We stand here on the shoulders of giants such as Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Job. This year’s High Holyday sermons will explore what they continue to say to us.

This evening we explore lessons our ancestor Jacob taught us.

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You don’t need paper and pencils but I’m giving you a pop quiz. Just answer in your mind. Ready? First question is a sentence completion: We Jews often refer to ourselves as The Children of ____________ (blank)? Got it? The answer, of course, is Israel.

Second question is multiple choice. In the preceding answer, the word Israel refers to a) a place; b) a person; c) a country; d) an airline; e) all of the above. The correct answer is: a person.

Last question is another sentence completion: The other name of the person named Israel is ___________? For those of you who might have been asleep that day in Religious School, the answer is Jacob.

We Jews refer to ourselves not as the children of Abraham, although he started it all, and not as the Children of Isaac, though he kept the whole thing going, but as the Children of Israel, whose name was also Jacob.

In Hebrew Jacob, the name he was given at birth, is Yaakov, “he will grasp” because as the second-born twin he emerged holding onto the heel of his brother Esau. What does this heel-grasping mean? It can mean many different things, or none at all:

Maybe he was trying to get a “free ride,” so to speak, letting the more vigorous Esau pull him along into the world,

or maybe he was trying to pull Esau back in so he could emerge first and receive the privileges of the first born, privileges he so ardently pursued later,

or maybe he was trying to prevent Esau from leaving at all, either so he could be the only one born or so that neither one would be born.

or maybe he was trying to push Esau out of his way, seeing his brother as an obstacle to his own birth,

or maybe his hand on Esau’s heel could have been just chance, with no particular meaning at all.

Aren’t our lives like that, if not at birth, soon after? Don’t we have myriad possibilities which, had one been different, would have had our lives turn out very differently than they are today?

I was in a pool once when I was little and all of a sudden I was yanked out of the water, hard, by my cousin Hal. I remember people screaming and crying and me wondering what the big fuss was about.

Another time I choked on a candy charm. Grape, I think. I remember being held upside down, being smashed on the back and the charm popping out.

Another time I was trying to get the three pronged hoe down from its hook in the garage. But I wasn’t really tall enough. Next to it was a pair of grass clippers. As I moved the hoe I must have jostled the clippers. They fell down, point first, and grazed my nose, just missing my eye.

Three small events. In two of them I might have died. In the third I might have been blinded in one eye. Small things, big consequences.

The first thing we learn from our ancestor Jacob is that these little instants and what we make of them are really the fabric of our lives.

Ah, what we make of them. That’s the key. Jacob was named heel-grabber. What did he make of that? Apparently he swallowed one of the negative connotations. Much of his early life was filled with deceit and deviousness:

27 When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob was a mild man who stayed in camp… 29 Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the open, famished. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Give me some of that red stuff to gulp down, for I am famished 31 Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 And Esau said, “I am at the point of death, so of what use is my birthright to me?” 33 But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Jacob then gave Esau bread and lentil stew… [Genesis 25:27, 29-32]

When his father Isaac was on his death-bed, at the urging of his mother, Rebecca, he tricked the blind old man into giving him the blessing of the first-born that actually belonged to Esau. But then the tables began to be turned. He fell in love with Rachel, worked for her father Laban for seven years to pay her bride price, and when he woke up the morning after his wedding, found it was Leah, her homelier older sister who was in his bed. He had to promise another seven years of service to marry Rachel.

When that was done, fourteen years in all, Jacob worked as a shepherd for Laban for another six years during which he was constantly cheated and tricked out of his proper wages. Later, he was tricked into believing that Joseph, his favorite son, was killed by wild animals.

The second lesson we learn from our ancestor Jacob is our belief in the moral consequences of our actions. Jacob doesn’t cheat and steal with impunity. As he has done to others, so they do to him.

The person to whom all this happened was Jacob, Yaakov, the heel-grabber, the trickster. But inside of him, as inside us as well, is another person, a better person, struggling to emerge. It began to emerge when he had to flee his home. His brother Esau found out what he had done and threatened to kill him. So,

10 Jacob left Beersheba, and set out for Haran. 11 He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking from the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down… 12 He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it. [Genesis 28:10-13]

What can this [dream] mean? They [the angels] are accusing and defending him. They are pushing him, leaning over him, abusing him… [Beraisheet Rabbah, 68:18].

The angels were on his case, which means Jacob was on his own case, struggling to get real, struggling to allow the better parts of him, the part we call Yisrael, Israel, to emerge. The angels go up and down, meaning they start here, meaning Jacob is struggling to elevate himself, to go up, from where he is now. That is the third lesson we learn from Jacob.

As important as these messages are, it takes many years for their import to fully take hold. Twenty years, as a matter of fact, until he returns home with wives and children and flocks and other possessions, and hears that Esau, the brother who threatened to murder him, is approaching with a force of four hundred men, a huge army for those times. He remains alone the night before they will meet,

And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. 26 When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket… 27 Then he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But he answered, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 28 Said the other, “What is your name?” He replied, “Jacob.” 29 Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping on his hip. [Genesis 32:25-32] 

This is the last lesson we learn from our ancestor Jacob today. Getting real, letting the best of us be in charge, not the worst, is a real struggle. It is not without pain, not without wound. But Jacob becomes Israel because he doesn’t run away from the impending, and dangerous, meeting with his brother, Esau. He is wounded, and after parting from his brother following a successful reconciliation, the text tells us that:

18Jacob arrived shalem in the city of Shechem which is in the land of Canaan… [Genesis 33:18]

He arrived whole, say our Sages, no longer limping. He had healed. Will he ever again have to take risks with the people in his family, risks that may injure him or them, or both? Of course he will, and so will we. Will he ever again have to struggle to cut through his own predilections and fantasies? Of course he will, and so will we. Will he ever again have to try and find what he really believes, what he really stands for? Of course he will, and so will we. There is no “happily ever after” except in the movies.

Here is this man, Jacob, whose life, unlike those of his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham, is made up of small moments, not grand ones. Just like us.

Here is this man Jacob, learning the hard way that there’s no free lunch, that what goes around comes around, that there are moral consequences for our actions. Just like us.

Here is this man Jacob, struggling to become Israel, paying the price of growing and learning. Just like us.

Was Jacob, fallible, all too human Jacob, worthy of being the father of our people? No, and I think that’s why he was picked. He can be our father because he’s so much like us. In his story, will he ever learn how to deal lovingly and successfully with his family once and for all? Of course he won’t, and neither will we. For him and for us, there are successes and failures. If we learn nothing else from Jacob, let us learn that. And let us remember, as that famous theologian Lawrence Peter Berra, otherwise known as Yogi said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Just ask Jacob.