Ziv Parashat Vayishlah


Each week, Gad Barnea or Sister Agnès de la Croix (from the Community of the Beatitudes) proposes a reflection on the portion of the Pentateuch that is read in the synagogue (parashat hashavua). This week the portion is from Genesis 32:4 – 36:43 with the haftarah (additional reading) from Obadiah 1:1 – 1:21. They call their reflection “ziv” – a ray of light.

ziv vayetse

There he erected an altar

As we enter into this parasha, we read that “Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir, the country of Edom” (Genesis 32:3). The word for “messengers” in Hebrew is the same as “angels”, and Rashi in his commentary on this verse explains them as: “actual angels” meaning that, according to him, Jacob sent actual angels and not mere human messengers before him to Esau. In so doing Rashi simply connects this verse to the verses immediately preceding it at the end of the previous parasha: “Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them he said, “This is God’s camp!” So he called the name of that place Mahanaim. (Genesis 32:1-2). Jacob, who meets angels at important junctures in his life, sends these angels before him to meet Esau - on a mission of peace.

The role of sending angels is, of course, reserved to God alone yet it is delegated to Jacob as he prepares to enter the promised land. This act of “sending” sets the tone for the parasha. Jacob is the “sender” and finds himself progressively tasked with more actions that were the exclusive domain of the divine. Before meeting Esau, Jacob will fight an angel, a messenger of God who is also called God, alone during the night and will be called by him “Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28).
Referring back to this struggle, the prophet Hosea wrote of Jacob: “In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed; he wept and sought his favor” (Hosea 12:3-4). This encounter, where this God-angel touched Jacob’s hip and caused it to dislocate, also introduces the first commandment given exclusively to the children of Israel: “Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh. (Genesis 32:32).

With the meeting with Esau behind him, Jacob continues to Succoth and from there to Shechem (Nablus), the same place where his grandfather Abraham camped when he first came to the land and there “he erected an altar and called it El Elohe Israel” (Genesis 33:20). In the Hebrew, this last verse can be read with several meanings: either Jacob gave a name to the altar; Jacob gave a name to God; God gave a name to Jacob; or Jacob was praying. Some of the interpreters claim that the simplest meaning of this verse is that he gave the name to the altar, but other important commentators, including the Talmud and the book of Zohar, say that the direct sense here is that God called Jacob “El” (God). The book of Zohar even continues to say that God said: “I am the God of the highs-realms, you are the god of the lower-realms”. Jacob who begins the parasha by sending actual angels on a mission of peace, reaches the land of his fathers assuming the role of god. Shabbat Shalom.

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