Yaakov: ‘I will not let you go until you bless me’
It was moving day. My wife and I watched as our entire household was loaded onto the moving truck. We were almost there. Our next step was to meet the movers at our new home, get set up for the night, and put our young children to bed. I casually glanced at my phone and read: “You owe us $36,000 for our labor. You had a lot more stuff to move than we agreed upon. You pay up now, or we drive away.”
True to their word, the moving truck drove off with our stuff.
We enlisted the help of the Long Beach police, but the extortion of our belongings would not be resolved that day. It was getting late. We needed to feed our children and put them to bed.
I reached out to a family I knew in our community. I explained our situation. “Please, come over!” They welcomed us immediately, all five of us, without hesitation. We stayed with them for two weeks, and they remained gracious and welcoming throughout. I will never forget their kindness and what it meant to me during that time of struggle.
As I watched the truck drive away with everything we owned, I felt myself detach from reality for a moment. Then, through the offer of refuge, I felt myself return.
• • •
This past summer, a community member reached out to us. Toxic mold had spread through their entire home. They needed to get out quickly. Repairs would take weeks. They had nowhere to go. My wife and I welcomed them as the other family had welcomed us.
When they arrived with garbage bags and suitcases, they said things like “We do not want to be in your way,” or “I am sure you cannot wait for us to leave.” I answered clearly: “No. Please do not feel that way. Stay as long as you need.”
We had been there. We knew how much it mattered when someone opened their home without making you feel like a burden.
What transforms a painful experience into something meaningful? How do we ensure that our struggles don’t just wound us, but somehow shape us? The Torah provides the answer in a single defining moment.
Yaakov wrestles with an angel throughout the night. The Torah tells us: “VaYivaser Yaakov levado, va yei’avek ish imo ad alos ha shachar (Yaakov was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn)” (Bereishis 32:25).
The Midrash identifies this “man” as the guardian angel of Esav, the embodiment of everything that had threatened Yaakov (Bereishis Rabbah 77:3). This was not only a physical struggle. It was a spiritual one.
“VaYar ki lo yachol lo, va yiga b’chaf yerecho (when the angel saw that he could not overpower him, he struck the socket of Yaakov’s hip)” (Bereishis 32:26). Even wounded and in pain, Yaakov held on. Then the angel spoke: “Shalcheni ki alah ha shachar (send me away, for dawn is breaking)” (Bereishis 32:27).
But Yaakov refused. “Lo ashaleihacha ki im beirachtani (I will not let you go unless you bless me)” (Bereishis 32:27).
• • •
What a profound moment. Yaakov was wounded, exhausted, and limping. The night had been brutal. Yet he refused to release the struggle until something meaningful emerged from it, until he walked away transformed rather than merely traumatized.
Rav Yitzchak Hutner explains in Pachad Yitzchak that this is the essence of Jewish resilience. We do not romanticize suffering. We do not claim that pain is inherently noble. But we also refuse to let anguish remain meaningless.
The angel then declared: “Lo Yaakov yei’ameir od shimcha ki im Yisrael, ki sarita im Elokim v’im anashim vatuchal (your name will no longer be Yaakov but Yisrael, for you have struggled with the Divine and with men, and you have prevailed)” (Bereishis 32:29).
The Midrash Rabbah notes that the name Yisrael comes from the root “sarita,” you wrestled. We became the nation of Yisrael not because we never fall. We became the nation of Yisrael because we refuse to leave a struggle empty-handed.
I cannot tell you why we had to go through that painful moving situation. I do not pretend to understand the divine calculus of hardship. But I can tell you what emerged from it. That experience transformed how my wife and I understand hospitality.
That is our inheritance as Yisrael. We do not let go of the struggle until we extract the blessing. We do not allow our suffering to go to waste. And when we finally limp into the dawn, transformed and renamed, we carry both the injury and the insight forward, using what we learned in our own darkness to bring light into someone else’s life.
That may be the great challenge of life. We do not choose our struggles. But we can choose to say, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
Rabbi Benny Berlin is the rabbi of BACH Jewish Center in Long Beach, New York. For more information, visit: www.bachlongbeach.com.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
