Man Down, but not Gone!
The epic struggle between the angel of Essau and Jacob takes place in the portion we read tomorrow. As they struggle and wrestle for hours, the angel of Essau realizes that although he has injured Jacob in the hip, he has lost the battle.
As he asks Jacob to let go, he then proceeds to give Jacob a blessing that your name will now be not only Jacob, but Yisrael, for the name means to struggle with man and angels, and still overcome.
As the Children of Israel, whom the country of Israel is named after, we have all been endowed with this eternal and timeless quality, of being able to collectively and individually overcome the challenges that we face from the outside, even if we are injured at times in the process.
This is not just a concept from the past, but a truism that we have lived by for generations, as we seek to live by the values of our ancestors and continuously make the world be the beautiful place that G-d intended, yet every so often we face tremendous hardships and enemies who seek to take us down, or stop us in our tracks.
Yet like Jacob, we too will continuously rise up and dust ourselves off, and keep moving the world forward to a much better destination.
The last fourteen months have been so hard as we wrestled with those who seek to take us down on so many levels, our brothers and sisters are still languishing in tunnels with terrorists, and we are all carrying hurt and pain inside of us. Yet steadily we are rising back up, more determined than ever to overcome the challenges, bring home our loved ones and stay focused on our goal of lighting up the world with goodness and kindness, one soul and one good deed at a time.
We are the people of Israel!
Am Yisrael Chai
Good Shabbos
Yisroel