By Howard Feldman
I Am Not a Rabbi – Asking for a Blessing
It’s night. Proper night.
Jacob is alone. He’s sent everyone ahead, family, possessions, all the careful planning, and for the first time there’s nothing between him and what’s coming next.
And then he’s not alone.
A man appears. Or an angel. Or something in between. The Torah doesn’t clarify, which is usually its way of telling us to pay close attention.
They fight. The whole night. Brutal, and physical. An exhausting existential struggle until dawn.
At some point the being realises he’s not going to win. And so he touches Jacob’s hip and dislocates it. Not enough to end it. Just enough to leave a mark that won’t go away. And causes damage that will endure a lifetime.
Still, Jacob doesn’t let go.
Eventually the being says, “Let me go. Dawn is breaking.”
And Jacob says something that should feel odd, but somehow doesn’t: “I’m not letting you go until you bless me.”
It’s a small detail in the story. Easy to read past. But for me it lands because it feels uncomfortably familiar.
There’s something about us, as Jews, that echoes that moment. We do the work. We build, we argue, we defend, we contribute. We fight when necessary. We survive things that should have finished us off long ago.
Like the name he had just been given, like the wound he has just received, this is a line that will endure.
Jacob has just gone through the most defining struggle of his life. He’s held his ground all night. He hasn’t backed down and hasn’t been beaten. He’s about to be given a new name, Israel. The one who struggles and prevails.
He’s won. And still… he asks. As if needs something from the very thing he’s just overcome. A blessing. But a kind of approval.
And if Jacob becomes Israel in that moment, then the pattern seems to follow the name.
The modern State of Israel does something similar. It survives. It defends itself. It innovates in ways that don’t make sense for a country its size. It deals with threats most countries would not tolerate for a week.
And then it explains; Why it acted. Why it had to act. Why it’s justified. Why it’s still justified. Why it would prefer not to have had to do any of it in the first place.
There’s always a version of: “Please understand.”
It might not be weakness. It comes from something more human. A need to be seen fairly. To be understood. To exist in the eyes of others as more than what they decide you are.
Religiously we have often done the same. Even some religiously observant Germans, for example, were known to not wear kippot at work. They believed that they would achieve more in business if they didn’t stand out and didn’t antagonise anyone.
But it raises a question.
At what point is the explanation no longer necessary? Or pointless.
Jacob didn’t need the blessing to win. The fight was already done. The name was already his. The injury made sure he’d never forget it.
The blessing didn’t change the outcome.
And maybe that’s the part that’s hardest to sit with. There’s a difference between engaging and needing approval. Between explaining and asking to be accepted.
We are very good at the struggle. It’s literally in the name. What we’re less good at is stopping and being comfortable with our success. Of knowing when we’ve already done enough and when the result stands on its own.
I’m not suggesting we go silent. Or disengage. Or stop trying to be understood. But maybe we shouldn’t need it quite so much.
Because that night, somewhere between the injury and the sunrise, something had already shifted.
The blessing just made it feel official.
And maybe that’s the point.
We’ve been Israel and the children of Israel for a long time. We really don’t need to keep asking.
Am Yisrael Chai