Wrestling With God: Jacob's Match

The medieval commentator Rashi wrote that the Hebrew word for wrestle (avek) implies that Jacob was "tied," for the same word is used to describe knotted fringes. Rashi says, "thus is the manner of two [people] who struggle to overthrow each other, that one embraces [the other] and knots him with his arms."

Now I understood. What had until then been my intellectual wrestling to know what was ultimately unknowable had been replaced by a different kind of struggle. "Wrestling with God" is an intimate act, symbolizing a relationship in which God and I are bound together. My wrestling is a struggle to discover what God expects of me, and I am tied to the One who assists me in that struggle. This Divine embrace supports and sustains me, just as it compels and even commands me. My wrestling is a constant struggle to remain bound to the Mystery and, through my actions, to bring godliness into the world.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, ...taught me that there is no such thing as coincidence--that we are surrounded by "invisible lines of connection," that God is the ocean and we are the waves. Human beings are the hands of God; each of us, he said, has a "Torah" of our own, a unique teaching that we convey to others by our words and our actions; our very lives can become a blessing and a teaching. In order to experience the Divine Presence, one must move one's ego aside. Most importantly, he explained that since God is everywhere and all the time, everyone and everything is a manifestation of the Holy One of Being. (by Barbara K. Shuman)