away?” My wife will pick up a two-week-old newspaper and say, “Are you saving this for any reason?” 

Guess what? I just got up my nerve and drank some beet juice. I’m glad I didn’t throw it out.

Mark Schiff is a comedian, actor and writer, and hosts, along with Danny Lobell, the “We Think It’s Funny” podcast. His new book is “Why Not? Lessons on Comedy, Courage and Chutzpah.”

I attended public schools all my life, but was always drawn to other Jewish kids as friends. I suppose it was an invisible force field of spiritual connection, even though none of us kept kosher or were religious in a traditional sense. In the 10th grade, though, I became close with an Italian-Catholic senior named Kyle. Handsome and engaging, Kyle and I often had lunch together on the grass under a shady tree, talking about books, politics, and life.

One day, Kyle met me in our usual spot under the tree and appeared nervous. After stammering a bit, he invited me to go out on a date. At 15, I was so naïve that his question shocked me. In my mind we were just buddies and could never be anything else. Despite my family’s lack of ritual observance, I would never have dated a non-Jew.

When I explained that I could not go out with him, Kyle reacted angrily. He fumed that religion was nothing more than tribalism, even accusing me of bigotry. My heart thudded during his tirade, because I had never seen this angry side of him. Yet with every word, Kyle reinforced my certainty that my Jewish identity was nonnegotiable.

This strong sense of Jewish identity was a gift, and by no means inevitable. My maternal grandparents, the Cohens, were religious immigrants from Europe, somber from their harsh experiences with antisemitism in Ukraine and Poland. They were filled with almost grim determination to instill Jewish values into their grandchildren to ward off assimilation, but they couldn’t see that their lack of joy in their Jewishness made it mighty tempting to reject their path.

On the other hand, my paternal grandparents were proudly atheist/agnostic. Their home didn’t even have a Kiddush cup on a display shelf, even as a token for old times’ sake. Their lives felt more expansive, lively, eclectic, and enticing.

And yet when I watched papa Cohen chant Kiddush on Friday night in his fine Shabbat suit, I felt glimmerings of holiness in the air. After lighting our family menorah, he sang “Maoz Tzur” with dignity and pride. This, too, touched me. He stood next to the four-foot-high wooden Star of David that my mother wrapped each year in shiny aluminum foil, a string of shimmery blue and white letters spelling “Happy Hanukkah!” taped to the mantlepiece. Our Hanukkah display was almost hokey in its simplicity, but I sensed eternity when the little candles shone their light across our small living room.

After my older brother died in a car accident when he was 17 and I was nine, grief lay like a dark cloud over our lives. The kind teachers, staff, and rabbi at our Conservative shul gave me comfort and nurtured me in a way that wasn’t available at home from my loving, but grieving parents. I wanted to be at shul more than at home, and joined the youth groups. When I outgrew them I became a youth group advisor and assistant Hebrew school teacher. I didn’t know much Torah, but I equated Judaism and shul with warmth and fulfillment.

As a teen, I saw how assimilation was pulling most other young Jews I knew away from whatever slivers of Jewish tradition their families practiced. I began to share my Cohen grandparents’ anxieties about this downward spiral. Papa Cohen had become a highly respected Conservative rabbi and devoted his life in America to Jewish education, scholarship, and counseling. I felt his pain at seeing this slippery slope, the acute disappointment of realizing that the liberalized Judaism he believed would have staying power in a tantalizingly free society was failing.

In my senior year at UC Berkeley, I came home to Los Angeles during Sukkot and went to shul with papa Friday night. At the kiddush afterward, papa put one hand gently but firmly on my shoulder and steered me from where I was standing on one end of the sukkah to the other end, parking me in front of one of his friends.

“Meyer, this is my granddaughter. She is the editor of the Jewish newspaper at Berkeley!” Papa was himself a prolific writer for Jewish newspapers and made this announcement with such a beaming expression and bursting pride that I became choked up. I was driven to pursue Jewish journalism out of my own ambition, but it was also deeply important to me to show papa that I would continue to carry the light of Judaism forward. I was the only one of his surviving four grandchildren involved in Jewish life, and I would not let him down.

Five years after Papa died, I was a newly married baalat teshuvah. I had committed to a level of religious observance that would have appalled my Rosenfeld grandparents, but thrilled — if not startled — my Cohen grandparents. Choosing a Torah life was the most wrenching decision of my life, despite a lifetime of positive Jewish involvement. I feared the constraints of so many mitzvot, of losing friends, even of losing my individuality. Yet having experienced the compelling truth and joy of this life, and not wanting to be washed away in a tide of assimilation, I voted for a level of Jewish commitment that I knew would have staying power.

My grandparents now have 17 great-great-grandchildren, 13 of them being raised in Shomer Shabbat homes. Two — Dov Ber and Chana Ettil — are named after papa and nana Cohen, whose dedication to Yiddishkeit lives on. Each child adds another light in our family’s figurative menorah. Each child has been named for an ancestor, fulfilling the fervent hopes and dreams of those who came before.

Judy Gruen is the author of “Bylines and Blessings,” “The Skeptic and the Rabbi,” and other books. She is also a book editor and writing coach.