Nothing But the Struggle

Harav Hagaon Yosef Elefant Shlita

In this week’s parashah Yaakov Avinu battles the Sar of Eisav, and tells him that he will not let him go until he gives him a brachah. Yet we don’t find anywhere that the Sar of Eisav actually gave a brachah; all he did was change his name from Yaakov to Yisrael: כִּי שָׂרִיתָ עִם אֱלֹהִים וְעִם אֲנָשִׁים וַתּוּכָל. Where exactly is the brachah? And what is the significance of the name change?

This event, and the name change of Yaakov to Yisrael, was unquestionably a defining moment for Klal Yisrael. We are named after this event, and it gives us our identity. So we certainly want to understand what happened here.

There’s a famous question that the baalei mussar ask: Why is it that Klal Yisrael is named after the battle, rather than the victory? The name Yisrael reflects the word שָׂרִיתָ, fighting the enemy, but shouldn’t we be named after the וַתּוּכָל, vanquishing him? The baalei mussar explain that our job is to struggle, to fight against the yetzer hara; the victory is in Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s hands. The struggle is what defines us, so that’s our name.

Perhaps we can add some more depth to our understanding of why we are defined by the struggle, as opposed to the victory.  In Shaarei Teshuvah, Rabbeinu Yonah uses the phrase: ולא מהרו לגעור בים התאוה ויחרב, describing the yetzer hara as a surging sea: yam hataavah. At times, the yetzer hara comes up against a person forcefully, yet the person can shout back at the yetzer hara and say no, and this sea of temptation suddenly dries up — a private Krias Yam Suf.  We have all experienced this phenomenon, that when we give a yell at the yetzer hara, he disappears. He comes back afterwards, obviously, but for now he disappears. Why is that? How does this surging tidal wave of the yam hataavah just dry up?

When Yaakov asked the malach for his name, he answered: לָמָּה זֶּה תִּשְׁאַל לִשְׁמִי. What is the significance of the Sar of Eisav avoiding giving his name? What he really meant was that he, the yetzer hara, really has no agenda, no content, and no reality. He really has nothing to offer. The entire essence of the yetzer hara is only to create a nisayon for a person, but the moment he does that, he no longer has any power. The moment the person overcomes the nisayon, the yetzer hara disappears. He’s not a real enemy, who continues to exist even if you win the battle. His entire existence is only to place you into a nisyayon, and the minute you’re victorious, the yetzer hara has already achieved its purpose, so he disappears. He has no metzius other than the nisayon itself.  Accordingly, when the Sar of Eisav answered לָמָּה זֶּה תִּשְׁאַל לִשְׁמִי, he was conveying that he has no reality of his own — all he has is the ability to bring a nisayon upon you. Other than that, the yetzer hara has no power.

Rav Wolbe, in Alei Shur, cites Chazal’s statement that until Avraham Avinu came along, the yetzer hara was like a highway robber who stood on the roads and robbed people: “Your money or your life!” When Avraham Avinu entered the scene, he called the yetzer hara’s bluff: “Hey, you’re a fraud! You don’t have a real gun — it’s only a water gun! There’s nothing to you!”  Avraham Avinu’s chiddush was that he recognized that the yetzer hara is nothing more than a hollow threat. He seems menacing, but really there’s nothing to him.

Indeed, Chazal teach that when Avraham Avinu was on the way to the Akeidah, the Satan placed all sorts of obstacles in his path: a river that almost drowned him, an iron wall. The Midrash Tanchuma states that Avraham declared, “I’m going through anyway” — and the moment he said that, all the obstacles disappeared, because the Satan has no reality and no real existence other than the ability to set up the nisayon. Once the person recognizes the nisayon for what it is and withstands it, then the Satan disappears, because he’s accomplished his job.

The reason Klal Yisrael is named after the struggle — שָׂרִיתָ, and not the victory, is that there really is nothing more than the struggle. The וַתּוּכָל is an inevitable result of the שָׂרִיתָ, since the moment a person stands up to the yetzer hara, he wins.

That explains why, immediately after the battle with Yaakov, the Sar of Eisav said, “I need to go” — to say shirah, Rashi explains. A malach says shirah after it does its job, and here, the Sar of Eisav finished its job, which was to place Yaakov into a situation of nisayon. Once Yaakov defeated him, the malach’s job was over. The Satan’s job is not to win, but just to create the nisayon. Once he does so, he can go say shirah.

Rav Wolbe notes that twice in Parashas Bereishis the Torah uses the term teshukah, once regarding the woman: וְאֶל אִישֵׁךְ תְּשׁוּקָתֵךְ, and once regarding the yetzer hara: וְאֵלֶיךָ תְּשׁוּקָתוֹ. What is the teshukah, the desire of the yetzer hara? The Maharal explains that everything that was created in this world, all material beings, yearn to be utilized and channeled for their correct purpose. The yetzer hara’s desire is to fulfill its tachlis, which it accomplishes by placing a person in a nisayon, so that he can overcome it: וְאַתָּה תִּמְשָׁל בּוֹ. The teshukah of the yetzer hara is not to get the person to do bad, but rather simply to create the nisayon so that the person can triumph over it.

Klal Yisrael is named after the battle because truthfully there is nothing more than the ability to struggle against the yetzer hara and say no: לגעור בים התאוה ויחרב.

The Chovos Halevavos (Shaar Yichud Hamaaseh ch. 5) explains that the whole intention of the yetzer hara is to prove that sheker is emes. If a person manages to identify this weakness of the yetzer hara, and expose his dressing up sheker as emes, then overcoming the yetzer hara is simple. In other words, the chink in the yetzer hara’s armor is the ability to recognize that his whole show is a lie. The minute you recognize that he has no metzius — not just that he happens to be saying something false, but that his whole show is a farce — then he unravels.

We now have an understanding of the nature of the battle between the emes of Yaakov and the sheker of Eisav. The job of Yaakov Avinu is to recognize that Eisav is לָמָּה זֶּה תִּשְׁאַל לִשְׁמִי — he has no reality to him, and the battle with yetzer hara lasts only as long as the person lends credence to it. The minute a person recognizes that the yetzer hara is purely a fraud, and that there’s nothing to him, he collapses, and it’s easy to break him.  The Satan presents the sheker of Olam Hazeh as if there’s really something there, when there isn’t.

Regarding the words וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ, the Gemara teaches that the dust of this battle between Yaakov and the Sar of Eisav rose all the way up to the Kisei Hakavod. The Sfas Emes explains that this means that as a person climbs higher in life, he might think that he has already vanquished the yetzer hara — but the truth is that at every level, a person faces another battle with the yetzer hara, another challenge. There’s no life without challenge — at every step along the way up to the Kisei Hakavod, a person is challenged to distinguish truth from falsehood. And the way to overcome challenges, at every level, is to recognize that this is a nisayon, and that the yetzer hara behind it is pure falsehood, with no reality to it.  That’s the meaning of the name Yisrael — שָׂרִיתָ. What defines Klal Yisrael is our ability to take a truthful look at the world and recognize what’s emes and what’s sheker.

The brachah that the Sar of Eisav gave Yaakov, then, is that he revealed to him his own limitations, by disclosing that he has no power beyond presenting the person with the nisayon and the struggle.