The Courage to Wrestle

Parashat Vayishlakh, 2025

Vayishlakh is, in many ways, a story about coming home – and about discovering that “home” is never quite as simple as a postcode or a set of keys.

Jacob is on his way back to the land he left years before. He has a family, flocks, a whole camp around him. But he is terrified. Waiting for him, somewhere ahead, is Esau – the brother he deceived, the brother he fled from. So he sends messengers, he divides his household into camps, he prepares gifts, he plans escape routes. The Torah is very honest with us here: this is not a hero striding confidently into the promised land, this is a frightened human being, trying to make sure that the people he loves will be safe.

That already tells us something important about “home”. Coming home is not always simple, or sweet, or neat. Sometimes coming home means facing the past, facing relationships that went wrong, or even facing versions of ourselves we’d rather forget.

And then, on the night before the meeting with Esau, when the camp has gone ahead and Jacob is left alone, something extraordinary happens. A mysterious being – the Torah calls him simply “a man” – wrestles with Jacob until daybreak. They struggle all night. Jacob is wounded, and yet he refuses to let go until he receives a blessing. He emerges with a new name – Yisrael, “one who wrestles with God (and with human beings)” – and with a limp. He is blessed, but he is also changed.

So: Jacob is on the threshold of a new chapter, almost at the border of the land, and what does the Torah give us? Not a story of buying land and houses, not a tale of smooth relocation, but a night of wrestling.

Many of us know this in our own lives. Moving to a new home, a new city, a new country, isn’t just about furniture and paperwork. It can also be a deep spiritual wrestle: Who am I, in this new place? What parts of my old self do I carry with me? What parts do I have to let go of? Where will I be safe? Will I belong?

For some, the moves are chosen – for work, for study, for love. For others they are forced: people fleeing war, persecution, economic collapse, or climate disaster. Behind every relocation is a story. And often, behind every story, there is also a night of wrestling. We may not say it out loud, but somewhere in the dark we are asking: Can I really build a life here? Will there be people who see me, who recognise my dignity? Is this place just a shelter, or can it become a home?

In Vayishlakh, Jacob’s fear is not irrational because he world he lives in is dangerous. And ours can be too. Later in the parashah we read of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, who goes out to see the daughters of the land and is assaulted. The Torah’s picture of new places is not naïve. The new town, the new neighbours, the new culture – they are not automatically safe. The text forces us to hold two truths together: the hope of returning and rebuilding, and the reality of vulnerability and harm.

So how does Vayishlakh help us think spiritually about new homes and safety?

Firstly, it teaches that safety is both practical and spiritual.

Jacob does not simply “have faith” and wander in unprepared. He makes a plan, he thinks about the most vulnerable, he divides his camp, he sends gifts to soften Esau’s heart, he prays deeply … but he also does what he can in the material world.

For us, creating safety in new places means both: it means laws, policies, and communities that protect the vulnerable – and it also means the spiritual work of not letting fear be the only voice we listen to. It means being honest about risk, like Jacob, but not letting risk freeze us in place.

Secondly, Vayishlakh suggests that “home” is wherever we build an altar, that is, wherever we mark out space as holy by the way we live in it.

After Jacob and Esau finally meet – and miraculously, they embrace instead of fight – Jacob moves on and begins to settle (although there is a question about the embrace possibly having been a bite, but that's a question for another day!) At various points he builds altars and names places: “El Elohei Yisrael” – “God, the God of Israel” – and later, at Beth El, returning to the place of his earlier dream, he renews his vow to God.

Notice: what makes a place “home” for Jacob is not just that it is safe. It is that he can mark it with gratitude, prayer, and commitment. A home, in Torah terms, is not just a roof; it is a place where we dedicate ourselves again to the kind of people we want to be.

For a community like ours, that might mean:

• A home is where we light Shabbat candles, even in a small rented flat, or a student room.

• A home is where we teach our children kindness, hospitality, and justice, even if we ourselves once arrived as strangers.

• A home is where we make room for the newcomer at the table and in the pews, as Abraham did in his tent and as Jacob eventually does in his camp.

Thirdly, Vayishlakh reminds us that we carry our new names, and therefore our new identities, with us into new places.

Jacob “becomes” Yisrael before he fully settles back in the land. His identity as someone who wrestles, questions, argues with God – that spiritual courage is part of what he brings to his new home. It is not that he arrives perfect. He limps. He has unresolved family trauma. There is still conflict and pain in the parashah. But he is not the same frightened young man who ran away. His wrestling has given him depth.

When we move, whether as individuals, as families, even as communities, we, too, have the chance to ask: What is the name I want to live by in this new place? What does it mean for me, for us, to be “Yisrael” here – people who wrestle with God and with the world, who do not give up on justice, who refuse to let go of hope until we draw out a blessing?

In our time, when so many are on the move, our tradition calls us to a double awareness.

We are sometimes Jacob: afraid, carrying our own wounds, longing for safety and a genuine home.

We are sometimes the land that receives Jacob: the society, the neighbourhood, the congregation that has the power to make a newcomer feel either deeply unsafe, or gently held.

Vayishlakh challenges us to see both sides, to ask: how can we, as a community, be part of someone else’s blessing rather than part of their night of wrestling? How do we ensure that those who find themselves in new homes – in new towns, in new countries, even in new relationships – find not only walls and a roof but also faces that welcome them, policies that protect them, and a community that honours their story?

Perhaps this week, as we read Vayishlakh, we might each choose one small action towards that vision: a message to someone newly arrived; an invitation to Shabbat dinner; support for a refugee charity; or even a quiet conversation with ourselves about where we still feel “in-between”, not quite at home, and how we might bring that wrestle into dialogue with God.

Jacob’s story does not end with perfect resolution. But it does give us an image: a human being walking towards an uncertain future, limping, yes, but also blessed, renamed, and determined to build a life of covenant in a land that once felt too dangerous to face.

May we, too, find the courage to wrestle, the wisdom to build homes that are truly safe, and the generosity to help others feel at home – wherever our journeys have brought us.

Shabbat shalom.