My son’s Facebook page Intro says “Ey, I'm an actor 🔯🍩Descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants.” It is a public expression of Jewish pride for all his friends and followers to see.
The idea of Jews as those who wrestle with angels (i.e. with God) is found in this week’s Torah portion, as our ancestor Jacob wrestles with a divine being and is given the name Yisrael – ‘one who wrestled with God and prevailed’.
We are a people who wrestle, struggle, question, and confront what we believe, and how we should act in the world. These days, the struggles are existential, with the rise of antisemitism leading many Jews to struggle with whether and when it is safe to be public about our Jewish identity. We struggle with the tensions we feel between our love and support for the people of Israel and our concern for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. And we struggle between our belief in the value of free speech and the right to protest in the face of pro-Palestinian protests on campus and elsewhere.
Our young adults struggle with what they may see as a contradiction between the Jewish values of social justice that they learned in religious school, and what they see as injustice in Gaza and the West Bank at the hand of the Israeli government. Parents struggle with communicating with their young adult children over these competing values.
It is important for all of us to remember that all these struggles are rooted in a shared love for Judaism and the Jewish commitment to justice. As long as our children continue to show their pride and love for their Judaism and the Jewish community, we know our struggles are all for the sake of Heaven.
-Rabbi Bonnie Margulis
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