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Orchard of Delights
Alternatively, on another level, Jacob may have been fighting
a projection of his brother Esau, a “man” whose heel he had quite
literally been grasping since birth. He had fought him over who
would be born first, over the birthright, over the blessing, and now
he would have to fight him again. Jacob knew he must overcome a
lifetime of emotional uncertainty and ambiguity to be able to face
Esau one more fateful time. Yet Jacob understood that his battle
with Esau was not just a physical battle but also a lofty spiritual
one. For Jacob to defeat Esau physically he would have to defeat
him spiritually. From this perspective, Rashi’s interpretation makes
sense: Jacob was fighting with the angel of Esau, the higher spiritual
root determining who Esau was and what he stood for.
Ultimately, as the verse explicitly states, Jacob fought not only
with man, but with God. Jacob’s struggle with God represents
human beings’ universal, existential struggle to understand who
we really are, why we are here in this world, and how we should
comprehend God’s Providence, especially when things do not go the
way we expect. On a deeper level, this is the struggle to understand
how to make His will our will.
Instead of explaining the wrestling match in terms of Jacob’s
immediate concerns and life, the entire incident can also represent the
archetypal battle fought by Jacob and his descendants throughout
eternity. This spiritual battle is associated with the number eight.
The Talmud relates that all the nations are ruled by the stars, while
Israel has the ability to transcend their authority and decide its own
destiny (Shabbat 156a). As a result of his triumph that night Jacob
earned the name Israel. This symbolizes Jacob’s elevation above the
natural order, represented by the number seven, and his assumption
of a new transcendental identity, symbolized by the number eight.
Later in the portion, the Torah enumerates Esau’s offspring.
Part of that passage records the kings who ruled in Edom before a
king ruled over Israel. This somewhat abstruse section is described
in Kabbalistic literature as containing lofty secrets related to the
creation of the world, the reality of evil, and the ultimate rectification
of the world. Eight kings are mentioned, seven who rule and die and
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and narratives in the Tanach, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and
Chassidut, addressing this formidable energy inhabiting the human
body and psyche. Joseph took that energy and power of imagination
and used them to create and amplify his keen ability to decipher
the symbolic meaning of dreams (dreams that are, paradoxically,
produced by the very same mental imaginative force).
We wage the battle for control of the mind and the imagination
over the effects that content and imagery introduced by the
following three sets of stimuli have on them: external stimuli that
constantly bombard our minds; our own hormones’ disturbing jolt;
and conflicting feelings and inner voices that well up within us, each
demanding our attention and careful discipline. The Ba’al Shem
Tov taught that a person is where his thoughts are, and we all know
how far away we can be in our minds while our bodies remain quite
stationary.
The mitzvah not to stray after our hearts or after our eyes
(Numbers 15:39) is one of six perpetual mitzvot incumbent on every
Jew, in every place and at all times, as taught by Rambam at the
beginning of his classic work the Mishneh Torah (see glossary for a
fuller explanation of these six mitzvot as well as Appendix 2). It is
also one of the hardest to fulfill, for the mind is like a wild stallion,
daring anyone to train it. Yet the mind and our imagination can
be trained to a great degree. We must choose between possessing
untrained, undisciplined, wild minds and imaginations that drag us
after them, or rectified minds and imaginations that become vessels
for Divine inspiration and prophecy.
The Midrash states that Joseph knew seventy languages. His
knowledge of the symbolism inherent in language was a crucial
component of his dream interpreting skills, for dreams either translate
prophetic messages from God or translate our individual experiences
of the world into symbolic words and images. The latter dreams give
expression to our unconscious, subconscious and super-conscious
levels, serving as the mechanism by which these largely concealed
aspects of our psyche communicate, as they filter and react to the
vast amount of physical, emotional, and spiritual input bombarding
our senses during our waking hours.
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