Who Are You, Am Yisrael?

by Rabbi Yechezkel Frankel, translated by Hillel Fendel

Israel/Jacob: Why is his life so complex and conflicted? And what's the connection to us?

Who Are We?

This question, and its parallel in the title, is not very simple to answer. It is no easy feat to characterize an entire nation with a past, present, and future, comprising so many different people, varied situations, and accomplishments and aspirations. But this does not give us the privilege of ignoring this elusive question – for without an understanding of our own identity, our lives become blurred and unfocused. 

Let us approach this question by remembering that our name is the Nation of Israel – and that Israel is the name Divinely given to our Patriarch Jacob (Yaakov Avinu). It is this name specifically that precisely specifies and indicates our character. And therefore, to answer our original question, we must ask something else, taking us further back: Who are you, Yaakov Avinu?

We know that he is the third of our patriarchs and the father of the Twelve Tribes, but what we want to know is: What are your traits, Yaakov? Why was your life so complicated? Why did you yourself have to describe your life as "short and troubled?" It truly appears that there is no Biblical personality so complex as our Patriarch Jacob.

Yaakov is a man of contradictions. His trait is "truth" (Micha 7,20), yet he is the one who, in response to his father's question, told him, "It is I, Esav your firstborn" (Gen. 27,19). He is the "simple man, dweller of tents" (25,27) - and also the one who sneakily acquired the birthright. He is the "simple man" who told his beloved Rachel that if her father wants to engage in deception with him, "I can easily match him in deceptions." He is so constantly involved in the more lowly aspects of life that of the ten verses in Genesis that speak of theft and the like, nine of them have to do with Yaakov [including Rachel's stealing of Lavan's idols]. And to top it all off: His own father describes him most unpleasantly to Esav: "Your brother came with trickery and took your blessing" (27,35).  

In a certain sense, Yaakov is the most down-to-earth of the Patriarchs. Being the last in the chain of our three Patriarchs, he is the one charged to be our link to practical life. Abraham is replete with wondrous kindness, and Isaac remained his whole life in the upper ambience of the altar on Mt. Moriah, where he was nearly sacrificed as an "unblemished burnt-offering" – but Jacob had the most intricate mission of all: to unite, to connect, to survive, and to rise up, all while in a perpetual struggle with threats and conflicts all around him. 

The central aspect in Yaakov's personality shines through specifically via that which the Torah chose to emphasize in him more than in his father and grandfather. Yaakov is the personage whose long-term life escorts are his bitter enemies.  Of course, Avraham and Yitzchak also had issues: Avraham with Lot, with Pharaoh, with the war of the kings, and more; Yitzchak with the Plishtim, Avimelech, et al. But relative to Yaakov's troubles, these were short-term problems. 

We find that in the Torah's stories about Yaakov, he is almost never alone – and when he finally is by himself for a few moments, right away, "A man [angel] fought with him" (Gen. 32,25). Esav, or the threat of Esav, accompanied Yaakov throughout his life and even more: from their shared experience in the womb where they fought, and up to Yaakov's funeral, when Esav's son tried to prevent his burial in the Machpelah Cave (see Sotah 13a). His trickster Uncle Lavan, too, was with him at critical times of his life: his marriages to Rachel and Leah and the birth of his children, and Egypt's King Pharaoh was with him practically at his deathbed. And in between, we learn from Rav Acha in the Midrash that "whoever can calculate the days of Exile will find that Yaakov had one day of serenity in the shadow of Esav" (B'reshit Rabba 63,13). 

So Who Are We Then?

So stormy was Yaakov's life that there is only one way we can understand it without feeling sorrow about his bitter fate: Yaakov is us!

Yaakov is the nation that is destined to emerge from him – the nation of Israel!  He is the first navigator of the practically impassable path – the path of the future history of his children and descendants. Just like his existence is so often accompanied by enemies, so too is ours, as we so well know. Just like he descended into one Exile after another, so too his children. Just like he struggled and survived, with unbelievable abilities and courage, the same has been true for us, for thousands of years. And just like he finds no rest, we too have ever been in a similar state.

And so convoluted was his life that of the nine instances of the verb "run away" in the Torah, seven were said about Yaakov, father of our history so interspersed with flight and wandering.

So bold are these colors of life, so intense are these events we have undergone, that we are accustomed to it already. The wonder has been dulled, and we remain with a sense of identification with the role, with the insight that our destiny is to be "Jacob-like," and to merit to be a genuine Israelite - the title we acquired so completely simply because we "struggled with G-d and with people – and we succeeded" [based on the Torah's description of Yaakov's struggle with the angel; 35,29]. 

Now that we know "who we are," what have we gained? What does this knowledge grant us? Perhaps not much in terms of the bottom line – other than the certainty that without filling our hearts with this Yaakovism, we have no selfhood, no identity, no way to ensure that we do not graze in foreign pastures. We would, for instance, fool ourselves with the dream [as in a famous post-Six-Day-War song] that, "next year, we will sit on our porches and count the migrating birds," and other similar far-off dreams of a pensioner nation. 

But that's not us, and apparently will never be. This is not because peace will never come to our doorstep; it will definitely come. But only when we make sure to be what we truly are: the Nation of Israel, the Nation of Yaakov, that which dwells in a land that is "the house of G-d and the gateway to Heaven" (28,17), as Yaakov realized after his dream of the ladder. We must know how to behave in it and to it accordingly. We must live as a nation that "beholds G-d standing upon it" (ibid. verse 13), that knows that this is the essence of its existence, and that despite the many times that we are a "ladder rooted in the ground" (verse 12) and are twisted in earthiness and its complications – still and all, regarding our historic future and destiny, we are climbing a ladder "whose head reaches the sky" (verse 12). To these heights we will most certainly ascend!