Rodger Kamenetz's the lowercase jew
Three gratitudes

Three responses to this week's Torah portion

As we enter into parashat Vayishlach, I wanted to share links to a few of the divrei Torah I've posted over the years which arise out of this week's portion:

Encounter, 2008, a Torah poem. "When Esau saw him he came running. / They embraced and wept, each grateful / to see the profile he knew better than his own..."

Beyond binaries, 2006. "Jacob earns the new name because he's open to transformation, but that transformation is neither instantaneous nor irrevocable; it's something he has to continue working at, a process rather than an endpoint. As a result, he's continually oscillating between his two sides, the part of him which lives in duality (Jacob) and the part of him which lives in continual awareness of the presence of God (Yisrael.) In a sense, his real new name is the back-and-forth between the two sides of who he is."

Blessing myself, 2010. "With whom did he wrestle? The text tells us that he was alone, and that he wrestled with a man. Jacob wrestled with himself: with the part of him that regretted cheating his brother, with the part of him that missed having a relationship with his twin, with the part of him that wanted a different ending to their story."

All feedback welcome, as always.

 

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