Double Identity

ESSAY: Double Identity
“No longer shall your name be called Jacob,” said Esau’s angel. “No longer shall your name be called Jacob,” G-d reiterated. Yet the Torah continues to call him Jacob

INSIGHTS: The Disposable Self
At first, life and growth are impossible without it; then it is their greatest impediment

And [the angel] said: “No longer shall your name be called Jacob; rather, Israel shall be your name. For you have struggled with the divine and with men, and you have prevailed.”

Genesis 32:29

So said the angel with whom Jacob wrestled for a night prior to his historic encounter with Esau. Later, we read that G-d Himself appeared to Jacob and reiterated the change of his name to Israel.[1]

Abraham, too, had his name changed (from Abram) by G-d. But with Abraham, the change was absolute; the Talmud[2] goes so far as to say, “Whoever calls Abraham ‘Abram’ violates a prohibition of the Torah, as it is written, ‘No[3] longer shall your name be called Abram.’” Jacob, too, was told, “No longer shall your name be called Jacob,” yet the Torah continues to call him by both names, often alternating between Jacob and Israel in a single narrative, or even a single verse.[4] The Jewish people, who carry the name of their exclusive ancestor,[5] are also called both “Jacob” and “Israel.”

Abraham’s name change, which came about when he circumcised himself by command of G-d, marked his elevation from Abram (“exalted father”) to Abraham (“exalted father of the multitudes”). The name Abraham includes all the letters, and meaning, of Abram; the change was the introduction of an additional letter (the letter hei) and role.[6] Thus, to call Abraham “Abram” is to reduce him to his prior self and significance.

On the other hand, Jacob and Israel are two different names, with two different meanings. While it is true that Israel represents a loftier state of being than Jacob (thus the Israel element in Jacob is “no longer Jacob”), there are certain virtues to the Jacob state that the Israel state cannot possess. So Jacob remains a name for both the third Patriarch and for the Jewish people as a whole. Israel might represent a higher stage in the Jew’s development than Jacob, but the greatness of the Jewish people lies in that there are both Jacob Jews and Israel Jews, and Jacob and Israel elements within each individual Jew.

One insight into the difference between the Jacob and Israel personalities is offered by Balaam, the pagan prophet who was summoned to curse the Jewish people and ended up mouthing one of the most beautiful odes to Jewish life and destiny contained in the Torah.

In the second of Balaam’s curses-turned-blessings there is a verse in which he proclaims: “[G-d] sees no guilt in Jacob, nor toil in Israel.”[7]

This implies that Jacob does experience toil, though his struggles and difficulties do not result in his guilt in the eyes of G-d. Israel, on the other hand, enjoys a tranquil existence, devoid not only of guilt but also of toil.

The Torah gives us two interpretations of the name Jacob. Jacob was born grasping the heel of his elder twin, Esau; thus he was named “Jacob” (Yaakov, in the Hebrew), which means “at the heel.”[8] Years later, when Jacob disguised himself as Esau to receive the blessings that Isaac intended to give the elder brother, Esau proclaimed: “No wonder he is called Jacob (“cunning”)! Twice he has deceived me: he has taken my birthright,[9] and now he has taken my blessings.”[10]

Jacob is the Jew still in the thick of the battle of life. A battle in which he is often “at the heel”—dealing with the lowliest aspects of his own personality and of his environment. A battle which he must wage with furtiveness and stealth, for he is in enemy territory and must disguise his true intentions in order to outmaneuver those who attempt to ensnare him.[11] Threatened by a hostile world, plagued by his own shortcomings and negative inclinations, the Jacob Jew has yet to transcend the axiomatic condition of his humanity—the fact that “man is born to toil”[12] and that human life is an obstacle course of challenges to one’s integrity.

G-d sees no guilt in Jacob, for despite all that Jacob must face, he has been granted the capacity to meet his every detractor. Even if he momentarily succumbs to some internal or external challenge, he never loses his intrinsic goodness and purity, which ultimately asserts itself, no matter how much it has been repressed by the travails of life. But while he might be free of sin, he is never free of toil, of the struggle to maintain his sinless state. For Jacob, the war of life rages ever on, regardless of how many of its battles he has won.

Israel (“divine master”), on the other hand, is the name given to Jacob when he “has struggled with the divine and with men, and has prevailed.” Israel is the Jew who has prevailed over his own humanity, so completely internalizing the intrinsic perfection of his soul that he is now immune to all challenges and temptations; who has prevailed over the divine decree that “man is born to toil,” carving out for himself a tranquil existence amidst the turbulence of life.

Thus, Jacob is the name reserved for us when we are referred to as G-d’s “servants,”[13] while “Israel” is G-d’s name of choice when He speaks of us as His “children.”[14] The defining element of the servant’s life is his service to his master. The child, too, serves his father, but their relationship is such that his service is not toil but pleasure. What for the servant is work, imposed upon a resisting self and environment, is for the child the harmonious realization of his identity as the extension of his father’s essence.

The first part of Jacob’s life was consumed by his struggles with his brother Esau—a struggle which began in the womb,[15] continued through their contest over the bechorah (firstborn’s birthright) and their father’s blessings, and culminated in Jacob’s all-night battle with the angel of Esau and the brothers’ face-to-face encounter the next day. In the interim, Jacob also spent twenty toil-filled years tending the sheep of Laban “the Deceiver”—years during which “heat consumed me by day and frost at night, and sleep was banished from my eyes,”[16] and he was forced to become Laban’s “brother in deception.”[17] Jacob’s name-change to Israel marked the point at which he graduated from a servant of G-d to G-d’s child, from an existence defined by struggle and strife to a harmonious realization of his relationship with G-d.

Yet even after he was named Israel, Jacob continued to be Jacob as well. The Torah continues to use his old name along with the new. The events of his life now include periods of tranquillity (such as the nine years from his return to the Holy Land from Charan until the sale of Joseph and the seventeen years he lived in Egypt[18]), but also periods of strife (i.e., the 22 years he mourned his beloved Joseph).[19]

As the father of the people of Israel, Jacob was the model for both states of the Jew: the tranquil child of G-d, at peace with himself, his G-d and his society, whose harmonious life is a beacon of light and enlightenment to his surroundings; and the embattled servant of G-d, grappling with his self and character, his relationship with G-d and his place in the world. For the Jacob state is not merely a prerequisite stage toward the attainment of the Israel state, but an end in itself, an indispensable role in the Creator’s blueprint for life on earth.

In the words of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi: “There are two types of pleasure before G-d. The first is from the complete abnegation of evil and its transformation from bitterness to sweetness and from darkness to light by the tzaddikim.[20] The second [pleasure] is when evil is repelled while it is still at its strongest and mightiest... through the initiative of the beinonim[21]... The analogy for this is physical food, in which there are two types of delicacies that give pleasure: the first being the pleasure derived from sweet and pleasant foods; and the second, from sharp and sour foods, which are spiced and prepared in such a way that they become delicacies that revive the soul.”[22]

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Shevat 10, 5718 (January 31, 1958)[23]

I am humbled by all the kindnesses and by all the truth that You have done Your servant

Genesis 32:11

A student of Torah should possess an eighth of an eighth[24] of pride... which crowns him as the husk does the kernel

Talmud, Sotah 5a

To grow and develop, the kernel requires sunlight and rain. But sunlight and rain are also the greatest threats to its survival: if the kernel were to be completely exposed to its sources of nourishment, it would be scorched by the heat of the sun and rotted by the moisture falling upon it.

Hence the husk—a hard, tough shell which encases the kernel or fruit, bearing the brunt of the sun’s rays and deflecting the drops of water falling from above. The husk shields the kernel from the sun and rain while absorbing enough energy and moisture to sustain it and fuel its growth.

Then comes the day of harvest. The grain has ripened, the fruit has matured, and is now fit to fill its function as food, fodder or seed. The husk, no longer an asset but an impediment, is broken open, peeled off, and discarded.

A student of Torah, says the Talmud, requires a certain degree of ego and self-regard, which serves him as the husk serves the kernel.

A person’s spiritual development is fueled by two primary nutrients: love and fear. Wherever we turn, we encounter the heat and light of the love which G-d radiates into His world, and are alternately dampened by the dread that keeps man from evil. But if we were to indiscriminately expose ourselves to these forces, we would be destroyed. Unchecked passion invariably disintegrates into a consuming lust, while unmitigated fear results in soul-corroding timidity and inertia.

Hence the ego—a hard, tough shell which encases the soul, bearing the brunt of life’s passions and deflecting its fears. Our sense of self prevents us from indiscriminately submitting to desire and insulates us from the terrors that would otherwise petrify us into inaction. The inner voice that insists “I am” resists and filters the passion and awesomeness of life, enabling the kernel within to grow and mature.

Ultimately, however, the ego is an impediment to the fulfillment of the purpose for which we were created. Ultimately, it must be discarded to reveal the selfless commitment to our Creator that is the core of our souls.

Every spiritual quest is launched by a stirring of the ego—by a selfish desire to make something of oneself, to achieve, to conquer the citadels of truth and fulfillment. In his unripe, immature stages, the seeker’s ego remains an indispensable component of his growing self, feeding him with stimuli and experience while shielding him from their excesses. But there comes a point at which the armor of self becomes a prison to be breached, freeing the supra-self of the soul to serve its Creator uninhibited by the constraints of ego.

When Jacob left his father’s home in Be’er Sheva and set out for Charan, he was a lone, penniless pauper fleeing for his life. Twenty years later, he returned a wealthy man, with a large and growing family, an army of servants and immense flocks of sheep and cattle. G-d’s promise to him—“I shall be will you, and protect you wherever you will go, and bring you back to this land”[25]—had been fulfilled in every respect.

Instead of bolstering Jacob’s ego, instead of giving him confidence in his continued success and reassuring him that Esau’s new plans against him would come to naught, all this had the very opposite effect. G-d’s blessings made him more diminished in his own eyes, less sure of himself, more fearful of his enemies. “I am humbled,” he cried to G-d, “by all the kindnesses and by all the truth that You have done Your servant.”[26]

In 1798, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of Chabad Chassidism, was arrested and charged with treason, on the basis of petitions to the Czar by opponents of Chassidism. After 53 days of imprisonment, he was exonerated of all charges and freed. The event—celebrated to this day on the 19th of Kislev—marked the decisive victory of the Chassidic movement over its foes, and the onset of a new, expanded phase in the dissemination of Chassidic teaching.

Upon his release, Rabbi Schneur Zalman dispatched a letter to all his followers warning them against any feelings of pride and superiority over their opponents as a result of their victory. He began his letter by quoting Jacob’s words, “I am humbled by all the kindnesses and by all the truth that You have done Your servant.”[27] It is natural that a show of kindness by G-d to a person should increase his self-regard; so why, asked Rabbi Schneur Zalman, did it evoke the opposite response in Jacob?

But this, explained Rabbi Schneur Zalman, is the difference between the person still ensnared in the labyrinth of self and the person who has gained a true perspective on himself and his relationship with G-d. To the self-absorbed person, a kindness from G-d is a favor to him, and proof of his own significance and worth. So the ultimate effect of the experience is a distancing of the person from G-d: a greater emphasis on himself and his own needs, and a diminished connection with the source of blessings that have been granted to him.

To the spiritually mature person, however, a kindness from G-d is, first and foremost, an act of divine love: G-d is drawing the person closer to Him. And the closer one comes to G-d, the more one realizes one’s own insignificance in the face of the divine infinity.[28]

Adapted from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber