{"id":38982,"date":"2018-08-30T07:20:27","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T04:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=38982"},"modified":"2018-08-30T07:20:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T04:20:27","slug":"with-whom-did-jacob-do-battle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/with-whom-did-jacob-do-battle-2\/","title":{"rendered":"With Whom Did Jacob do Battle?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"38982","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":38140,"related_cahpter":"1007","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is one of the most resonant moments of the entire biblical saga: Jacob, on his way to meet his brother Esau for the first time since fleeing from him many years ago, leaves his family and his camp in the middle of the night and encounters an unnamed figure\u2014an angel\u2014who wrestles with him until dawn. Jacob walks away from the encounter with a limp, but he gains a new name: Israel\u2014\u201che who wrestles with God\u201d\u2014the name which shall became the namesake for the people that will descend from his children.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This story may be one of the more memorable episodes in the entire Tanakh, but did it really happen? Maimonides, the great medieval halakhist and philosopher, startlingly maintains that it did not. According to Maimonides, human beings can only see angels in dreams, or in waking visions. Thus, according to Maimonides, the seminal story of Jacob wrestling with the angel was not an event that occurred in the external world; it only occurred within Jacob\u2019s mind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If so, responded Nachmanides, Maimonides\u2019 great medieval antagonist, how could Jacob have walked away from this \u201cdream\u201d with a limp? This vision was obviously no dream, Nachmanides responded; it was an event that took place in the external world, and had real, physical consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So? Was Jacob wrestling with the angel a tension-filled tussle in the darkness of the night? Or a no-holds-barred battle within the depths of the soul? The view you choose to take of this story\u2014reading it through the prism of Maimonides\u2019 realism, or through Nachmanides\u2019 literalism\u2014may be the reading of the Jewish tradition that most speaks to you: rationalism, or mysticism; both schools of thought, like Jacob and the angel, have always, and will always, continue to wrestle with each other within the limitless wrestling ring that is the universe of Torah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(Cover art by Elisheva Horowitz, by courtesy of the artist)<\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"With Whom Did Jacob do Battle?","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"A rationalist and a literalist wrestle with the text","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":{"ID":38778,"id":38778,"title":"Yaakov and Eisav-G32","filename":"Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/jacob-goes-for-win-win\/yaakov-and-eisav-g32\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"yaakov-and-eisav-g32","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":38716,"date":"2018-08-27 07:28:08","modified":"2022-03-20 21:20:38","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1000,"height":764,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32-300x229.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":229,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32-768x587.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":587,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32.jpg","large-width":1000,"large-height":764,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32.jpg","1536x1536-width":1000,"1536x1536-height":764,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32.jpg","2048x2048-width":1000,"2048x2048-height":764,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32.jpg","post_full_size-width":1000,"post_full_size-height":764,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Yaakov-and-Eisav-G32-550x420.jpg","home_baner-width":550,"home_baner-height":420}},"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38983,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38982\/revisions\/38983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}