Finding the Joy · Parashat Vayishlach
The Name You Carry Home
The Name You Carry Home
I booked another flight. This time with a layover in Milan, departing next week for Tel Aviv. The airfare was absurdly cheap. I bought two tickets before the price could change its mind. And possibly before I talked to my husband.
He looked at the confirmation email and said, “You know it’s going to be hard to leave shul.” He was right. This would be our third trip to Israel this year. Leaving feels like stepping away at the wrong moment. But there’s a broader congregation, too. Am Yisrael doesn’t stop at the walls of one synagogue in Atlanta.
I chose the name Uriel when I converted — “my light is God” — and Chanukah starts the week after we land. If there was ever a time to carry that name somewhere specific, this is it.
It will be hard to leave here. It will be hard to leave there. Both of those things are true.
Parashat Vayishlach opens with Jacob heading home after twenty years away — and terrified of what’s waiting for him. His brother Esau is marching toward him with four hundred men. Jacob prays. He sends gifts ahead. He divides his family into two camps. And then, the night before the encounter, he sends everyone across the Jabbok River, and he stays behind. Alone.
וַיִּוָּתֵ֥ר יַעֲקֹ֖ב לְבַדּ֑וֹ וַיֵּאָבֵ֥ק אִישׁ֙ עִמּ֔וֹ עַ֖ד עֲל֥וֹת הַשָּֽׁחַר׃ Jacob was left alone. And a figure wrestled with him until the break of dawn.
The Torah doesn’t tell us who the figure is. The figure wrenched Jacob’s hip out of its socket, and still Jacob held on. Dawn came. The figure said, “Let me go.” Jacob said no. Not until you bless me.
The figure asked his name. Jacob said it: Yaakov. The heel-grabber. And then:
וַיֹּ֗אמֶר לֹ֤א יַעֲקֹב֙ יֵאָמֵ֥ר עוֹד֙ שִׁמְךָ֔ כִּ֖י אִם־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל כִּֽי־שָׂרִ֧יתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִ֛ים וְעִם־אֲנָשִׁ֖ים וַתּוּכָֽל׃ Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.”
Jacob walked into the dawn with a new name and a limp. Both were permanent.
Earlier in the parsha, before the wrestling, Jacob prayed one of the most quietly devastating lines in the Torah:
קָטֹ֜נְתִּי מִכֹּ֤ל הַחֲסָדִים֙ וּמִכׇּל־הָ֣אֱמֶ֔ת אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשִׂ֖יתָ אֶת־עַבְדֶּ֑ךָ כִּ֣י בְמַקְלִ֗י עָבַ֙רְתִּי֙ אֶת־הַיַּרְדֵּ֣ן הַזֶּ֔ה וְעַתָּ֥ה הָיִ֖יתִי לִשְׁנֵ֥י מַחֲנֽוֹת׃ I am unworthy of all the kindness that You have so steadfastly shown Your servant: with my staff alone I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.
Katonti. I am small. I crossed this river once with nothing but a walking stick, and now look — two camps, a family, flocks, a life. The word isn’t false modesty. It’s the gasp of a man who can see the distance between where he started and where he stands.
On Monday, Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that the Iron Beam laser defense system — renamed Or Eitan, “Eitan’s Light” — is complete. The system intercepts rockets and drones with a beam of light at a cost of about three dollars per shot. It was named in memory of Captain Eitan Oster, twenty-two years old, an Egoz commando killed fighting in southern Lebanon in October 2024. His father, Dov Oster, was one of the system’s lead developers. A father built a shield of light. It carries his son’s name now.
I think about Jacob at the Jabbok a lot when I’m preparing to pack for Israel. The man had two camps and stood between them alone in the dark. He did not run. He wrestled. And the blessing he demanded was a name.
Names matter. I picked mine maybe a year ago and received it about seven months ago, standing in a mikveh in Atlanta. Uriel. The light of God. I did not pick it because I thought I deserved it. I picked it because I thought it was a direction — something to walk toward, not something I had already become. Katonti. I crossed this Jordan with nothing, and now I have two camps.
Both camps are mine. The pull between them is not a problem to solve. It is what it feels like to belong to something larger than one building, one city, one comfortable life.
Jacob limped into the sunrise carrying a new name he would spend the rest of his life growing into. That is what names do. They don’t describe who you are. They describe who you are supposed to become.
Next week we land in Israel just days before the first candle. We’ll be there when the lights go up.
Shabbat shalom.
— Uriel ben Avraham