“…Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:29)
לֹ֤א יַעֲקֹב֙ יֵאָמֵ֥ר עוֹד֙ שִׁמְךָ֔ כִּ֖י אִם־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל כִּֽי־שָׂרִ֧יתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִ֛ים וְעִם־אֲנָשִׁ֖ים וַתּוּכָֽל׃…
In this week’s Torah portion Jacob gets a new name—Israel. The meaning of the name is a topic of great interest to the commentators and to us as well for we are b’nei Yisrael, the children of Israel. So what is the meaning of his and our name?
The Torah verse suggests that to be Yisrael is to be one who “strives” or “wrestles” with God. Remember the context: Jacob goes to sleep the night before his dramatic and anxiety producing reunion with his brother Esau. Jacob is understandably nervous about their meeting since the last time they were together, some twenty years earlier, Esau vowed to kill him for tricking their father and stealing his blessing. During the night he has a strange encounter with some sort of divine being, perhaps an angel. They wrestle and in the morning, the being gives Jacob his new name.
The Keli Yakar, a 17th century sage who lived in Prague, connects the word Yisrael to the word yashar which means “straight,” referencing a verse from the book of Isaiah: “Let every valley be raised, every hill and mountain made low! Let the crooked (הֶעָקֹב) be made straight (לְמִישׁוֹר)…” (Isaiah 40:4) To be Yisrael in this reading is to be aligned with God. Jacob had previously been out of alignment as it were, crooked. Now he will be yashar El—walking in God’s ways.
As Ibn Ezra, a 12th century sage who lived in Spain, explains: “‘Crooked’ (akov) means deceitful which is the opposite of upright or straight (yashar).”
So in this reading, Yisrael is a moral category, one who lives her life in accord with the desires of the Holy One.
Here’s how I would put these two readings together: our task if we are truly to be worthy of inheriting the name Yisrael is to commit ourselves to wrestling with the difficult issues of our time so that we can ultimately behave in ways that are yashar, straightforward and correct, so that we can live our lives as much as possible in harmony with the Divine.
— Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback
