Parashat Vayishlah 5785

One night many years ago, I drove to the home of a congregant to lead an evening shiva minyan. As I approached the house, I saw that it was dark, but with candle flames flickering in the windows. Having walked into a variety of interesting shiva practices, I wondered what unusual ritual I was about to encounter – a séance? – and hoped it would be something I found reasonable.

To my relief, the family explained that their electric power had gone out; hence the candles. We began to recite the evening prayers. In the soft candlelight, with the sadness of loss in the air, the atmosphere in the room was quiet and soothing, with a sense of a gentle, spiritual presence. In the dimness, the words of arvit held a power of their own: God rolls away light before darkness, and darkness before light. It was a comforting message to share with the bereaved, who were then in the dark, but could anticipate the return of light. At the same time, the prayer describes God poetically as “maariv aravim,” ‘erev’ representing a liminal time between light and dark, or perhaps, a mixture of light and dark. That image mirrors the complex experience of grief, as well as the mixed light and dark complexities of life itself. I always remember that night of encountering a Presence in the dimness, and find meaning in arvit, especially in a house of mourning.

We humans crave light – literally, physical light as well as spiritual and emotional light. We want to light up the darkness, especially at this time of year, as we do with the upcoming Festival of Lights. Yet we might also appreciate the experience of night. The Torah stories of Jacob, which we always read in this dark season, evoke the potential power of darkness. Jacob is a man of the night. So many turning points in his life take place in the dark, a movie of his life might be a film noir.

It is in the dark of night that Jacob first encounters God’s presence. As he runs from home for fear of his life, and sleeps outside on the ground, he dreams of angelic beings and hears God’s promise to protect him. Jacob wakes up in the middle of the night, waking up literally and spiritually, as he realizes: God is in this place, and I did not know it! There, in the dark, he encounters the Divine, and begins a new spiritual journey.

Jacob’s life is again changed when he spends his wedding night with the wrong bride: Leah instead of Rachel – talk about being in the dark! The deception sets in motion the complex dynamics of Jacob’s family, and will determine the history of his descendants.

As this week’s parashah opens, Jacob is once again on the road at night. After twenty years away, he is returning home, now a man of experience and wealth, a husband, and father to a very large family. As he returns to the place of his past, Jacob’s fears begin to surface. He does not know: will his reunion with Esau be a friendly reconciliation, or a battle to the death?

The Torah pointedly relates how Jacob prepares in the night to face his brother. At night he takes his wives, children and possessions across the river Yabok – we can imagine them silently crossing in the dark. He stashes his family in two camps, and then, in the dead of night, crosses back alone. It is a striking image – Yakov crosses Yabok – in the dark, he crosses a boundary that is an acronym of his own name. Yakov-Yabok. It is as though his very self is being jumbled or turned inside out. Something profound, maybe terrifying, maybe awesome, is happening to Yakov in this mysterious night crossing.

This dark scene is sometimes read as a metaphor for death – for crossing from this world into the next. Thus the classic manual of Jewish death rituals, including those of the hevra kadisha, is called Maavar Yabbok – crossing the Yabok.

After the crossing, Yakov is alone in the dark, and an “ish” – a mysterious stranger – wrestles with him through the night. At dawn, the “ish” delivers a final blow, wrenches Jacob’s hip, and asks to be released. Jacob demands a blessing, and the stranger gives him his new name of Yisrael – God-Wrestler.

The Torah never identifies this “ish,” who seems to be a divine messenger, like those who have followed Jacob in the past. The mysterious scene is wonderfully ambiguous; it may be understood in many ways. Perhaps the ‘ish’ is Jacob wrestling in the dark with his own fears. Perhaps in the murky place of dreams, Jacob wrestles with an image of his brother before he has to face the real Esau in the light of day. Maybe he is wrestling with his dark past, or with his own darker impulses. We do not know. What we do know is that the nighttime encounter leaves Jacob both wounded and blessed. In the morning, in the light of day, he declares, just as he declared twenty years earlier, that he has experienced the presence of God. Jacob has been transformed by a profound encounter, and once again, it happened in the night.

The rabbinic sages credited the three Biblical patriarchs with establishing the three primary prayer services. Fittingly, Jacob is connected with the nighttime ma’ariv. There are times we encounter the Divine in the sunlight – in the bright moments of our lives – shaharit. At other times, we find spiritual meaning in our everyday routines – minha. But sometimes it is in the night-times, those dark nights of the soul, that we may encounter mystery and imagine a different reality.

None of us wishes for dark times, but we all must face them. The stories of Jacob teach that we might use these times to open ourselves to new ways of thinking and being, and to encounter our deepest selves, our biggest questions and maybe even the Divine Presence. When we wrestle in the dark, we may, like Jacob, be wounded. And then we may wake up, as he did, to discover and receive great blessings.
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Rabbi Rena Kieval was ordained as a rabbi by AJR in 2006. She retired in June 2022 as full-time rabbi at Congregation Ohav Shalom in Albany, NY, and continues to teach, write and study.