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Jacob won his share of eternity, but he emerged a shaken, shattered man. Jacob or Israel? Both. True, God ordered him not to call himself Jacob any more, yet one moment later the Bible calls him just that. As though Israel did not succeed in severing his link to Jacob. We are explicitly forbidden to call Abraham by his former name, Avram, but such is not the case for Jacob. For with him, we are dealing with the very destiny of Israel—the immanent, real, historical people of Israel as well as the eternal, meta-historical Israel. Could Israel have erased Jacob? No, he should not have—even if heaven had ordered him to do so. Israel would not have been Israel had he not first been Jacob, had he not carried inside himself Jacob’s strange and exalted dream.

Tormented, torn, staggering under the weight of his memories, Jacob belonged to Israel just as Israel was part of Jacob. More than his father and his grandfather, Jacob was conscious of the pluralism that was to mark his descendants. Contrary to his father’s and his grandfather’s children, his children all entered Jewish history, even the exiled ones, even the Ten Lost Tribes. Jacob is the entire house of Jacob, Israel is the entire community of Israel.

Hence his obsession, in his old age, with the problem of exile. In his dreams he had seen the Temple go up in flames over and over again. Before dying, he would have liked to know when it would all end.

As he lay on his deathbed he summoned his children to gather around him so as to disclose to them the ultimate mystery of redemption—the end of time, the end of history. Here, again, he went further than either his father or his father’s father. God allowed him to see further than his predecessors, and further than his successors, all except Daniel. But, says the Midrash, at the moment he was about to translate his vision into words, his prophetic gifts were withdrawn.

That was the most poignant, heartbreaking moment of his life. He had entered the most secret of sanctuaries, he had beheld the most luminous of beings, and now he passionately yearned to transmit, to teach, to make known what he had seen—and he could not. He could but look. In silence.

Listen to a Midrash: Jacob was about to open his mouth when he was beset by doubts: surely his insight was limited to Israel’s destiny. How was he to know whether his descendants would remain in Israel’s fold? He was wrong to doubt; for that doubt cost him his powers. In other words: the story he did not tell is more beautiful than the others—all the others—those told in his name and even those told by himself.

And yet, his intuition was right. He anticipated how difficult it would be for Israel to remain Israel, and how much suffering, how many ordeals were in store for the sons of Israel. How could he not at least attempt to console his children? To urge them not to lose hope? To tell them that every exile has its boundaries just as every night meets the dawn? He had to tell them something—only the words ceased to obey him. And so, all that was left for him to do was to bless his children. Did he recall Peniel? The angel, the blessing, the victory? He died taking along his secret, the secret named Israel, this first ray of dawn to separate night and its specters from day and its pitfalls.