The struggle of faith. There are Mozart's and there are Beethoven's, which are you? I have only the most amateur knowledge of music, but the impression one gets about Mozart is that from him music flowed. There's something effortless and effervescent about his compositions. They are not sickly at awe by the pale cast of thought.

He wrote at speed. He carried the worries of the world lightly. Not so Beethoven, for whom it

sometimes took years, for an idea to crystallize into its final form with countless drafts and

revisions and crossings out. This was a man who could be angry with himself and with the world,

for whom creativity was a struggle from which he emerged triumphant,

with work that is rarely less than strenuous and full of conflict

until its final majestic resolution.

The ethereal, mystical, almost otherworldly quality of his last compositions,

the sublime late piano sonatas and string quartets,

are the creation of one who has finally found peace

after a life of wrestling with his own angels and demons.

All of this for me is a way of coming to understand Jacob, the man who became Israel,

our father in faith. Jacob is not the most obvious choice of religious hero. He doesn't appear,

at least on the surface of the biblical text, as a man with Abraham's courage or kindness,

Isaac's faithfulness and self-restraint, Moses's vigor and passion,

David's politics and poetry, or Isaiah's lyricism and hope. It was a man surrounded by conflict,

with his brother Esau, his father-in-law Laban, his wives, Leah and Rachel and his children,

whose sibling rivalry eventually brought the whole family

into exile in Egypt, his life seems to have been a field of tensions. Then there were his transactions.

The way he purchased Esau's birthright took his blessing and eventually outwitted his wily father-in-law,

Laban. In each case, he seemed to have won,

only to find that each ended in tears. The episode in which, at Rebecca's request, he dressed up as

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