A Thought on Parshas Vayishlach

Yakov's wrestles with the heavenly emissary, known as "Saro shel Esav" - the celestial entity which embodies and represents all that will be enacted in our embedded and fated historical encounters with Esav's descendants. The Torah depicts this struggle and is quite graphic in portraying the fight, the treachery, as Yakov clutches the malach who can barely fend him off. ibn Shu'aib hastens to assert that this actually happened, and was not a vision. Citing midrashic support, ibn Shu'aib also finds allegorical lessons in the martial combat: it occurs in the evening, which symbolizes the dark exiles wherein we will square off against Esav. There is an attempt to impair Yakov from proliferating, which is history's attempts to annihilate all traces of Jewish people. The coming of the dawn is the period prior to the Geulah, when plots will intensify against us. Injuring the thigh or leg represents the frightening fact that our enemies so often go after our righteous ones (the "legs" that our nation stands on), and so often, it is those who uphold the faith and preserve its practices who are targeted. Even as Yakov is struck in his leg and injured, he continues to pin his adversary down, who begs him to let go "for dawn has arrived." It is hard to discern who is the victor at that moment - Yakov who can barely walk, or the assailant who pleads to be released. And then, Yakov declares (32:27) "I will not let you go unless you bless me." Why does Yakov need a blessing from an enemy, even if it is an angelic one? ibn Shu'aib suggests, somewhat cryptically, that this is the deeper nuance contained in a halachic statement (Gitin 22b) "ain kiyum ha'get ela b'chosmav" - a bill of divorce is only effective when it is signed. He explains: it is the will of HaShem that His children be blessed by their opponents. Bilaam ended up blessing us, and Esav needs to bless us too. It is a signal that they acknowledge that HaShem's covenant is with us. It represents Esav's final submission to the fact that Yakov fully and rightfully "owns" the brachos which were given to him by Yitzchak. Esav's blessing is "the signature on the document" that he will no longer contest the role of the Jews in HaShem's world. He will ultimately divorce himself from prior claims to inheriting the "birthright." This is why Yakov insists on wresting a bracha from archetypal Esav, setting the stage for later history. ibn Shu'aib closes by noting that our Haftorah is the Book of Ovadia. Ovadia was a ger tzedek - a sincere convert to Judaism - from the nation of Esav. Ovadia's recognition that the true faith, the real mode of just and righteous life, could only be found among the descendants of Yakov - the Jewish people - sealed that document. This was the ultimate attestation that Yakov had prevailed as the real victor in the ancient struggle. Ovadia's conversion and siding with the Jewish people was a sublime manifestation of the bracha which Yakov took from Saro shel Esav. Good. Shabbos. D Fox