Parashat Vayishlach: What I Like About Yaakov

Avraham is someone I could never be. He is a great model of faith, but his example is difficult to emulate. He is never scared or doubtful. He never cries or cries out. He is stoic, disciplined and obedient. That’s why I’m glad we have Yaakov as an ancestor as well.

Yaakov is emotional. He cries when he meets Rachel. The commentaries try to explain why, but the Torah gives no reason, and perhaps there was no specific rational one. Isn’t that the way it is sometimes, all the emotion of days on end welling up and coming out unexpectedly? He cries again, later, inconsolably, when he thinks that Yosef has died.

He cries, and he also experiences great fear. First, after his ladder dream, he awakes and has a great fear. And second, in the beginning of this week’s parsha, when he hears that his brother – who wanted to kill Yaakov when they last met – is approaching him with 400 men, the Torah again tells us – Vayira Yaakov me’od vayetzer lo -- Yaakov was greatly frightened and distressed. He has intense emotions. The Torah says vayetzer lo, literally, “It was narrow for him.” He is in straits, suffering deeply.

The commentaries wonder about this expression of fear. Why was he fearful when God had promised him protection? Didn’t he trust in God’s promise? They explain away his fear in various ways – he was worried maybe he’d sinned and so the promise didn’t apply anymore – but it seems to me that the Torah is telling us that our ancestor, Yaakov, at least occasionally, had doubts. He was not an Avraham, stalwart and unwavering in his faith. There were moments when he was not sure.

And out of this doubt, out of this confusion and deep distress and struggle and fear, out of all those very human emotions, arose a new kind of religious outlook. For Yaakov is the first of the patriarchs whose passionate prayer we hear. “O God of my father Abraham . . . O Lord, who said to me . . . deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother . . .” (32:10ff).

Avraham never asked God for anything, except to save others, in Sodom, and there he did it methodically, rationally, politely. Yitzhak entreated God over Rivkah’s barrenness, but there is no description of the emotion that went with it, nor do we hear the words. But Yaakov, Yaakov is bursting with emotion, so that when he prays, it is a shavat ani¸ “cry of the afflicted.” He opens his soul and pours it out to God.

That is Yaakov’s way, not a clear, calm one like Avraham’s, but a struggling, searching one full of turmoil and emotional upheaval. Yaakov receives a name change and a body change (the wrenching of his hip by the angel) in this parsha just as Avraham received a name change and a body change (circumcision) years earlier. But if Avraham’s mark was a symbol of covenant and obedience, Yaakov’s is a symbol of struggle and strife. Even with God, he is locked in struggle.

They each have their place. We can hope at times to experience a little bit of the peace of Avraham’s faith, but we shouldn’t stop ourselves from pursuing the Yaakov route as well, the turmoil, the brokenness, the doubt, the struggle, and the cry, because this, too, or perhaps, this, especially, is a route to the divine.