Falling Up - VaYishlach

By Rabbi Neil Fleischmann
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Yaakov Avinu seems to always have people around him, a life filled with family, with one stark exception. In anticipation of re-meeting Eisav he prepares for battle, for a typical, physical war. Yaakov divides his camp strategically and advises them on how to deal with Eisav. He helps the fifteen members of his nuclear family cross the stream of Yabbok. Then, suddenlly, briefly – though it probably feels like forever -Ya'akov finds himself unusually alone. “Vayivater Ya’akov levado – and Ya’akov was left alone (Breishit 32:25).” Then he is confronted by an unexpected enemy of a unworldly sort. There is no explicit documentation of his preparation for his spiritual battle. Ya'akov's life up until this moment was his preparation. There was no cramming for this exam.
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Rabbi Yosef Blau sees this story as reflective of all of our lives. The major battles are spiritual and our sole preparation for the fights that count is the way we live the episodes of our lives up to the moment when we are tested. These conflicts are amorphous. When they arrive is unannounced and unknown. The physical challenges that we think we must prepare for, often never come. When the unexpected confrontations occur the people who usually travel with and support us can suddenly be absent from our surroundings . We can fight dark forces and win, but like Ya'akov we may come out limping. We can survive and thrive and, like Yaakov, in the end gain a new identity, sanctified through our spiritual victories. It is to our advantage to view these hurdles in a positive light.
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Shlomo HaMelech wrote "Sheva Yipol Tzaddik Vekam" - "A tzaddik falls seven times, and rises" (Mishlei 24:16). We all fall. A tzaddik moves on even with his many falls. Rav Yitzchak Hutner explains that rather than being a tzaddik despite falling down, a tzaddik is a tzaddik because of the times he falls and rises. In a letter to a student experiencing hard times, Rav Hutner developed the idea that achieving greatness is a process of overcoming and moving on. He explained that while we imagine righteous people being born righteous, it is more likely that they struggled to become great.
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"Ma'ayan nirpas u'makor mashchat: tzaddik mat lifnei rasha"-"A righteous man falling down before the wicked: like a muddled fountain, a polluted spring" (Mishlei 28:26). Rabeinu Bachai cites this pasuk as ancillary to "Sheva Yipol Tzadik Vekam". A tzadik stumbles through encounters with reshaim. Just as a sullied spring re-invigorates and returns to its previous purity, a tzaddik collapses into the hands of a rasha but soon regains his glory. Rabeinu Bachai offers these lines from Mishlei as an introduction to Parshat VaYishlach. Yaakov was temporarily humbled before Eisav; he showered his brother with gifts and addressed him as master. In the end, Ya'akov departed unscathed from his encounter with Eisav. The Sfat Emet notes that Ya'akov bowed before Eisav seven times (Breishit 33:3), an allusion to "Sheva Yipol Tzaddik Vekam". Using Rav Hutner's sense of the pasuk this can be understood to mean that Ya'akov not only fell and rose before Eisav, but his falling was part of the rising. This can be applied to the seemingly myriad rough times Ya'akov went through.
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The physical altercation with Eisav which never happens takes the form instead of a spiritual fight. The wrestling match which precedes Yaakov’s meeting with Eisav tells us what it, along all of Yaakov’s other hardships, was really all about. In Ya'akov's lifetime as in seasonal cycles, fall foreshadowed spring. In the lives of individual Jewish people as in the life of the Jewish People as a whole, we fall to rise again. The road to geula is galus, as our private exiles are paths to personal redemption. May we soon merit to see redemption for ourselves, our families, Klal Yisrael, and the world.