Who was Jacob? The son of a survivor. And as such, it was difficult for him to live in his father’s house. Isaac never spoke of the past. Yet Jacob wanted to know, to understand, for he loved his father. Still, in a curious way, he envied him. He was jealous of his grief, his memories. Jacob knew that no event would ever surpass the one that had taken place on Mount Moriah, and that troubled him. And so he tried to live dangerously, in his own way. He quarreled with his parents, argued with his brother, seemingly thriving on this existence filled with the blows and stumbling blocks of his own making. Threatened from all sides, he made a show of impassiveness in the face of adversity that reminds one of Isaac on the altar. Traveling from country to country, from refuge to refuge, as Abraham had done before him but for different reasons, Jacob left behind him a trail of resentments and jealousies. He seemed pleased when he was hunted. But deep down he knew that it was not the same, that it would never be the same. An enemy brother cannot be likened to an enemy father. Mahanaim was not Moriah, just as a ghetto in New York or Detroit is not, and cannot even be compared to, the Warsaw ghetto. Next to his father’s life, his own seemed flat and bland. He was born too late, after the event. Was there anything left for him to hope for, to cry over? He had not even suffered. He could never know the agony of a man helpless between a father and his God, one as demanding as the other, in a world made of indifference. Moriah to him was a mountain like any other.

This is the context in which we must reread the episode at Peniel. Jacob needed to provoke God to justify his place in history. Only thus could he surpass himself and become Israel.

And as dawn broke, he did become Israel. He had to cross night, go to the end of the confrontation—face solitude and anguish—to become worthy of his name.

At dawn Jacob was a different man. Whatever he touched caught fire. His words acquired a new resonance; he now expressed himself as would a visionary, a poet. Jacob’s strength is named Israel, says the Midrash. Did he win the battle? Can man defeat his Creator? Obviously that is impossible; but is it not a privilege to be defeated by God?

The Midrash, always cautious, stresses the angelic nature of the assailant. Though powerless before God, man is capable of defeating the angels.

Let us listen to another story:

When the battle was over, the angel pleaded with Jacob to let him go; Jacob refused to leave without a blessing.

— I cannot, said the angel. I do not have time. Dawn is breaking and I must leave.

— You are afraid of dawn? Why? Are you perhaps a thief? Or a nocturnal gambler?