{"id":71052,"date":"2020-03-01T11:39:36","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T09:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=71052"},"modified":"2022-03-14T13:56:20","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T11:56:20","slug":"jacob-boundary-crosser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/jacob-boundary-crosser\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacob: Boundary-Crosser"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":51083,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[490,442,492],"acf":{"old_id":"71052","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":69185,"related_cahpter":"28","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Surviving the road","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jacob is the first character in the Bible whose experiences on the road are described for the reader. While Abraham is similarly forced to travel, we read uniquely about Jacob\u2019s adventures on the road, alone, in a strange place. \u201cJacob left Beer-sheba, and set out for Haran\u201d (28:10)\u2014these are fateful words. In the Bible, to be on the road, journeying from one location to another, is not a condition for romance or envy. The road is a lawless expanse between the comfort, familiarity and safety of inhabited spaces, a place where people can disappear or die without anyone finding out. The most fearsome instance of this danger can be found in the episode of the broken-neck heifer in Deuteronomy 21, which conveys a ritual to be performed when a person is found slain in the no-man\u2019s-land between cities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is not surprising, then, that the road is where we find Jacob, for tricksters are, to cite one famous example, road-runners by nature. Their fierce native independence renders them eager to cast off societal bonds, or to antagonize and threaten society to the point where they are forced to flee. The Yoruba trickster Eshu, for example, goes on the road to seek \u201cescape from the prescription of social laws.\u201d For his part, Jacob seeks safety after provoking his brother\u2019s rage (his mother is further concerned for his marital prospects). Still, flight often comes with a cost. The Winnebago trickster Wakdjunkaga is \u201cdesocialized, to be represented as breaking all his ties with man and society.\u201d Jacob is shorn of family ties and exposed to unseen dangers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These experiences illustrate another aspect of the trickster tradition he shares: Jacob as boundary-crosser. Tricksters are characterized by their fluidity: they cross boundaries sometimes out of defiance and provocation, but just as frequently change form as an adaptation to new circumstances. Their very bodies are amorphous and changeable, able to alternate between human, animal and divine forms. These forms can shift so subtly and rapidly that the reader may not know what form a particular trickster inhabits until the middle of the tale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While Jacob does not display this full range of crossings typical of a mythological trickster\u2014he doesn\u2019t actually become an animal, a deity, a woman\u2014he does freely cross boundaries. His earlier triumph over his brother is partly rooted in his ability to cross back and forth over the gender divide. By donning goat-skins, he deceives his father about his masculinity while inhabiting an animal body. Even more so, on his travels, when he first lies down to sleep, Jacob experiences being on the crossroads of human and divine encounter in a way that blurs the distinction between these two realms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Excerpted from <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by Elliott Rabin by permission of the Jewish Publication Society. \u00a92020 by Elliott Rabin.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":69430,"id":69430,"title":"BiblicalHero","filename":"BiblicalHero.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BiblicalHero.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-gap-between-god-and-humankind\/biblicalhero\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"biblicalhero","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":69219,"date":"2020-02-02 17:04:11","modified":"2020-11-23 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