Facing Our Past Selves

 Shabbat Shalom From Rabbi Eitan Weiner-Kaplow

 

November 19-20, 2022 / 16 Kislev 57812

 

Shabbat Vayishlach

Torah Reading: Genesis 32:4 - 36:43 / Haftarah Reading: Obadiah 1:1-21

 

“Facing Our Past Selves”

 

Dear Friends,

 

How do we confront the attributes of ourselves that need attention and change?  How do we grow and mature?  In this week’s Torah portion Jacob encountered just such a question.  Upon returning to the land of Israel after twenty-one years of exile, he needed to face up to his brother Esau and the things Jacob did so long ago that caused Esau such pain and anger.  The Torah tells us that Jacob wrestled with an angel on the night before the meeting.  Many commentaries suggest that Jacob was actually wrestling with himself – his old self.  When victorious, Jacob emerged as a changed man and his name was changed to Yisrael, meaning God Wrestler.

 

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan offered this teaching when it comes to self-improvement.

 

“The God-impulse in us is not fear but hope, not helplessness but self-help, not despondency but courage, not the obfuscation of the mind but the light of reason, not the belittlement of what man is but the exultation of what he might be.”

 

Zay a mentsch – be a good person.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

Rabbi Eitan Weiner-Kaplow