52 | NOVEMBER 11 • 2021 

W

hat is it that made 
Jacob — not 
Abraham or Isaac 
or Moses — the true father of 
the Jewish people? We are the 
“congregation of Jacob,
” “the 
children of Israel.
” 
Jacob/Israel is the 
man whose name 
we bear. Yet Jacob 
did not begin the 
Jewish journey; 
Abraham did. 
Jacob faced no 
trial like that 
of Isaac at the binding. He 
did not lead the people out of 
Egypt or bring them the Torah. 
To be sure, all his children 
stayed within the faith, unlike 
Abraham or Isaac. But that 
simply pushes the question back 
one level. Why did he succeed 
where Abraham and Isaac failed?
It seems that the answer lies 
in this week’s parshah and the 
next. Jacob was the man whose 
greatest visions came to him when 
he was alone at night, far from 
home, fleeing from one danger to 
the next. In this week’s parshah, 
escaping from Esau, he stops 
and rests for the night with 
only stones to lie on and has an 
epiphany:
He had a dream in which he 

saw a stairway resting on the 
Earth, with its top reaching to 
heaven, and the angels of God 
were ascending and descending 
on it … When Jacob awoke 
from his sleep, he thought, 
“Surely the Lord is in this place, 
and I was not aware of it.
” He 
was afraid and said, “How awe-
some is this place! This is none 
other than the house of God; 
this is the gate of heaven.
” (Gen. 
28:12-17)
In next week’s parshah, flee-
ing from Laban and terrified at 
the prospect of meeting Esau 
again, he wrestles alone at night 
with an unnamed stranger.
Then the man said, “Your 
name will no longer be Jacob, 
but Israel, because you have 
struggled with God and with 
humans and have overcome” … 
So Jacob called the place Peniel, 
saying, “It is because I saw God 
face to face, and yet my life was 
spared.
” (Gen. 32:29-31)
These are the decisive spir-
itual encounters of Jacob’s life, 
yet they happen in liminal space 
(the space between that is nei-
ther starting point nor destina-
tion), at a time when Jacob was 
at risk in both directions, where 
he came from and where he 
was going to. Yet it was at these 

points of maximal vulnerability 
that he encountered God and 
found the courage to continue 
despite all the hazards of the 
journey.
That is the strength Jacob 
bequeathed the Jewish peo-
ple. What is remarkable is not 
merely that this one tiny people 
survived tragedies that would 
have spelled the end of any 
other people: the destruction 
of two temples, the Babylonian 
and Roman conquests, the 
expulsions, persecutions and 
pogroms of the Middle Ages, 
the rise of antisemitism in 
19th century Europe and the 
Holocaust. After each cata-
clysm, it renewed itself, scaling 
new heights of achievement.
During the Babylonian exile 
it deepened its engagement with 
the Torah. After the Roman 
destruction of Jerusalem, it 
produced the great literary 
monuments of the Oral Torah: 
Midrash, Mishnah and Gemara. 
During the Middle Ages it 
produced masterpieces of law 
and Torah commentary, poetry 
and philosophy. A mere three 
years after the Holocaust it pro-
claimed the state of Israel, the 
Jewish return to history after 
the darkest night of exile.

STRENGTH OF LEADERS
When I became Chief Rabbi, 
I had to undergo a medical 
examination. The doctor put 
me on a treadmill, walking at a 
very brisk pace. “What are you 
testing?” I asked him. “How fast 
I can go, or how long?” 
“Neither,
” he replied. “What I 
am testing is how long it takes, 
when you come off the tread-
mill, for your pulse to return to 
normal.
” 
That is when I discovered 
that health is measured by the 
power of recovery. That is true 
for everyone, but doubly so 
for leaders and for the Jewish 
people, a nation of leaders (that, 
I believe, is what the phrase “a 
kingdom of priests” means).
Leaders suffer crises. That 
is a given of leadership. When 
Harold Macmillan, prime min-
ister of Britain between 1957 
and 1963, was asked what was 
the most difficult aspect of 
his time in office, he replied, 
“Events, dear boy, events.
” Bad 
things happen, and when they 
do, the leader must take the 
strain so that others can sleep 
easily in their beds.
Leadership, especially in 
matters of the spirit, is deeply 
stressful. Four figures in Tanach 

Light in
DarkTimes

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

