Upon his arrival at Paddan-Aram, having wrestled with the angel, pacified his brother, survived the trauma of his daughter's rape and his sons' revenge on the men of Shechem, and having built an altar to God at the ancestral home-base of Beit-El, Jacob receives a surprising message from God:
God appeared again to Jacob on his arrival from Paddan-Aram, and God blessed him. God said to him, "You whose name is Jacob, you shall be called Jacob no more, but 'Israel' shall be your name." Thus God named him Israel.
Perhaps because of all Jacob had experienced in his lifetime, perhaps because of the spiritual growth that transformed a scheming, manipulative adolescent into a sage and a spiritual giant, God gave Jacob a new name to signify that new, enhanced identity.
One might reasonably assume that when God gives a new name that it would supersede the older name previously given by parents. After all, the parents are mere flesh-and-blood-how can their chosen appellation possibly compete with the choice of the Master of the Universe? If God wants "Israel," then Israel it is! Indeed, Rashi seems to reflect that understanding when he comments on the name "Jacob" that this "means a man who comes as a lurker and a trickster, but "Israel shall be your name" signifies a prince and a chief. Jacob was the name that implied his former identity. The Torah itself tells us that Yaakov refers to the baby's attempt to supplant his brother, Esau, by grabbing the emerging baby's heel. That willful attempt to wrest destiny from his elder sibling and to force the world to bow to his strategies and his plotting typify Jacob as a youth. But, in a remarkable transformation, Jacob in his prime learns to listen to the world, learns that not all efforts can be crowned with success. By wrestling with the angel and learning to be satisfied merely with holding on (rather than with a clear victory), Jacob learns the wisdom of patience and modesty, he acquires the ability to put God at the center and to surrender the doomed need to control everyone and everything. At the end of that transforming momen, the angel acknowledges Jacob's new, more mature nature, by bestowing the new name Israel.
And in today's parashah, God confirms that new, enlightened identity. And not only does "Israel" signify a spiritual transformation, but also a political and social stature as well: As the Radak (Rabbi David Kimhi) tells us, that new name "Israel" embraces the Nation-it recognizes Jacob as the ancestor of the entire Jewish people and links our identity to his. He is now truly the father of the nation, the heir of his grandfather Abraham.
So far, so good. But the Torah throws a problem our way when it persists in calling Israel "Jacob" from time to time throughout his life. If God has given Israel a new name, why doesn't that name replace the old one forever. The Talmud, Massekhet Berakhot, notes, "Jacob is not to be entirely eliminated, but 'Israel' is to be primary and 'Jacob' secondary." And the great medieval sage, Rabbi Saadia Gaon, writes that "you will no longer be called by your name Jacob only, but also you will be called by the name Israel." That understanding is supported by Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra.
Why does the third patriarch retain his earlier, somewhat embarrassing name?
The reality of human life is that we never eradicate our earlier identities. Rather than living solely in the present, each person's identity is a blend of all previous embodiments-the infant, the child, the adolescent, the young adult, and so on throughout life. With each new phase of existence, we grow and add new aspects of an emerging self. But we are never simple, never single layered. Instead, just as a thriving tree adds new rings, but always around the earliest core, so too we humans add new modifications and identities to an increasingly complex and layered history of who we are. The little child within never goes away, but simply lies underneath the surface. The right smell or place can reawaken feelings we didn't remember having, or can excite memories long forgotten. Interactions with parents, or situations that reenact childhood struggles can summon up the passions and helplessness that childhood once imposed.
No matter how much our surface radiates the placid wisdom, profundity, and tranquility of an Israel, the chaos, passion, and turbulence of our earlier identities as a Jacob never lurks very far beneath the surface.
Who we were, we are. But the glory of human growth is that we too, like our ancient ancestor, need not accept our shortcomings as defining. Instead, we can struggle with our own angels and wrestle with the demons that we retain from our youth.
While we will never obliterate the Jacob within, it is within our power to transcend him.
We, too, can grow to become Israel.
Shabbat Shalom.